Pune adjudged best governed city

NEW DELHI: Pune has emerged as the best governed city and most equipped to deliver urban reforms in an all-India survey.

Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy, a Bengaluru-based non-profit, released the 5th edition of its Annual Survey of India’s City-Systems (ASICS) report which covered 23 major cities across 20 states based on 89 questions. Pune topped the charts for the first time in the annual survey followed by Kolkata, Thiruvananthapuram, Bhubaneswar and Surat.

Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Dehradun, Patna and Chennai constituted the bottom five cities. The survey evaluates the fundamental ability of a city’s institutions to deliver a better quality of life over the medium and long term.


Surat was the biggest gainer in this year’s rankings, jumping 12 positions over 2016 to the 5th spot.

“This was on the back of improved performance on own revenue generation, higher capital expenditure per capita by the city and implementation of Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) reforms including appointment of an internal auditor and credit rating,” said Vivek Anandan Nair, project lead on ASICS 2017.

Bhubaneswar, according to surveyors, stood out for showing steady improvement and moving six positions to fourth this year from the tenth position in 2016.

ASICS has brought out problem areas in city’s governance. The report points out, “Overall, India’s cities have continued to score low over the last three editions of ASICS, with average score improving marginally from 3.4 to 3.9. This indicates slow progress on fixing city systems. This is particularly worrisome, given the pace at which India is urbanising and the already poor state of public service delivery in our cities.”

The report underlines the need for sharp focus on city-systems or institutional reforms to city governance in our cities.

Here the complete list of the cities based on their ranking.
1. Pune
2. Kolkata
3. Thiruvananthapuram
4. Bhubaneswar
5. Surat
6. Delhi
7. Ahmedabad
8. Hyderabad
9. Mumbai
10. Ranchi
11. Raipur
12. Kanpur
13. Lucknow
14. Guwahati
15. Bhopal
16. Ludhiana
17. Visakhapatnam
18. Jaipur
19. Chennai
20. Patna
21. Dehradun
22. Chandigarh
23. Bengaluru