Revision as of 20:07, 15 March 2015

2010: Delhi best city to live in, glitzy NCR is no match

The Times of India

Megha Suri Singh | TNN

New Delhi: Despite all its problems, Delhi offers the best quality of life to its residents among all cities in the country, according to a ‘Liveability Index’ released by CII. In the index, based on surveys, Delhi outscores metros like Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore and Kolkata; NCR towns Gurgaon, Noida and Faridabad; and even planned cities like Chandigarh.

Delhi ranks first on parameters like population density, safety, transport, education, job opportunities and accidents. The only red line in the capital’s card is health care, where the city is ranked 17th. Kozhikode, Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi and Kolkata score high on this front.

Among NCR cities, Gurgaon ranks ninth on the list — it tops the chart on housing and educational facilities but lags behind due to lack of job opportunities, crime and unsafe roads and public transport. Noida ranks 27th due to poor health care, crime rate, no public transport and high rate of accidents.

In NCR, worst city to live in is Faridabad

New Delhi: ‘Liveability Index’ released by the Confederation of Indian Industry, while terming Delhi as the best city to live in, stated that the worst city in NCR is Faridabad with a rank of 32. The city needs upgradation of employment opportunities, public transport, roads, migration and healthcare.

Delhi also scores relatively low (12th) on migration. But cities like Indore, Pune, Chandigarh, Goa, Bangalore, Jaipur and Faridabad are far worse at ranks 37, 35, 34, 33, 32, 29 and 28, respectively.

After Delhi, the next best cities to live in, according to the survey, are Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore, in that order. The bottom rankers in the index are Jamshedpur (ranked 37th), Visakhapatnam (36th), Patna (35th), Lucknow (34th) and Ludhiana (33rd).

The survey studied 37 Indian cities over a decade to deduce a Quality of Life index. ‘‘The study uses hard data collected from reliable sources to eliminate the possibility of personal bias or a sampling error obscuring the reality,’’ said an official.

2013-14: safest Indian cities

Mumbai loses safest city tag, slides to 4th rank: Survey

TNN | Mar 6, 2014

The Times of India

MUMBAI: With rising incidents of crimes against women in Mumbai, the metropolis has lost the top slot as the place perceived to be most secure for women.

An online survey done by a travel portal put Ahmedabad on the top slot. "Ahmedabad garnered 86 % votes and was followed by Pune at 84 % and Bangalore at 81 %. Mumbai, which was number one in 2013, received only 72% votes," stated the survey released ahead of Women's Day by TripAdvisor. The survey mentioned that 53% said they travel alone only to destinations, which are perceived as being safe.

Of the 63% women who have not travelled alone ever, only 8% felt it was unsafe to travel alone abroad but 33% felt it was unsafe to travel alone in India. "An encouraging proportion of women in India have started to travel by themselves or in all-women groups," Nikhil Ganju, country manager, TripAdvisor India said. Despite safety being a concern, over 51% respondents were unaware that hotels in India have floors exclusively for women.

2013-14: the world's least inexpensive cities are all in South Asia

Mumbai tops list of world's 10 least expensive cities, Delhi third: Survey Kounteya Sinha,TNN | Mar 4, 2014

[timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Mumbai-tops-list-of-worlds-10-least-expensive-cities-Delhi-third-Survey/articleshow/31413718.cms The Times of India]

LONDON: For an average Indian, living costs in Mumbai may be a nightmare. But the new Worldwide Cost of Living 2014 index has thrown up an interesting finding.

India's city of dreams has emerged as the world's cheapest city to live in. The analysis takes into account the concept of value of money — how much bread would you get for one dollar or for that matter a litre of petrol. While Mumbai has emerged as the country with the best value for money spent, Delhi has emerged the third cheapest, placing it right at the bottom of the world's most expensive cities.

For example, buying 1 kg bread in Mumbai would cost $ 0.91 while in Delhi it would be $ 1.05 as against $ 3.36 in Singapore which has toppled Tokyo to be the world's most expensive city to live in this year. The average cost of one litre unleaded petrol in Mumbai is $ 1.21 and in Delhi $ 1.14 as against $ 2.50 in Paris — the world's second most expensive city.

Singapore topped 131 cities globally to become the world's most expensive city to live in 2014, according to the economist intelligence unit (EIU). Asia is interestingly home to some of the world's most expensive cities as well as to many of the world's cheapest cities.

The index says: "Within Asia the best value for money is in the Indian subcontinent (defined as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka). Mumbai is the cheapest location in the survey and three of the four cheapest cities surveyed hail from Pakistan, India and Nepal. Mumbai's title as the world's cheapest city and is a reflection of the structural factors that define price within the Indian subcontinent."

It added: "Although India has been tipped for future growth, much of this is driven by its large population and the untapped potential within the economy. Income inequality means that low wages proliferate, driving down household spending and creating many tiers of pricing that keep per capita spending low. This, combined with a cheap and plentiful supply of goods into cities, as well as government subsidies on some products, has kept prices down, especially by western standards."

Besides Singapore, cities making up the top five most expensive cities to live in are Paris, Oslo, Zurich and Sydney, with Tokyo falling to sixth place. The economic intelligence unit's Worldwide Cost of Living Survey looks at more than 400 individual prices.

The survey gathers detailed information on the cost of more than 160 items-from food, toiletries and clothing to domestic help, transport and utility bills — in every city. More than 50,000 individual prices are collected in each survey round.

The 10 least expensive cities in the world

1. Mumbai (India)

2. Karachi (Pakistan)

3. New Delhi (India)

4. Damascus (Syria)

5. Kathmandu (Nepal)

6. Algiers (Algeria)

7. Bucharest (Romania)

8. Panama City (Panama)

9. Jeddah (Saudi Arabia)

10. Riyadh (Saudi Arabia)

India Today Best Cities study: 2014

India Today

As India increasingly shifts to its cities, the dominance of the south remainsunchanged

Kaushik Deka

November 20, 2014

The urban population in India is growing at such a rapid pace that by 2020, 35 per cent of the country's total population is expected to live in the cities; the projection is 50 per cent by 2050. According to a 2010 McKinsey Global Institute report, India's urban population will grow from 340 million in 2008 to 590 million in 2030. So the big question is: are Indian cities equipped enough to deal with this population explosion? How liveable are our cities?

The India Today Best Cities study is an ambitious attempt to find the answer. The first version of this annual exercise last year examined 30 capital and metro cities and 20 emerging cities on 11 parameters- overall, economy, housing, transport, public services, healthcare, education, crime and safety, entertainment, environment and investment. This year, we have added one more category-cleanliness.

However, what has remained unchanged is the dominance of south Indian cities. Chennai remains unchallenged as the top capital city while Coimbatore displaces Vadodara as the best emerging city in the overall category.

Across the 12 categories, Hyderabad and Chandigarh are the two capital cities which appear among the top five ranks in six categories, the highest, followed by Mumbai and Chennai in five categories each. The Union Government has announced a grand plan to create 100 smart cities. While chalking out the policy road map, the Government might as well pay attention to a worrisome trend that has emerged from the two India Today Best Cities studies-the uneven distribution of urban development. The winners this year come from just nine of the country's 29 states.

Civic systems ranking: 2014

Delhi 5th in India, way behind world

New Delhi: TIMES NEWS NETWORK

The Times of India Jun 07 2014

Survey Ranks It Low For Lack Of Politically Representative Civic Systems And Transparency

It’s not a patch on the likes of New York and London, but the bad news is that Delhi even trails other Indian cities in terms of civic systems. A survey by Bangalore based Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy has ranked it fifth behind Kolkata, Thiruvananthapuram, Bhopal and Patna.

The annual survey evaluates the performance of 21 cities, including 18 state capitals, on four parameters: urban planning and design (UPD), urban capacities and resources (UCR), empowered and legitimate political representation (ELPR), and transparency, accountability and participation (TAP).

Although Delhi leads Indian cities in urban planning and urban capacities, which includes budget and staff strength, it lags in terms of political representation and accountability. Janaagraha claims some audit queries on financial and project related discrepancies are pending in Delhi since 1964—50 years.

“Imagine if this were a company instead of a city, it would have been immediately delisted from the stock exchange,” said Ramesh Ramanathan, co-founder, Janaagraha. Delhi also has error rates of more than 20% in its municipality election voter list.

Delhi with a large staff strength of 140,000 and Mumbai with a huge budget of Rs 30,000 crore have mayors with terms of one year and 2.5 years, respectively . Delhi does not have a public disclosure law, neither do Kolkata, Ahmedabad and Chandigarh. Thiruvananthapuram is the only city to have a local body ombudsman to resolve inter-agency disputes which often slow down projects.

And unlike Ranchi and Patna, Delhi does not have independent external auditors (a panel of chartered accountants). All these facts have gone against Delhi.

While the benchmark cities, London and New York, have average scores of 9.6 and 9.3 (on 10), all Indian cities have scored in a range of 2.5 to 4. Chandigarh, famous for being a planned city, has slipped to the bottom with 2.5 points for coming up short on contemporary planning needs, public disclosure and a community participation law.

Delhi also has some catching up to do with major cities in the developing world. It has 1.4 lakh civic employees for a population of 1.7 crore while Sao Paulo in Brazil had more than 1.7 lakh employees in 2004 for a smaller population. Mexico City has one of the most “open” or accessible municipalities while Delhi doesn’t even have a citizen’s charter.

On the brighter side, Delhi is the only Indian city to have legal provisions of decentralization to a local level in its town and country planning Act. The other cities have archaic plans, with Hyderabad following an Act that was drafted in 1920. Delhi is the only Indian city with ward-level spatial development plans and has scored 3.8 for planning but zero for implementation.

Smaller cities have better and relatively newer legislations compared to the bigger cities, hence Thiruvananthapuram, Bhopal and Raipur find a place in the top 10.

Janaagraha benchmarked the 21 cities on 83 questions covering 115 parameters.

Most comfortable weather among Indian cities

IIT finds city’s comfort zone

Four-Year Study Calculates Hours Of Comfortable Weather

Jayashree Nandi TNN

The Times of India

New Delhi: Extreme summers and winters in Delhi are clearly uncomfortable. But Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi has calculated the percentage of hours when most Delhiites may be finding the weather to be “comfortable”. In a recent study, IIT’s Centre for Atmospheric Sciences (CAS) has ranked five cities on the basis of “comfortable hours”. Hyderabad has the highest comfortable hours, followed by Kolkata, Chennai, Delhi and Mumbai in the descending order.

The idea of which temperature range is comfortable is based on a comfort index defined by Saskatchewan weather station in Canada that considers 15 to 25 degrees comfortable while 25 to 32 degrees warm. The index, according to IIT scientists, is suited for Indian cities too. Comfort index means hours that fall under temperature, humidity and wind speed conditions that is optimum for people to carry out light to moderate physical activities without being affected by the weather. The CAS team assessed temperature and other weather data for the five cities from 2004 to 2008 and then graded them under five categories — cool, comfortable, warm, uncomfortably hot and severe danger.

The analysis found that 70% of the time all the five cities were uncomfortable. For instance, Hyderabad —which ranks highest as per the comfort index — had only 28.9% of the time in the comfortable category but 18.6% of the time in the uncomfortably hot category. Delhi had a whopping 12.9% of time in the severe danger category and about 26.3% of time in the comfortable category. Mumbai surprisingly has only 0.3% of the time in the severe danger category. It concludes that less than 30% of the time in these cities is comfortable for outdoor activities or indoor time without cooling needs.

“There is too much seasonal variation. The ranking of cities according to comfortable hours does not imply which city is most comfortable. The idea was to analyse how much time annually can be spent without the use of energy for heating or cooling. Also from the tourism point of view, we wanted to see which is the ideal time to visit these cities,” said Manju Mohan, the lead author of the study.

Another part of the study is to develop a method of assessing comfortable hours despite the seasonal variation. That looks at each month to check for the time that is not extremely hot or cold. For instance, “uncomfortable hours” have not been factored in the current ranking. If the ranking is done as per uncomfortable hours then Kolkata, Delhi and Chennai will rank higher than Mumbai.

Small cities put metros to shame in cleanliness ratings

The Times of India

Mahendra Kumar Singh | TNN

New Delhi: They may not have the glamourous tag but when it comes to cleanliness and sanitation, smaller cities like Chandigarh, Mysore, Surat, Tiruchirapalli and Jamshedpur have beaten the metros in the sanitation ratings released by the Union urban development ministry on Monday.

Not surprisingly, Chandigarh is on top, followed by Mysore, Surat, New Delhi Municipal Council area and Delhi Cantt in the top-five list of civic areas graded by independent agencies appointed by the ministry.

Cities like Tiruchirapalli, Jamshedpur, Mangalore and Rajkot fall in the top 10 list out of 441 cities and towns with a population of more than one lakh subjected to the test.

What could surprise many, Kanpur, once a major industrial city and considered quite polluted, ranked 10th in the list. With an ambitious task of 100% sanitation, the ministry took up the rating exercise with the objective of promoting safe sanitation in around 400 cities and towns across the country. Though Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) could not make it to the list of top 25 released by the ministry, metropolitan areas — Navi Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai — got the 11th, 12th and 13th rank, respectively. Kolkata could manage the last rank in the list of top 25 cities and towns.

Cities and towns have been rated on parameters such as complete elimination of open defecation, elimination of open scavenging, safe collection and disposal of total human excreta. On basis of the rating, cities are been classified as Red, Black, Blue and Green which would denote increasing level of achievement of good environmental and health outcomes.

The overall sanitation standard in cities and towns in the country was reflected in the fact that not a single city could achieve the top most classification of Green, while only four — Chandigarh, Mysore, Surat and New Delhi Municipal Council area — could find a place in second best classification of Blue.

Though the ministry did not release the list of the worst (Red) category, only 25 cities and towns out of 441 could find place in the Blue and Black categories.

The Capital’s neighbouring township of Noida could manage the 17th rank while Ahmadabad achieved the 19th place. Haridwar got the 21th rank and Vijaywada 24th in the list.

Releasing the rating, urban development minister S Jaipal Reddy hoped that some cities would reach the top most Green classification soon. He said the rating exercise for class I cities and towns was undertaken in order to sensitize the states and cities as well as citizens about the current state of sanitation and raise awareness about the need for improvement.

Best and worst cities for women

Source- NCRB, Rate- Incidents per lakh population

December 11, 2014

The Times of India

Two years after the Nirbhaya case, the recent incidents have again put a question mark on Delhi's record in ensuring safety for women. NCRB data on violent sexual offences (rape and assault on women) suggests that the national capital is among the worst cities in the country. Among 53 large cities, the rate of these crimes (the number per lakh population) was 73.9 for Gwalior and 59.5 for Delhi -the two cities ranking first and second in the hall of shame. Five of the ten most dangerous cities on this count are in Madhya Pradesh. The data also shows that Coimbatore, Chennai, Dhanbad, Rajkot and Madurai are among the safest cities for women.

2014: growth of cities

The Times of India

Feb 12 2015

Chidanand Rajghatta

Only 6 Indian metros among top 100 in an Economic Performance Index

The Brookings Institution's 2014 Global Metro Monitor Map that measures and compares growth patterns in the world's 300 largest metro economies puts Delhi at 18th place, followed by Kolkota (among Indian cities) at 32nd.Mumbai (52) Chennai (57) Hyderabad (76) and Bangalore (87), round up the Indian cities in the Top 100, which expectedly is dominated by Chinese cities. China has 11 cities in the Top 20, and four in the Top 10.Surprisingly, Turkey has four in the Top 10, including Izmir, Istanbul, and Bursa at two, three and four, respectively. Macau got the top spot. The report compares growth patterns in the world's 300 largest metro economies on two key economic indicators -annualized growth rate of real GDP per capita and annualized growth rate of employment.

These indicators, which are combined into an economic performance index on which metro areas are ranked, matter because they reflect the importance that people and policymakers attach to achieving rising incomes and standards of living and generating widespread labour market opportunity, the report says.

There is increasing emphasis by planners in recent years on cities because, as the report shows, with only 20% of the population, the 300 largest metropolitan economies in the world accounted for nearly half of global output in 2014.

Despite the dismal ranking of Indian cities, they have all improved on their rankings from the 2009-2014 period, pointing to better prospects.

Most of the growth in the cities surveyed is occurring in developing countries, particularly in Asia.

The highest ranked developed western city is London, which is placed at 26, and the top ranked American city is Austin at 38.