Indicative of best quality of life and coming up as an aspirational benchmark of urban development for other Indian cities, the city of Delhi leads the chart declares ‘The Liveability Index 2010’, a unique report based on a rigorous study conducted by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Institute for Competitiveness, India (IFC). Coming close to the winner Delhi are the cities of Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Pune ranked 2^nd to 8^th respectively in overall quality of life ratings. Ironically the NCR region, which should have kept pace with the development of Delhi, has failed to do so. Gurgaon, Noida and Faridabad have been ranked 9^th, 27^th and 32^nd respectively.

The Liveability Index 2010 is a methodical index of quality of living conditions in Indian cities. The report is brought-out after a comprehensive study on 37 cities, ranked on the basis of eight pillars like demographics, education, health & medical standards, safety, housing, socio-cultural political environment, economic environment and natural build & planned environment basis. An objective analysis was conducted by employing more than 300 indicators on a 10 year time line series across 20 constituent sub-pillars. This data driven approach is a distinctive mark of reports by Institute for Competitiveness, wherein no subjective opinion surveys are resorted to.

Contrary to media questioning safety in Delhi, the report puts Delhi as the safest city, while Bhopal and Bengaluru follow. Sadly, Gurgaon and Noida both take up poor rank on safety, 32nd with Faridabad 18th; is this what is jeopardising Delhi’s safety? Delhi also tops the list in domains of education and economic environment followed by Mumbai and Bengaluru. On Education front, the poorest performers are Bhubaneswar, Guwahati, Jaipur, Kanpur, Lucknow, Patna, and Vadodara.

Mumbai gains the top rank in Socio-political environment, followed by Delhi, Kolkata, Goa and Chennai. The city of Mumbai leads in city planning followed by Chennai and Delhi.

Health and Medical standards are the most notable for Kozhikode, Trivandrum and Kochi, a straight win for Kerela. Mumbai is 12th while Delhi is 17^th and Bengaluru 18^th. Lucknow, Noida and Patna (37th) are the last three ranked cities in providing convincing examples of health and medical standards. Health and Medical Standards are issue of gravest concern for cities like Ahmedabad, Bhopal, Chennai, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Mumbai and Pune as well.

Comparing house-cost & availability, urban household crowding and household incomes, the cities of Bengaluru, Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh, Dehradun, Gurgaon, and Noida provide the best housing options. Faring poorly in this parameter are the cities of Vishakhapatnam, Nagpur, Coimbatore, Kolkata, Kochi, Nashik, and Vadodara.

The authors Dr Amit Kapoor and Sandeep Mann have raised a few stirring questions: Why are our cities lagging on liveability standards vis-à-vis international cities? What is the understanding of policy makers and those in governance, of issues besetting our cities? Are they aware of the factual position? Do they have a generic grasp or an analytical insight into state of the cities? What roadmaps are being evolved to excel on global standards? The authors also exhort each city to discover its uniqueness, and create competitive advantages, rather than rely solely on inherited configurations.

Cities have to strongly emerge as engines of development for the economy. India has a total urban population of 285 million and 35 metropolitan cities and metropolises, therefore with such huge numbers the issue of urban development in the country demands a proactive addressing of challenges and integrating the opportunities in the national polity agenda with a priority approach.

You could download the complete report from here.

The Competitiveness Institute (TCI) and Institute for Competitiveness, India present the Asia Competitiveness Forum at New Delhi, India, to be held from 28 to 29 April 2010. The theme of the Forum in 2010 is “Competitiveness, Clusters and Development”.

With nearly half the humanity residing in Asian countries and Asian countries becoming the engine of growth, the competitiveness of the entire planet is incumbent on enhanced competitiveness of Asian countries. Therein lies the tremendous need for providing pragmatic solutions towards superlative prosperity of people in these countries.

Asia’s business axis is poised at an interesting inflection point, surging towards more evolved business models and innovation centricity. This is how its firms, industries and clusters over multitudinous sectors shall serve the changing and growing demand for ideas, goods and services for Asian region and rest of the world. Integrating with businesses from Asia is a challenge and an opportunity businesses from rest of the world face. The Asia Competitiveness Forum shall bring forth cohesive and synergistic fruition of this integration, allowing entire mankind to have a pursuit of sustainable growth – economic and social.

New Delhi 2010 will be the first conference that talks of issues related to competitiveness, clusters, social impact of clusters, SMEs and clusters, economic development, regional competitiveness, cross national issues, equitable growth, sustainability, policy imperatives, corporate role in economic development and eventually alleviating poverty at Asia level with specific focus on firm strategy, impact of clusters and policy imperatives.

The conference will have an academic track, a practitioner track, special training sessions, thematic debates, roundtables, networking events, private sector events, cluster tours etc. Speakers and contributors will come from the government, think tanks, academia and practitioners who are working in the area of competitiveness, clusters and economic growth.

Presentation – Asia Competitiveness Forum