Good news!Bhubaneswar pips Delhi, Mumbai in urban governance

Bhubaneswar: Odisha capital bagged fourth position in the country in terms of urban governance beating Delhi and Mumbai, according to a national survey released today.

Bhubaneswar scored 4.6 out of total 10 points as per the the fifth Annual Survey of India’s City-Systems (ASICS), conducted by Bengaluru-based advocacy group Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy.

Bhubaneswar was placed at 10^th in 2016 in the 23-city survey spread across 20 states in the country based on 89 questions.

Pune, Kolkata and Thiruvananthapuram secured first, second and third respectively. Bengaluru, one of India’smost cosmopolitan and forward-looking cities, was ranked last.

Delhi was ranked sixth this year with a score of 4.4 and Mumbai secured 4.1 out of 10.

The study ranked cities on the basis of four key components of governance – urban planning and design; urban capacities and resources; empowered and legitimate political representation; and transparency, accountability and participation. Scores were accorded in the 0-10 range.

The key findings of the survey about Bhubaneswar are:  (1) Policy in place for incentivising green buildings. Only 11/23 cities have provided such incentives, (2) Internal audit report made available online. Only 6/23 cities have made it available online, (3) Municipal staffing data made available online. Only 3/23 cities have made such information available online, (4) Action taken report on state finance commission recommendations made available online. Only 10/23 cities have made it available online.

“India’s cities have virtually no platforms where citizens can participate in matters in their neighbourhood. This impacts not just municipal accountability, but the quality of democracy itself,” the report said.

The annual survey also pointed out that most Indian cities use town and country planning acts which were drafted decades before the economy was liberalized and the lack of a modern, contemporary urban planning framework may be denying India up to 3% of its GDP every year.

Speaking on the objective of the annual survey, Janaagraha CEO, Srikanth Viswanathan, said: “The objective of the survey was to measure the preparedness of cities to deliver high quality infrastructure and services in the long term by evaluating “city systems”.