Zeenews Bureau
New Delhi: Delhi, being spruced up for 2010 Commonwealth Games, has beaten all other cities in India to emerge as the best city to live in India, according to a new survey.
‘The Liveability Index 2010’, a unique report based on a rigorous study conducted by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Institute for Competitiveness (IFC) has put the national capital on top as the city which provides the best quality of life.
Coming close to the winner Delhi are the cities of Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Pune ranked 2nd to 8th 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 9th, 27th and 32nd respectively.
The Liveability Index 2010 is a methodical index of quality of living conditions brought-out after a comprehensive study on 37 cities, ranked on the basis of eight parameters: demographics, education, health & medical standards, safety, housing, socio-cultural political environment, economic environment and natural build & planned environment.
Interestingly, contrary to popular belief, Delhi has also emerged as the safest city in India followed by Bhopal and Bangalore.
The Delhi-NCR divide was also apparent on the safety parameter with both Gurgaon and Noida ranked 32nd while Faridabad does somewhat better at 18th.
Delhi also emerges as winner on the education and job front; closely followed by Mumbai and Bangalore. The poorest performers on the education front are Bhubaneswar, Guwahati, Jaipur, Kanpur, Lucknow, Patna, and Vadodara.
However, Mumbai gains the top rank in socio-political environment, followed by Delhi, Kolkata, Goa and Chennai. Mumbai also leads in city planning followed by Chennai and Delhi.
As per the authors of the survey Dr Amit Kapoor and Sandeep Mann, the only parameter in which Delhi has fared very poorly is regarding health and Medical standards as it stands 17th in the county on this count. The top three cities in India on this count are all from Kerala- Kozhikode, Trivandrum and Kochi.
Mumbai is 12th and Bangalore 18th. Lucknow, Noida and Patna (37th) are the last three ranked cities in providing convincing examples of health and medical standards. Health and medical standards is an issue of concern even in cities like Ahmedabad, Bhopal, Chennai, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Mumbai and Pune.
On the house-cost & availability front, Bangalore, Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh, Dehradun, Gurgaon, and Noida come out as winners, while Vishakhapatnam, Nagpur, Coimbatore, Kolkata, Kochi, Nashik, and Vadodara fare poorly.
