Ease of Living Index: Temple City ranks 18, Steel City 87

New Delhi: An assessment by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) ranks Bhubaneswar 18 and Rourkela 87 on the Ease of Living Index among 111 cities.
Bhubaneswar scored 46.19 points out of 100, while Rourkela got 28.84 points. Pune topped the index with 58.11 points followed by Navi Mumbai with 58.02 points.
Bhubaneswar scored 11.12 points out of 25 in terms of governance and 14.4 out of 25 on ‘social pillar’ parameters, which include health, education, culture and safety. The temple city scored only 17.78 points out of 45 on ‘physical pillar’ factors like solid waste management, waste water management, transportation and mobility, public open spaces and power supply. Similarly, Rourkela scored 6.07 points in terms of governance and 10.13 points on ‘social pillar’ parameters and only 10.94 points on ‘physical pillar’ issues.
Notably, the Ease of Living Index is an initiative of the MoHUA to help cities assess their liveability vis-à-vis global and national benchmarks and encourage cities to move towards an ‘outcome-based’ approach to urban planning and management. It was decided in June 2017 to rank cities based on the liveability parameters and the assessment commenced formally on January 19 this year.
According to the ministry’s statement, the Ease of Living framework comprises four pillars namely institutional, social, economic and physical which are further broken down into 15 categories and 78 indicators. The evaluation of cities has been done on a 100-point scale across the 78 indicators with the institutional and social pillars carrying 25 points each, the physical pillar 45 points and the economic pillar 5 points.
“A data entry portal and a monitoring dashboard for real time update on progress were established. The cities submitted data on more than 50,000 points. Secondary audit of 10,000 documents, physical audit of 14,000 units and survey of more than 60,000 citizens have been completed which led to finalisation of ease of living index,” the ministry’s statement added.