Bengaluru ranks as most liveable city in India

New Delhi: Bengaluru, Chennai, Shimla, Bhubaneswar and Mumbai are the top five most livable cities in India, according to a study prepared by the Centre for Science and Environment.

According to the Ease of Living Index, which is a part of the State of India's Environment 2021, Delhi is ranked 6th in the index.

For the quality of governance rankings of the cities, five parameters were used: services, finance, technology, urban planning and overall governance. Delhi ranked high on services, finance and governance, but received very low scores between 30 and 40 in both the urban planning and the technology categories.

Bengaluru was ranked as the best city overall, followed by Chennai. The CSE report states, "Only one state capital (Bengaluru) demonstrates a decent economic ability, scoring 78.8 out of 100, four other state capitals (Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad) provide middling economic opportunities.

"The Ease of Living Index 2020 included citizen's feedback for the first time. It is interesting that despite faring poorly on almost all development parameters, the capitals obtained high scores in the citizens' feedback section. We need to understand why urban citizens think so highly of their clearly poorly performing cities," Richard Mahapatra, Managing Editor of Down To Earth said. This is the second edition of the index, originally launched in 2018. The current index has seen a significant change from that of last year, the most noticeable being the inclusion of citizens' feedback to establish the liveability of Indian cities.