All India Radio, UPSC Articles
Development of Smart Cities and Ease of Living Index
Search 6th Feb 2020 Current Affair here: http://www.newsonair.com/Main_Audio_Bulletins_Search.aspx
Topic:
General Studies 1:
- Urbanization, their problems and their remedies
General Studies 2
- Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation
Aim: To help assess the progress made in cities through various initiatives and empower them to use evidence to plan, implement & monitor their performance, two Assessment Frameworks, viz. Ease of Living Index (EoLI) and Municipal Performance Index (MPI) 2019 have been launched
By: The Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs
Both these indices are designed to assess quality of life of citizens in 100 Smart Cities and 14 other Million Plus Cities.
Municipal Performance Index 2019:
To assess the performance of municipalities based on five enablers namely Service, Finance, Planning, Technology and Governance which have been further divided into 20 sectors which will be evaluated across 100 indicators. This will help Municipalities in better planning and management, filling the gaps in city administration, and improving the liveability of cities for its citizens.
Ease of Living Index
Ease of Living Index is aimed at providing a holistic view of Indian cities – beginning from the services provided by local bodies, the effectiveness of the administration, the outcomes generated through these services in terms of the liveability within cities and, finally, the citizen perception of these outcomes.
The key objectives of the Ease of Living Index are four-folds, viz.
- Generate information to guide evidence-based policy making;
- Catalyse action to achieve broader developmental outcomes including the SDG;
- Assess and compare the outcomes achieved from various urban policies and schemes; and
- Obtain the perception of citizens about their view of the services provided by the city administration.
EoLI 2019 will facilitate the assessment of ease of living of citizens across three pillars: Quality of Life, Economic Ability and Sustainability which are further divided into 14 categories across 50 indicators.
Quality of Life
1 Education: Household expenditure on education; literacy rate; pupil-teacher ratio; dropout rate; access to digital education; professionally trained teachers; national achievement survey score.
- Health: Household expenditure on health; availability of healthcare; professionals; accredited public health facilities; availability of hospital beds; prevalence of water borne diseases; prevalence of vector borne diseases;
- Mobility: Availability of public transport; transport related fatalities; road infrastructure (road density, footpath density).
- WASH and SWM: Water supply to household; households with piped water; supply Swachh Survekshan score; amount of waste water treated; connected to sewerage network.
- Housing and Shelter: Households with electrical; connections; average length of electrical; interruptions; beneficiaries under PMAY; slum population.
- Safety and security: Prevalence of violent crime; extent of crime recorded against women; extent of crime recorded against children; extent of crime recorded against elderly.
- Recreation: Availability of open space; availability of recreation facilities.
Economic Ability
- Level of Economic Development: Traded clusters
- Economic Opportunities: Cluster strength; credit availability; number of incubation centres/skill development centres.
- Gini Coefficient: Inequality index based on consumption expenditure.
Sustainability
- Environment: Water quality; total tree cover; households using clean fuel for cooking; hazardous waste generation; air quality index (SO2, NO2, PM10).
- Green Spaces and buildings: Availability of green spaces; does the city incentivise green buildings?; green buildings in the city.
- City Resilience: Has the city implemented local disaster reduction strategies?; number of deaths and directly affected persons attributed to disasters.
- Energy Consumption: Energy requirement vs energy supplied; energy generated from renewable sources; number of energy parks.
Citizen Perception Survey
For the first time, as part of the Ease of Living Index Assessment, a Citizen Perception Survey is being conducted on behalf of the Ministry (which carries 30% of the marks of the Ease of Living Index). This is a very important component of the assessment exercise as it will help in directly capturing perception of citizens with respect to quality of life in their cities.
