Ease of Living Index 2020 – Desh Deshantar – RSTV IAS UPSC

Archives

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

In News: Ease of Living Index (EoLI) 2020 was recently released by Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs.

Ease of Living Index 2020

• Has added Citizen Perception Survey in the index, having a weightage of 30%.
• The rankings were announced for cities with a population of more than a million, and cities with less than a million people.
• Top performer in the Million+ category: Bengaluru 
• Top performer in Less than Million category: Shimla 

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. It provides a comprehensive understanding of participating cities across India based on the quality of life, the economic ability of a city, and its sustainability and resilience.

The key objectives of the Ease of Living Index are four-folds, viz. 

1. Generate information to guide evidence-based policy making; 
2. Catalyse action to achieve broader developmental outcomes including the SDG; 
3. Assess and compare the outcomes achieved from various urban policies and schemes; and
4. Obtain the perception of citizens about their view of the services provided by the city administration. 

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.
2. 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;
3. Mobility: Availability of public transport; transport related fatalities; road infrastructure (road density, footpath density).
4. WASH and SWM: Water supply to household; households with piped water; supply Swachh Survekshan score; amount of waste water treated; connected to sewerage network.
5. Housing and Shelter: Households with electrical; connections; average length of electrical; interruptions; beneficiaries under PMAY; slum population.
6. 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.
7. Recreation: Availability of open space; availability of recreation facilities.

Economic Ability

8. Level of Economic Development: Traded clusters

9. Economic Opportunities: Cluster strength; credit availability; number of incubation centres/skill development centres.

10. Gini Coefficient: Inequality index based on consumption expenditure.

Sustainability

11. Environment: Water quality; total tree cover; households using clean fuel for cooking; hazardous waste generation; air quality index (SO2, NO2, PM10).

12. Green Spaces and buildings: Availability of green spaces; does the city incentivise green buildings?; green buildings in the city.

13. City Resilience: Has the city implemented local disaster reduction strategies?; number of deaths and directly affected persons attributed to disasters.

14. Energy Consumption: Energy requirement vs energy supplied; energy generated from renewable sources; number of energy parks.