Bengaluru: Bengaluru's image’s has been taking a knocking of late. While it was recently ranked among 11 cities in the world most likely to run out of water like Cape Town in South Africa, the latest survey by a non-profit organization, Janaagraha has ranked it the worst city in India in terms of delivery of quality of life to its people over the medium and long term.
Conducted in 23 major cities across 20 states, the fifth edition of Janaagraha’s Annual Survey of India's City System (ASICS) , 2017 has given the city the least rating of three out of 10 across several parameters. While Pune topped the survey, other cities that made it to the top five were Kolkata,
Thiruvananthapuram, Bhubaneswar and Surat, with scores in the range of 4.6 to 4.5. Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Dehradun, Patna and Chennai were the bottom five cities with scores in the range of 3.0 to 3.3 on 10.
The parameters for the study included urban planning and design, spatial planning, standards of urban design, urban capacities and resources, municipal finance, IT, municipal staff, empowered legitimate and political representation, transparency, accountability and participation, and powers and functions of the city council and its legitimacy. While Bengaluru score only three out of 10 in urban capacities and resources, Pune topped with a score of 7.3. In transparency and accountability, the city got merely three out of 10 while Pune got a high of 5.5. As for powers and functions of the city council, the survey points out that the Bengaluru Mayor is indirectly elected for a term of only a year while other cities, that have fared better, elect them for 2.5 to 5 years.
It also noted that multiple civic agencies like BWSSB, BESCOM, BDA, BMRCL and BMTC directly report to the state government and the BBMP council has no control over them unlike in Mumbai, where services like water and transport are handled by its corporation. The survey further points out that the BBMP has limited autonomy over budget which has to be ratified by the State and that the Mayor is not an ex officio member of the Metropolitan Planning Committee.
