The survey on Indian cities conducted by Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy, a non-profit organization, looks at 83 governance patterns to rank 21 cities across 18 states. Thiruvananthapuram remains at the top of the Annual Survey of India’s City-Systems (ASICS), Pune comes in second in the 2017 survey, rising two spots from the last edition. Bhubaneswar was the biggest gainer, rising eight notches to the 10th spot in the survey, thanks to reforms such as instituting of municipal cares. Bengaluru, on the other hand, dropped four places to rank 16. And Delhi, the capital of India stood at number nine in spite of it being the seat of power with all the money and attention. The question is why is Delhi doing so badly?
Ever since Arvind Kejriwal took over the reigns, Delhi has performed badly in governance, therefore, affecting the quality of life for its residents. What happened to all those promises of making Delhi the best city?
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This clearly indicates that the progress on fixing city-systems has been virtually missing and the AAP government is to blame for this. It is even more worrisome Delhi is urbanising very fast. Inter-state migrations are the highest here in Delhi. What happens to the promise of corruption-free government and promise of a clean polity, transparent governance, cut in water bills, electricity bill, free WiFi are some of them. But he has not made good on any of his promises, something that is reflecting in Delhi’s performance in the city index. There have not only not been any substantive changes in Delhi’s governance, but has gone worse.
Delhi has gone worst over the last two years since Kejriwal took over. It is frightening because the city is not being governed and that also means that there is a drop in the quality of lives of people. This survey which is a health indicator for the cities can help city leaders like Kejriwal fix the root causes.
It is time Kejriwal concentrated on governance. Like Hyderabad and Pune, no city in India conducts citizen satisfaction surveys. Maybe Delhi chief minister can take a cue from them and start a citizen satisfaction survey.