Bengaluru may have ranked better than Delhi and Mumbai on the Prosperity & Inclusion City Seal and Awards Index, but it still has a long way to when compared with other cities across the world. It ranked only 83 of 113, indicating that a lot more work has to be done to achieve real inclusivity.
“These rankings are only relative and often distract us from the real issues. The scores of the three cities in India and their global rankings indicate that all of us are more or less in the same basket,” said Ashwin Mahesh, urban expert.
The rankings are dependent on the criteria of evaluation for inclusive cities: per capita income, level of education, access to health care, environmental quality, personal safety, affordable housing and quality of life.
“Bengaluru has done better than other Indian cities because rental housing rates are quite low, air quality is relatively high, access to communication technology is good, per capita income is not too low, and educational levels are quite decent. So it does relatively well in all the key metrics of the index,” said Mathew Idiculla, a research associate with Centre for Law and Policy Research.
According to Mr. Mahesh, a lot of this can be attributed to the history of planning and investments from the Colonial times.
However, the parameters of evaluation are more skewed towards the developed world, which may not be suited for evaluating Indian cities, Mr. Idiculla said. “We have to evaluate our cities with access to schools, homelessness, slums and such basic infrastructure. But the criteria for the Index almost assumes these are in place and evaluates cities on other larger indicators like the level of education and access to information and communication technologies,” he said.
In fact, the Index categorises cities into developed and emerging. The best ranking for an ‘emerging city’ on the Index is 50 for St. Petersburg in Europe. All cities from the 79th rank are ‘emerging cities’.
The picture of inclusivity in the city is not all that rosy. “How many among the working class in the city own land? Even those living in slums don’t have titles to those lands,” said Clifton D' Rosario, a trade union leader working with pourakarmikas, street vendors and urban poor groups.
Mr. Mahesh pointed out that it has been 12 years since the Bengaluru Development Authority developed a layout in the city. “In its absence, the market has taken over and the poor are being pushed to the margins of the city. Lack of planning is spatially segregating the haves and have-nots and only widening this gap,” he said.
But what the city is found lacking in is inclusion of the urban poor in decision making, argue activists.
“For instance, TenderSURE project was decided by a set of NGOs. While the people's basic needs are not met, the elite class are deciding how to use the city's resources for beautification,” said Mr. Clifton.
Activists have also been fighting to make ward committees, which are the grassroots decision making bodies, include the urban poor, which is not the case today.
