Understanding liveability and its multiple indices to define a 'decent liveability' for the city of Bengaluru

Abstract

Recently the Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU) has ranked Bengaluru as the “least liveable” city in India in its annual Global Liveability Index, which ranks 173 cities across the world (EIU 2022). In contrary, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), Government of India declared Bengaluru as the most liveable city in its Ease of Living Index 2020 (MoHUA 2021). This indicates a huge gap and mismatches in the assessment criteria of both the indices.

Liveability is a highly dynamic, multi-dimensional, and an ensemble concept. There is no universally agreed-upon definition for liveability. The definition varies across geographies, time, and purpose of the assessment and also depends on the value system of the assessor. Broadly the indices operate on five domains – economic, environmental, institutional, social, and governance (political). However, the subdomains in each index differ both in number and the weightage attached. Not just the indices, countries too differ in identifying and prioritising liveability domains. For example, Australia has eleven specific sub-domains, including crime and safety, public open space, while China has six categories to measure its cities’ liveability (Khorrami et al. 2021).

The duality in rating of a city like Bengaluru leads to a variety of negative problems, from socio-welfare concerns to political difficulties, with the city's economy bearing the majority of the burden. This dissertation seeks to examine the root of this duality, to pinpoint the reasons for the ranking disparity and to identify the aspects that require significant development for achieving "decent liveability" through the citizens’ perspective. The present study aims to understand and to define an appropriate definition of liveability. The study also focuses on the concept of ‘decent liveability’ suitable for the city of Bengaluru.