Vizag ranks 9th in the Municipal Performance Index 2020

Hardeep Singh Puri, Minister of State (Independent Charge), Housing and Urban Affairs announced the release of the final rankings of Ease of Living Index (EoLI) 2020 and the Municipal Performance Index (MPI) 2020 on 4 March 2021, in an online event. Also present were Durga Shanker Mishra, Secretary, MoHUA and senior officials of the Ministry. Between the two, Vizag ranked 9th in the list of the Municipal Performance Index 2020 for cities with populations over a million.

Both the indices represent an attempt to gauge the performance of cities across India on various parameters of urban living. The Ease of Living Index encapsulates the outcome indicators while the Municipal Performance Index captures the enabling input parameters. These indices provide a holistic assessment of cities based on their efforts to cultivate a better quality of life, create infrastructure, and address the challenges of urbanization.

The MPI is an effort to assess and analyse the performance of Indian municipalities based on their defined set of functions. Owing to the efforts put in by the Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation (GVMC) in the light of the pandemic in 2020, Vizag bagged a place in the top 10 of MPI.

The MPI was launched as an accompaniment to the Ease of Living Index. It seeks to examine local government practice in municipalities across areas of services, finance, policy, technology and governance. It seeks to simplify and evaluate the complexities in local governance practice and promote the ethos of transparency and accountability.

The assessment framework under MPI 2020 has classified municipalities based on their population- Million+ (municipalities having over a million population) and Less than Million Population. In the Million+ category, Indore has emerged as the highest-ranked municipality. In the Less than Million category, New Delhi Municipal Council has emerged as the leader.