NEW DELHI, Sep 27: After reports revealed that Shillong is one of the worst performers in the smart city project, another national level study found that Meghalaya is the third lowest-performing state in urban governance after Nagaland and Manipur.
According to the report prepared based on a biennial analysis conducted by the Praja Foundation and released on Thursday, Shillong lags behind in several indicators in urban governance.
The report is based on a ground visit by teams of researchers. They visited 43 cities across 28 states and three Union territories and interacted with 2,213 key stakeholders, including elected representatives, administrators, academics, members of civil society, media persons, practitioners and experts in the field of urban governance and policy, over the past two years.
The Urban Governance Index marking is based on four aspects – empowered city elected representatives and legislative structure, empowered city administration, empowered citizens and fiscal empowerment. These themes are further divided into 13 sub-themes, comprising 42 indicators.
The Praja Foundation, which is a Mumbai-based non-profit organisation, and the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) released the Urban Governance Index 2024, ranking cities and states based on their performance and highlighting the lacunas in civic governance.
Kerala was found to be the highest performing state in terms of urban governance, followed by Odisha, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. Nagaland, Manipur and Meghalaya were placed as the lowest performing states.
At the launch of the report, Debolina Kundu, NIUA’s director (additional charge), said, “Robust municipal finances are the backbone for efficient service delivery and independent functioning of the city governments. With the right financial instruments, city governments can lead to the right pathway. They need to be devolved with financial powers and authority to make themselves self-sustainable and independent in their functioning.”
