Union Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri released draft guidelines for a new ranking system of cities based on financial performance and beautification.

City Finance Rankings

• Robust finances of ULBs are crucial for realising the vision of ULBs as a viable third tier of government and capitalising on the potential that cities represent for growth and development. 

• Currently, municipal revenues in India are less than 1 per cent of the GDP, with high dependence on inter-governmental transfers, and own revenues accounting for less than half the total revenue of ULBs.

• This is reflected in the chronic deficits that ULBs run and, also among other things, in their inability to fund infrastructural demand or even meet the operation and maintenance (O&M) requirements.

‘City Finance Rankings 2022’ aims to evaluate, recognise and reward urban local bodies (ULBs) on the basis of their strength across three financial parameters:

i) Resource mobilisation.

ii) Expenditure performance.

iii) Fiscal governance systems.

• It is also an effort to analyse and help the ULBs in identifying areas in their financial performance where they can make further improvements, to be able to deliver quality infrastructure and services, and hence a good quality of life to its citizens.

• The City Finance Rankings will evaluate and assess each participating ULB on 15 indicators and metrics across three key municipal finance criteria which, put together, will help in identifying the most financially sustainable and accountable cities.

• Under the rankings, the cities will be ranked at the national level on the basis of their scores under any one of the following four population categories — above 4 million, between 1-4 million, 100,000 to 1 million and less than 100,000. 

• The top three cities in each population category will be recognised and rewarded at the national level as well as within each state and state cluster.

• Over 4,500 cities or ULBs across all states and Union Territories would be encouraged to participate in the City Finance Rankings 2022. 

• In May 2020, the ministry implemented and launched www.cityfinance.in, which is the national municipal finance portal and serves as a framework of standardized, timely and credible financial information on India’s cities (urban local bodies). It facilitates benchmarking, comparison and peer learning between ULBs on a range of financial and operational performance indicators.

Objectives of City Finance Rankings:

i) Reward and recognise ULBs that are financially healthy and showing improved financial performance over time.

ii) Promote healthy competition among ULBs and states with an aim of building a robust municipal finance ecosystem.

iii) Platform for identifying technical support needs of states/cities for implementing municipal finance reforms.

iv) Facilitate peer learning, and enable collaborations and adoption of best practices.

City Beauty Competition

The ‘City Beauty Competition’ has been conceived and designed as a platform to evaluate, recognise and reward wards and public spaces in cities across five broad pillars:

i) Aesthetics

ii) Accessibility

iii) Amenities

iv) Activities

v) Ecology.

• It aims to encourage cities to conserve their rich traditional heritage, streamline their delivery mechanisms for efficient provisioning of basic infrastructure, develop community participation, imbibe the tenets of ecological conservation, and promote local economy.

• The competition would felicitate most beautiful wards, both at the city and state levels, while cities would be awarded for their most beautiful public places, waterfronts, green spaces, tourist and heritage spaces and market and commercial places.

• Competing wards and cities would submit their entries on the city beauty portal which would be designed by the ministry’s knowledge partners — Administrative Staff College of India.

• Entrants would need to establish that their ward or public place meets the requirement along a set of indicators. 

• Entries would be judged by the jury. To facilitate the jury, a third party independent assessment would also be carried out. The decision of the jury on winning entries would be final.

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