- Monday, May 05, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
DAYS after the Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU) gave Bengaluru, India’s ‘Silicon Valley’, a poor ranking in the list of liveable cities, the opposition Indian National Congress in the state of Karnataka slammed the state’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) saying the list proved that it failed to deliver during its term. Bengaluru is the capital of Karnataka.
While the world’s top 10 most liveable city list of 2022 continues to be dominated by West European nations, Indian cities have fared particularly poorly this year, with Bengaluru finishing at the 146th position (out of 173), the last rank an Indian city got in the list.
Five Indian cities have found place in the list with the other four being national capital Delhi, financial capital Mumbai, Chennai and Ahmedabad. All of them were placed between 140 and 146. Austrian capital Vienna topped the list, followed by Copenhagen, Denmark.
The least 10 liveable cities in the EIU’s Global Liveability Index 2022, which was released on June 24, include Tehran, Iran; Dhaka, Bangladesh; Karachi, Pakistan and Lagos, Nigeria.
The EIU ranked the cities based on some criteria such as stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure. While stability and culture and environment have the highest weightage of 25 per cent each, healthcare and infrastructure have weightage of 20 per cent each and education having a weightage of 10 per cent.
Before 2022, only Delhi and Mumbai featured in the list of 173 cities and this was the first time that Chennai, Ahmedabad and Bengaluru also found places.
The latest revelation comes as a shocker as in May 2022, the Indian government ranked Bengaluru as the most liveable among 111 Indian cities in its ‘Ease of Living Index’, followed by Pune, Ahmedabad, Chennai and Surat.
Karnataka Congress working president Ramalinga Reddy, a former Bengaluru affairs minister, slammed the government of current chief minister Basavaraj Bommai. “On infrastructure, Bengaluru has scored 46.4 out of 100. This is the same as Lagos in Nigeria. Karachi in Pakistan has a better score of 51.8,” Reddy pointed out. “The government claims to have given Rs 6,000 crore to Bengaluru. If the money was spent properly, then the city wouldn’t have fallen to this level. The CM should, at least now, wake up,” he was quoted as saying by local daily Deccan Herald.
Karnataka’s former information technology minister Priyank Kharge said Bengaluru has received the tags of ‘undesirable’, ‘intolerable’ and ‘uncomfortable’ over issues such as petty crimes, the threat of civil unrest, availability and quality of public healthcare, quality of road network, etc.
Karnataka will go to polls in 2023.
