Nagaland State’s capital Kohima has been ranked 49 amongst 60 cities surveyed for Ease of Living Index (EoLI) 2020 and 27th position out of 62 cities (below 1 million population) in the country. This was made known after Union minister of state (I/c) for Housing and Urban Affairs, Hardeep Singh Puri announced the release of the final rankings of EoLI 2020 and the Municipal Performance Index (MPI) 2020 in Delhi Thursday in an online event.
As per the ministry’s dashboard, Kohima total EoLI score out of 100 was 49.87 and top score in population class was 60.90. In the median score within population class, Kohima was 52.18.
Further, Kohima ranked 58 with a total MPI score of 24.38 out of 100 while the top score in population class was 52.92 and median score within population class was 40.80. In pillar wise performance (MPI), Kohima scored the highest in Technology and was ranked 36th. In other pillars, the ranking was low– 60 in planning, 58 in services, 54 in finance and 46 governance. (See table)
Speaking to Nagaland Post, Kohima Smart City Development Ltd chief executive officer (CEO) Kovi Meyase said, compared to 2018 ranking, the State Capital’s ranking has improved to a certain extent.
He lauded ward chairmen, NGOs, media and the citizens who participated in the citizen’s perception survey for the overwhelming response. Meyase admitted that though the ranking had improved, there were many other areas where the ranking was worse than expected.
He pointed out that the perception of “livability and non-livability” did not depend on KMC alone as many other departments were also involved in providing data, which directly impacted the ranking. He assured that more efforts would be put in to ensure that proper data was furnished so that the State Capital’s had better “livability” and improve its ranking in EoLI.