Urban Development Minister Suresh Bhardwaj said here today that the NITI Aayog has issued first Sustainable Development Goals Urban Index Report. The SDGs index took into account for 56 urban areas for measuring SDGs indicators in areas related to ending poverty, Zero Hunger, Good Health and well-being, Quality Education, Gender Equality etc. In this ranking Shimla has secured First Rank with 75.50 marks out of 100 in Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Urban Areas for the year 2021. Minister said that the statistical methodology for the SDG Urban Index is drawn from the globally accepted methodology developed by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN). A comprehensive list of 77 indicators, covering 46 global SDG targets across 15 SDGs are used in the index. SDG 14 (life below water) has not been included as it is relevant for only coastal areas, which are only a few of the selected cities, and SDG 17 (partnerships for the goals) has been excluded as the progress of its targets are monitored at the national level.
For each SDG, the urban areas are ranked on a scale of 0-100 and a score of 100 implies that the urban area has achieved the targets set for 2030 The areas with ranking between 0 and 49 have been ranked as aspirants, those with 50-64 are termed as performers, 65-99 are called front-runners and the ones with perfect score are called achievers. The data on the indicators have been sourced from official data sources such as National Family Health Survey, National Crime Records Bureau, Unified District Information System for Education, data portals of various ministries, and other government data sources. The NITI Aayog is of the view that this transformative change is quite essential to increasing prominence of the cities and urban areas for future Development. Top 10 Urban areas in SDG Urban Index and Dashboard 2021-22 are Shimla, Coimbatore, Chandigarh, Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi, Panaji, Pune, Tiruchirapalli, Ahmedabad and Nagpur. Shimla was also ranked most liveable among the cities across the country under Ease of Living Index ranking which was issued earlier this year. This was based on the assessment of four parameters – Quality of Life, Economic Ability, Sustainability and Citizen Perception.
