A survey of 21 cities shows that while there is deep dissatisfaction with lack of safety and the inadequate provision of civic services, there is little citizen involvement in improving the situation and high level of cynicism about elected officials.
The Voice of India’s Citizens (VOICE) study is conducted annually by the Bangalore-based urban governance group Janaagraha to gauge citizens’ perceptions on the quality of life and civic services in their cities. The VOICE 2014 study spoke to over 25,000 respondents in 21 cities across India.The findings were shared exclusively with The Hindu .
The 2014 survey found that satisfaction with policing is significantly lower in Delhi than in Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai which are significantly more satisfied . Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Patna and Bhopal are among the cities where citizens report the least patrolling by police. Chennai, Surat and Dehradun report the highest proportion of citizens saying that one requires police connections to get the men in uniform to act — over 75 per cent of those surveyed in these cities said that it was either always or usually necessary to have connections to get the police to do their job.
Delhi and Mumbai score high on citizen satisfaction with civic amenities, while Bengalure and Chennai score poorly. For Chennai, the most acute problem is water supply; it has the lowest proportion of respondents among all 21 cities with a tap within their premises for water. Just over a third of Chennai’s respondents had their own taps, as against over 75 per cent in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad.
Mumbai leads in power supply, Kolkata in women’s safety
According to the Voice of India’s Citizens (VOICE) study conducted annually by the Bangalore-based urban governance group Janaagraha, Mumbai had the country’s best power supply system with nearly 70 per cent of respondents reporting no power cuts. Kanpur had the most complaints about electricity, with 78 per cent reporting power cuts more than twice a week. Among the metros, 40 per cent in Hyderabad reported power cuts more than twice a week.
Perceptions about public safety were reflected in the time until when the head of the household is comfortable with an adult female staying out; more than 85 per cent of Delhi’s household heads were not comfortable with women being out after 8 p.m., while over half in Kolkata were comfortable with women being out up to 10 p.m. or midnight. Hyderabad and Kolkata have the largest proportion of households comfortable with women being out through the evening.
Chennai had the lowest proportion of residents with a water storage system and reported the longest gaps in water supply as compared to other metropolitan cities.
Bad roads
Ahmedabad, Surat, Jaipur, Kanpur, Patna and Bhopal had the most complaints about the quality of roads. In most of the metros, majority of people use buses for transport; in Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Pune, the largest proportion use two-wheelers.
However, the findings also reported limited public interest in fixing city-level problems. People were more likely to be members of a religious or caste-based organisation than of an NGO or a Residents’ Welfare Association, and the majority were unaware of the local ward committee or of when its meetings were held.
“Active citizenship and robust city-systems go hand in hand in liveable cities,” said Srikanth Viswanathan, Coordinator, Advocacy and Reforms at Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy. “Presently however most of our cities have deficient and sometimes non-existent systems. The first step therefore is for the political leadership to undertake systemic reforms underlying each aspect of quality of life such as water, roads and transport, safety, open spaces etc. Active citizenship too is dependent on creation of platforms for citizen participation through such reforms,” he added.
