India’s Urban Future is at a Crossroads

dian cities are increasingly struggling with water shortages, electricity demand, and rising temperatures amid intensifying summers, raising urgent concerns about their readiness for climate extremes and rapid urbanisation, and exposing gaps in India's efforts toward achieving Sustainable Development Goal-11 (SDG-11) — inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable urban spaces.

Challenges in India's Urban Future

• Urbanisation and Vulnerabilities: Rapid urbanisation in India is intensifying pollution, congestion, and environmental degradation, disproportionately affecting the urban poor and exposing cities to greater climate vulnerabilities, as highlighted in the Sustainable Futures Collective’s 2025 report.
• Limitations of Existing Indices: India’s current tracking tools like NITI Aayog’s SDG Urban Index and the Ease of Living Index cover only limited aspects of SDG-11, lacking comprehensive, ground-level assessments of urban sustainability, inclusivity, resilience, and safety.
• Absence of Grounded Policy-Research Tools: The non-availability of a dedicated SDG-11-focused city index has created a policy-research gap, making it difficult for policymakers to accurately assess and address the real needs of Indian cities.

Key Findings from New Research on Urban SDG-11

• Methodology and Data Sources: The study constructed four separate indices for SDG-11 pillars — safety, inclusivity, resilience, and sustainability — using 57 indicators from diverse datasets like Census 2011, NCRB, IMD, employing the Shannon Entropy Weighting technique for objectivity.
• Performance Rankings Across Cities: Findings revealed that Ahmedabad ranked highest in inclusivity, Bengaluru in safety, Surat in sustainability, and Chennai in climate resilience, whereas Jaipur and Kolkata consistently ranked lower across multiple dimensions.
• Exposure of NITI Aayog Ranking Gaps: A comparison with NITI Aayog’s rankings showed that cities labelled as "front-runners" under its framework performed poorly in the new indices, exposing significant flaws in the official performance evaluation methods.
  

Way Forward for Sustainable Urban Development

• Localised Governance Imperative: Given each city's unique challenges, there is a pressing need for city-specific governance and urban planning strategies that are data-backed and ground-reality oriented.
• Leveraging Technology for Better Tracking: Integrated Command and Control Centres under the Smart Cities Mission should be utilised to collect real-time urban data for dynamic and responsive planning, improving SDG-11 monitoring at the Urban Local Body (ULB) level.
• Addressing Urban Poverty Gaps: As urban poverty is severely underestimated due to reliance on outdated Census 2011 data, a periodic Urban Poor Quality of Living Survey at the State level is essential for making inclusive policies aligned with contemporary urban realities.
  

Practice Question