Why in News?

• New Delhi has dropped by six places to rank 118th on a list of the world’s most liveable cities due to increase in cases of petty crimes and poor air quality.
• While New Delhi registered the biggest decline in Asia, Mumbai also fell two places since last year to rank 119^th on the list topped by Vienna (Austria) for the second consecutive year.

Ranking:

• The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) publishes an annual Global Liveability Ranking.
• The EIU ranking of 140 cities is based on their scores in Five Broad Categories — stability, Healthcare, Culture and Environment, Education, and Infrastructure.
• Each factor in a city is rated as acceptable, tolerable, uncomfortable, undesirable or intolerable.

Global Scenario:

• Among the BRIC countries, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) was positioned at the 89^th place, Moscow (Russia) at 68^th, St Petersburg (Russia)71^st.
• The Chinese cities in the list include Suzhou at 75^th rank, Beijing 76^th, Tianjin 79^th, Shanghai 80^th, Shenzhen 84^th, Dalian 90^th, Guangzhou 96^th and Qingdao 97^th,
• Several major global cities received mixed scores. London and New York ranked 48th and 58^th out of the 140 cities in the survey.

Why Decline in liveability in India?

Abuses against Journalists:

• The EIU also flagged “an escalation in abuses against journalists in recent years” in India.
• It cited a decline in the country’s ranking in Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index where India now sits in the bottom quartile of countries.
• The study said that Asian cities overall have scored slightly below the global average while three Asian cities — Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea (135^th), Pakistan’s Karachi (136^th) and Bangladesh’s Dhaka (138^th) — are among the ten least liveable globally.

Rise in Crime rates:

• The EIU said decline in Mumbai’s rank was mainly due to a downgrade in its culture score, while New Delhi has fallen in the index because of downgrades to its culture and environment score as well as fall in the stability score owing to rising crime rates.

Climatic Changes:

• Several cities, such as New Delhi in India and Cairo in Egypt received substantial downgrades on their scores owing to problems linked to climate change, such as poor air quality, undesirable average temperatures and inadequate water provision,” the report said.

Constrained liveability Conditions:

• A score between 50-60 points, which is the case for India, indicates constrained liveability conditions.
• The 2018 update to the WHO Global Ambient Air Quality Database shows that New Delhi has the sixth highest annual mean concentration of fine particulate matter among cities around the world.
• Companies pay a premium to employees who move to cities where living conditions are particularly difficult and there is excessive physical hardship or a notably unhealthy environment.
• The suggested allowance for Indian cities is 15%.