- Karachi is like Damascus. And without a civil war!
The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) recently launched, ‘The Global Liveability Index 2019’. According to the Report the Index assesses, ‘which locations around the world provide the best or the worst living conditions’.
Hence, the index covers 140 cities around the world, which are assessed on five broad indicators, a) stability, b) healthcare, c) culture and environment, d) education, and e) infrastructure. These five categories, in turn, evaluate the relative comfort of these cities on thirty quantitative and qualitative sub-indicators/factors.
Here, the score for indicators range from acceptable, tolerable, uncomfortable, undesirable or intolerable, which are then weighted to reach a rating. Thereby, a score of ‘1’ indicates an ‘intolerable’ city; while that of ‘100’ indicates that the city is ‘ideal’ in terms of liveability. This means that the scores are bounded by these two limits.
Vienna, holds the first rank in terms of liveability, and for a second year in succession. In four of the five indicators, it has an ideal score of ‘100’, while in the category of ‘culture & environment’ it is not that far off at ‘96.3’. Many of the other countries among the top-ten cities are from Australia and Canada.
According to this Index for 2019, Karachi stands at 136th place in terms of liveability, only to be beaten in terms of least liveable cities by the likes of Damascus (ranked last at 140th position). This is indeed worrisome, since the situation of the city, in terms of liveability, is already alarming, but it would be that shocking, comes as a surprise to the writer. After all it is the economic hub of the country.
Here, while the rating of ‘100’ is considered ideal in terms of liveability for a city, Karachi could only score ‘40.9’. In terms of scores for individual categories, and when compared with the worst performing city, Damascus (scores in brackets), they are as follows, whereby, in the category of ‘stability’, Karachi scored only 20 (same as Damascus at 20). This is really disturbing– and where the ranking methodology perhaps needs to be probed as it appears questionable– since Syria recently went through a war.
For ‘healthcare’ the score of Karachi is 45.8 (and 29.2 for Damascus). The score may not be that good if disaggregated for public sector health facilities; the main recourse for the majority of population, belonging in turn, to the lower income groups. At the same time, one must remember that unlike Karachi, where like the rest of the country there is functioning democracy since 2008, Damascus and overall Syria saw a war in which even many hospitals were severely affected.
In the third category, ‘culture & environment’, Karachi scored 38.7 out of 100 (where Damascus scored a close-by 40.5). In the category of ‘education’ Karachi scored roughly twice as much as Damascus at 66.7; yet in its own right they are on a lower side since the ranking of Karachi being so low, means that many cities up the ladder would have performed better here to be at a higher overall position. In the last category of ‘infrastructure’, Karachi could only score roughly half of the total at 51.8 (where Damascus scored 32.1).
This data will also help lead the policy makers to different policy plans of cities that are performing better. For example, the country could learn about tackling the all-important climate change crisis– where Pakistan is also amongst the leading countries being affected by climate change- by examining the ‘Sustainable Sydney 2030’ strategy
At the same time, there are many cities from emerging-market countries, which should give heart to policy makers in Pakistan that things can improve quickly if policy and implementation are geared up properly. This is because the following list of countries moved fast up the ladder of liveability rating, in the past five years, and include, i) Moscow (Russia; rank: 68; scored improved by 4.9 percentage points), ii) Belgrade (Serbia; rank: 77; percentage points improved by 6.4), iii) Hanoi (Vietnam; rank: 107; improved by 5.5 percentage points), iv) Kiev (Ukraine; rank: 117; improved by 5.2 percentage points), and v) Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire; rank: 123; percentage points improved by 6.3).
The government in Pakistan should learn from this Index. For this, as a first step, the Ministry of Planning and Development, to start with at least, should purchase the full data- both current and historical- from EIU on which this Index is based. It should thereafter, analyse in detail, looking in turn at comparisons that Pakistan could focus in the short-term, and then could build from there.
This data will also help lead the policy makers to different policy plans of cities that are performing better. For example, the country could learn about tackling the all-important climate change crisis– where Pakistan is also amongst the leading countries being affected by climate change- by examining the ‘Sustainable Sydney 2030’ strategy. At the same time, it could learn how those cities (indicated above) improved so rapidly during the last five years.
The 30 sub-indicators or factors, along with the methodology and other related details, should provide strong basis for Pakistan– augmented by multiple aspects it covers, as indicated above– to formulate its own ‘City Liveability Index’(CLI). This is very important to have for ranking of 100 plus cities of Pakistan. This would not only help in better distribution of resources and improved policy focus in turn, but also to learn from a once similar performing cities globally, which improved over time. The Ministry of Planning and Development, its provincial departments, related ministries/departments, and the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics should come together in making this Index a reality for Pakistani cities.
Here, it would be useful to detail these thirty sub-indicators for better understanding this Index, produced by EIU. Hence, in the first category, ‘stability’ (with weight: 25% of total), the sub- indicators are, i) prevalence of petty crime, ii) prevalence of violent crime, iii) threat of terror, iv) threat of military conflict, and v) threat of civil unrest/conflict.
‘Healthcare’ (with weight: 20% of total), which is the second category, has the following sub-indicators or factors, i) availability of private healthcare, ii) quality of private healthcare, iii) availability of public healthcare, iv) quality of public healthcare, v) availability of over-the-counter drugs, and vi) general healthcare indicators.
In the third category, ‘culture & environment’ (with weight: 25% of total), the sub-indicators are, i) humidity/temperature rating, ii) discomfort of climate to travellers, iii) level of corruption, iv) social or religious restrictions, v) level of censorship, vi) sporting availability, vii) cultural availability, viii) food & drink, and ix) consumer goods & services.
In the fourth category, ‘Education’ (with weight: 10% of total), the sub-indicators are, i) availability of private education, ii) quality of private education, and iii) public education indicators. As a suggestion to improve the Index further, it would make sense to increase the weight of education- and the weights of other categories adjusted accordingly- in the overall CLI for Pakistan.
In the last category, ‘Infrastructure’ (with weight: 20% of total), the sub-indicators are, i) quality of road network, ii) quality of public transport, iii) quality of international links, iv) availability of good quality housing, v) quality of energy provision, vi) quality of water provision, and vii) quality of telecommunications.
