Mumbai and New Delhi figure among 95 world cities identified by the United Nations as those moving towards prosperity, but the two Indian metropolis are just “half-way” to achieving it with the reasons being poor infrastructure and environment conditions among others.

‘State of the World’s Cities’ report by the UN Habitat analyses the prosperity of the cities on various counts like productivity, quality of life, infrastructure, environment and equity and on all these five categories, the Indian cities are rated just above Dhaka, Kathmandu and Kampala.

The report places Mumbai at the 52nd position and New Delhi at 58th among the world cities, though two Chinese cities — Shanghai and Beijing — figure much above.

“Two Indian cities come under the Group 4 and they are in the medium level (of prosperity). Prosperity is not just the economic prosperity, but the kind of infrastructure and the quality of life in the city. Both the cities have been penalised for poor environment conditions, especially New Delhi,” Edvardo Lopez Moreno, Chief Researcher of the report, told a press conference here.

The UN diplomat said the two Indian cities are “half-way to prosperity” and stressed “political and technical” interference to relatively improve conditions in both cities.

However, the report also praises the IT revolution that Bangalore has been able to achieve and calls Hyderabad as the pharmaceutical capital of India. On ICTs in Asian cities, it said Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai feature mobile telephone connection rates of 138 percent, 112 percent, 102 percent and 143 percent respectively.

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