EVALUATION OF INDIA’S URBAN SOCIAL SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT USING A COMPOSITE INDEX

Abstract

India has experienced phenomenal growth in urbanization in the last few decades putting massive pressure on basic infrastructure and services. The objective of this paper is to create a composite social sustainable index for India which will help us to understand the dynamics of social sustainable development .The index will enable prioritization of resource allocation between the various sectors of the social dimension. Secondly the paper attempts to analyse the impact of macro-economic factors like economic prosperity, population, population density, income inequality, environment and migrant influx on social sustainability. It examines all four facets of urban sustainability: social, economic, environmental and institutional, in an integrated manner. The three tiered hierarchical model is tested in the state of Odisha , in Eastern India . Using this framework we go on to obtain a composite index for urban social sustainability which can be applied to all Indian cities with contextual changes. This research shows that in India education is fundamental to improving the social sustainability and urban policies should focus strongly on three critical zones of education, safety and access to basic services.