QUALITY OF LIFE INDEX ASSESSMENT FOR SURAT CITY OF INDIA

For many years, economic indicators such as the gross national product and customer price index have been the primary measure on "progress "available to decision makers. However, decision makers are being challenged to produce change that improves the quality of life in social, economic, environment, health, political, education and infrastructural sense. It was also generally said that if a big industrial complex is established anywhere, it will lead to a marked change in the surrounding area in terms of general changes in development and implement in employment opturnities, income generation and consequently in the quality of life of people. But unfortunately small towns have not attracted industries or people and have not served as counter magnets to the growth of big cities; as such there is deterioration in the quality of life of dwellers of big cities due to this very reason. Also the current patterns of the urban development are based on the ideas imported from western countries and they use systems that are highly capital and natural resources intensives. Capital intensity divided the urban population in to urban rich and urban poor while the resource intensity destroys the rural hinterland. The end result is that while there is an effluent class with a very high quality of life, the majority of urban dwellers face a very poor environment quality. The urban population in India has increased significantly from 62 million in 1951 to 285 million in 2001 and is estimated to grow to around 540 million by the year 2021.it would be touching 37% of the total population next 15 years. India's urban population has growth rate nearly 41% in last decade. This directly affects the quality of urban life. In the present paper an attempt has been made to evolve a composite index for quality of life urban dwellers and the same has evaluated for Surat city by conducting pilot survey (100 Nos.).By considering seven main indicators like Natural Environment, Physical Environments, Health, Economic, Social, Political, Educational and Infrastructure affecting quality of life. The subjective measures for all factors given by stake holders and objective measures by expert, to a normalized scale. The importance weighing, on a rank order scale. The study offers a way of expressing the quality of life index using mathematical modelling. The indices of seven indicators that were used to complete QOL Index. The quality of life index for Surat city is 5.11. This study also helps local Government, policy makers, planners, non government organization and research scholars for decision making tool for development of city region.