Maharashtra lagged behind Bihar and neighbouring Rajasthan when it came to improving the conditions of its slums between 2001-2011, says a latest report of the Union housing and Poverty Alleviation Ministry which has placed the state in the fifth rank in the first-ever 'National Slum Improvement Index'.

While Uttarakhand tops the chart and Assam is at the bottom, Gujarat is placed 23rd among 25 states ranked, where condition of slums worsened over the decade. Even an alternative method used for computing the ranks places Gujarat in the 15th rank.

The rankings are part of a report of a high-level committee submitted to the ministry last week. The 16-member committee headed by Amitabh Kundu was constituted by the Ministry for preparation of a Slum Index in January 2014. The index ranks 25 states for which comparable Census and NSSO data were available.

The report also ranks 24 cities on the same parameters. In this analysis Jaipur shows the highest improvement and Vadodara exhibits a deterioration and comes last. Pune, Nagpur and Mumbai are at fifth, sixth and seventh place respectively. Ahmedabad is in 12th place.

The rankings are based on the improvement of slums on six broad indicators- magnitude of population, availability of amenities, conditions of households, possession of assets, social dimensions and access to banking facilities taking into account 7,550 slums (with 2 lakh households) across 24 states.

The report says that the rankings are "for illustrative purpose" owing to lack of sufficient data. Yet the report is significant, because 6.5 crore Indians are living in slums as per the 2011 census- 17% of the urban Indian population.

The report also points out the exclusiveness of the cities, which seek to push slum dwellers outside the city limits- as is obvious from urban population statistics.

"The urban population growth of India has remained constant since 1991. The main reasons are the decline in the natural growth in urban population and sluggish migration from rural to urban areas," states the report, citing Pronab Sen's report which had projected India's slum population to be 93 million in 2011 while census data says it is 65 million.

The committee recommends that government should offer slumdwellers "tenure security" and rehabilitation rather than evicting them to make cities look beautiful.

Union minister for housing and poverty alleviation Venkaiah Naidu was unavailable for comment, as was prof. Kundu.

"The ministry might use these findings for effective implementations of the policies and allocation of funds to the states," said an official of the ministry, pointing out data inconsistencies and data management capacities which had been a hindrance to the effective implementation of housing and other slum directed policies.

Due to these slum data inconsistencies, India has not been able to accurately present the country's progress towards the UN Millennium development Goal Target 11 of "significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers". One of the early reports of the Union government on MDG had noted that the available information did not permit a reasonable assessment that can be reported.