Melbourne, Australia is the most livable city in the world. Photo: Reuters

Okay, so Norway has been ranked as the best place to live in the world for the 12th year in a row, closely followed by Australia, Switzerland, Denmark and Netherlands.

Where is India in this list? Well, we are, umm, at number 130. But the good news is we have gone up by five ranks since last year.

So, we can either sulk about being nowhere in the top 10 - or top 25 - in the list, or we can be happy about the fact we are making progress. Slow, but still!

Where did this list come from?

Every year, the United Nations releases a list in its annual Human Development Report, ranking 188 countries around the world based on the Human Development Index (HDI) - a measure of basic human developments.

The HDI is categorised based on the life expectancy at birth in the country, their access to education, and income per capita indicators. Hence, higher the measure of these three aspects, higher the score of the country.

India's HDI is 0.609, with life expectancy at birth being 68 years, expected years of schooling being 11.7 years (while mean years of schooling is 5.4) and the gross national income per capita is 5,497. And this GNI per capita rank minus the HDI rank brings us to -4.

Norway, on the other hand, has scored the HDI of 0.944, followed by Australia with 0.935, Switzerland with 0.930, Denmark and Netherlands with 0.923 and 0.922 respectively.

The newest list, released on December 14 this year, compiles the estimates for 2014.

Here's a list of the best countries to live in, as per their HDI: