The capital city of the state of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram has been declared as India’s very first peace city. The city has been identified to be one of its kind in the country not because of it being a place for unrest, but because it carries a strong lineage of peaceful coexistence of its people.

Peace has been the global agenda for nations to build better places of tomorrow, acknowledging the damage done in areas of un-rest is far more than just physical damage. Peace is an overarching theme that underpins the common vision of a life of dignity and well-being for all.

Developing a Peace Index at the city level will not only help in decentralizing the vision but also will help in spreading the identity of the peace city and reaching out to a larger mass. The index would be helped in rating each ward in the Municipal Corporation boundary and develop a healthy competition in order to excel as an entire city holistically.

Negative peace is defined as the absence of violence or absence of fear of violence. Positive peace therefore is considered in a further nuanced definition which helps in somewhat capturing the intangible aspect of the term. Well-developed Positive Peace represents the capacity for a society to meet the needs of its citizens.

Once according to the people of Trivandrum the final defining peace parameters are included in the list, indicators which can be used as a measuring tool or as a proxy to quantify the parameters can be identified.

The analysis of this will not help people understand the performance of their own ward but also will act as a people’s progress card where the community would start developing a sense of ownership to the idea and identity of peace. Annual release and updating of this index and data will result in the overall growth and further will nurture the identity of India’s first peace city.