to say that a locality/place/village/town/semi urban area/big cities are several important parameters spanning several vital verticals(education, health, law&order, zero corruption, free press, clean and safe drinking water and air, etc)

one important component for all the above verticals is water. sunita narain calls water as a definition for a difference in development. she writes more on this angle in her latest editorial.

her last para sums it up eloquently:
In the dingy dairy of Laporiya I learnt this: last year, after nine years of persistent drought, when it rained less than 300 mm, the village of 300 households sold milk worth Rs 17.5 lakh. It was a valuable lesson.

(As india today gropes with a water crisis we continue polluting our water sources. The river sabarmati, whose bank Gandhi setup his ashram and continued his fight for freedom is today but a murky mass of sewarage even as the much hyped Sabarmati river front development project continues. )