Bengaluru: For the second consecutive year, Kerala retained its Numero Uno status in the 2017 Public Affairs Index (PAI),
Kerala stands 1st in Governance for the second year in a row, says Public Affairs Index (PAI), an initiative by the Public Affairs Centre (PAC).
PAC is a think tank committed to good governance.
The PAI aims at objectively ranking the states of India in the field of governance on a wide variety of themes, focus subjects and indicators.
Launching the 2017 edition of Public Affairs Index as the Chief Guest was former Judge of the Supreme Court Santosh Hegde along with Chairman of PAC, former Chief Justice M N Venkatachaliah.
The PAI report revealed that states like Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Himachal Pradesh and Goa were at the top of the governance spectrum as seen from a wide range of important themes such as Essential Infrastructure, Support to Human Development, Social Protection, Women and Children, Crime, Law and Order, Delivery of Justice, Environment, Transparency and Accountability, Fiscal Management and Economic Freedom.
Kerala Chief Secretary SatyajeetRajan and Dr Purnima Chauhan, Secretary Administrative Reforms Department from Himachal Pradesh graced the occasion.
The 2016 edition of PAI included 25 focus subjects under ten themes and 68 indicators.
The 2017 PAI expands this scope to include 26 subjects and 82 indicators and also includes a new theme of ‘Inequality’.
Telangana makes its debut in the report as data for the State was unavailable for the previous year.
The PAI report uses statistics from sources available in the public domain and standardizes the data using the GSDP or population as the denominator while assigning the values of 1.0 and 0.0 to the highest and lowest performers respectively, and placing the other states in between these two end points.
Speaking at the book launch, Chairman of PAC and former Chief Justice M N Venkatachaliah said the Public Affairs Index will be a game changer in governance.
It creates a competitive environment among governments to secure the top spots that will without a doubt result in a direct benefit to the common man,’’ he said.
Author of PAI Dr C K Mathew, Senior Fellow at PAC and former Chief Secretary of Rajasthan, said Public Affairs Index is our attempt to produce a credible report on the quality of governance in India.
The attention that it received through its first edition in 2016 was heartening and inspired us to come out with the 2017 edition which we hope will aid future governments in providing better public services to the citizens of India.
The report categorises states into small and large states with the population of two crore as the distinguishing line.
Among the large states, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat secure the top three spots respectively while Himachal Pradesh, Goa and Mizoram are the best performers among the smaller states respectively.
The special chapter on Inequality examines three perspectives of economic disparity, social discrimination and gender bias through the lens of 25 indicators making a broad analysis of the issue in all its dimensions.
Kerala also emerged as the least unequal (or the most equal state) with Tamil Nadu and Punjab following closely. The special focus on Inequality makes PAI 2017 unique in the annals of comparative governance literature.
(Agencies)
