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Competition among districts: Uttar Pradesh to release its first good governance index soon
The practice will aim at identifying districts’ strong and weak points to initiate a healthy competition among them and for encouraging better citizen centric administration and governance.
Uttar Pradesh will very soon release its first-ever District Good Governance Index (DGGI), ranking all the 75 districts on the basis of their performance in around a dozen key government sectors.
The practice, that might become an annual feature, would aim at identifying districts’ strong and weak points to initiate a healthy competition among them for encouraging better citizen centric administration and governance. The Indian Institute of Public Administration (IIPA) was giving final touches to the report that had analysed the relevant data received from the concerning government departments for the years 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22, people aware of the development said.
“In a meeting chaired by chief secretary Durga Shankar Mishra two weeks ago, it was decided that the UP’s first DGGI should be released at the earliest after incorporating some more changes suggested in the meeting,” an official said. “The report is likely to be released jointly by the state and the Central government on whose directions U.P. is preparing the DGGI,” he added.
“Jammu & Kashmir is the first state (UT) in the country to have good governance index with Union Home minister Amit Shah having released the DGGI for the 20 districts in January, 2023. Many more states are working on their own good governance index and we hope UP to be second state to have such an index,” the official said.
The Good Governance Index (GGI) for states has already been released by the Centre. Now, the Central government has asked states to develop a similar comprehensive District Good Governance Index encompassing administrative, economic, social, environmental, judicial and other criteria.
Among a dozen sectors that IIPA and the public administrative reforms department jointly identified for ranking districts on the basis of around 60 performance parameters in U.P. include agriculture and the allied sectors, industry, public health, public infrastructure and development, public safety, judiciary and financial inclusion.
Each sector will have different criteria for being judged. For example, parameters for the health sector would be operationalisation of health and wellness centres, availability of doctors at PHCs, maternal mortality rate (MMR), availability of number of hospital beds per 1000 population etc.
“The DGGI will largely be modelled on the Good Governance Index, 2022 with some modifications due to regional disparities and requirements,” the official said.
