Governance performance ranked over a decade

Regional disparity has been growing over the years, shows a new study which evaluates the governance performance of 19 major States. The research, conducted by Sudipto Mundle, Samik Chaudhury and Satadru Sikdar, was published in The Economic and Political Weekly earlier this month.

Five of the six best-performing States in 2001 — Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Punjab — continue to be the top performers in 2011. Likewise, four of the six worst-performing States in 2001 — Odisha, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar — remained at the bottom in 2011. This led the researchers to conclude that “development clusters” — combinations of quality service delivery and high per capita income — are emerging among the more developed States in the south and west of the country, leaving behind the less-developed States, especially in the eastern region.

While there are various approaches to evaluating performance of the State governments, the researchers use “output” — the quality of service delivery — as a measure of governance quality. Five sets of criteria were used to rank the States: infrastructure, social services, fiscal performance, justice, law and order, and quality of the legislature. Only official government data were used. The study covers 19 States which account for 96 per cent of the population, for which requisite data was available from 2001-02 to 2011-12.

Browse our interactive to see how various states compare based on the indicators used for the study.

Notes to read the graphic

a. Graphic shows comparative data for states between 2001-02 and 2011-12.

b. On both sides, states are arranged in descending order. Higher position implies better performance. Exception: Maternal Mortality Rate, Infant Mortality Rate and Crime Rate – where lower position/value indicates better performance

c. The line shows change over a decade and relative performance of the 19 states that were studied.

When Narendra Modi took over as Gujarat Chief Minister in 2001, the State had already been at the top and it continued to occupy the slot in 2011. In 2011, Gujarat was placed at the top for infrastructure delivery, justice, law and order, where it jumped six places, from the seventh position in 2001. However, in social services, the State slipped from the fifth in 2001 to the ninth in 2011. In fiscal performance, it was placed sixth in 2011, down from second in 2001.

There is a vast difference among the States in infrastructure. For instance, road density in Karnataka in 2011, at 10.8 km per 100 sq-km, was five times that of Odisha, at 1.95 km. Similarly, in education, the gross enrolment rate in Himachal Pradesh during 2011-12 had already reached 100 per cent, whereas it was only 63.7 per cent in Assam.

The study shows that development legacy seems to have a strong impact on the quality of governance (when measured as service delivery). Hence, another set of rankings was devised factoring in the impact of development on governance outputs.

Some of the less developed States like Bihar and Madhya Pradesh moved up significantly in the modified ranking. Bihar jumped eight positions from the 18th in standard ranking to the 10th in development-adjusted ranking. Madhya Pradesh jumped from the 13th to second position. Chhattisgarh, placed at the eighth position, was the top performer in the modified ranking.

“Governments in these States are attempting to offset their negative legacy of relative backwardness, delivering a much better quality of services than would be expected at the relatively low level of development of these States,” the study says.