Good Governance Index 2021

• Union Minister of Home Affairs released the Good Governance Index 2021 prepared by the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) on 25 December 2021.
• 25th December is celebrated as Good Governance Day marking the auspicious occasion of late former Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s birth anniversary.
• Good Governance is the key component of the economic transformation and with the present government’s focus on ‘minimum government and maximum governance,’ the Index assumes more significance.

Good Governance Index (GGI)

• GGI is a comprehensive and implementable framework to assess the State of Governance across the States and UTs which enables ranking of States/Districts.
• The objective of GGI is to create a tool that can be used uniformly across the States to assess the impact of various interventions taken up by the Central and State Governments including UTs.
• Based on the GGI Framework, the Index provides a comparative picture among the States while developing a competitive spirit for improvement.
• The GGI 2019 encompassed 10 Governance Sectors and 50 Governance Indicators.
• For GGI 2020-21, the same 10 Governance Sectors are retained while indicators have been revised to 58, namely;

1. Agriculture and Allied Sectors
2. Commerce & Industries
3. Human Resource Development
4. Public Health, 5.) Public Infrastructure & Utilities
5. Economic Governance
6. Social Welfare & Development
7. Judicial & Public Security
8. Environment,
9. Citizen-Centric Governance.

• Further, the GGI 2020-21 categorises States and UTs into four categories, i.e.
• Other States – Group A
• Other States – Group B
• North-East and Hill States
• Union Territories.
• This year, 20 States have improved their composite GGI scores over the GGI 2019 index scores.

Top ranking States in the Sectors as well as in Composite Ranks

• As per the GGI 2021 rankings, Uttar Pradesh has shown an incremental growth of 8.9% over GGI 2019 performance.
• Among the sectors, it has secured top position in Commerce & Industry sector including an increase in Social Welfare & Development and Judiciary & Public Safety.
• The state has also performed well in citizen-centric governance including public grievance redressal.
• Jharkhand witnessed a growth of 12.6 per cent over GGI 2019 performance in 7 of the 10 sectors.
• Rajasthan has shown an incremental growth of 1.7 per cent over the past year’s index and topped the Other States (Group B) category in Judiciary and Public Safety, Environment & Citizen Centric Governance.
• In the North-East and Hill States category, Mizoram and Jammu and Kashmir registered an overall increase of 10.4% and 3.7% respectively over GGI 2019.
• The latter has performed strongly in Commerce & Industry sector and has improved its scores in Agriculture & Allied Sector, Public Infrastructure and Utilities and Judiciary and Public Safety sectors.
• Mizoram too has performed strongly in commerce and industry, human resource development, public health and economic governance.
• In the Union Territories category, Delhi has topped the composite rank registering a 14 per cent increase over the GGI 2019 indicators.
• The national capital has performed strongly in Agriculture & Allied Sectors, Commerce & Industry, Public Infrastructure and Utilities and Social Welfare & Development.