1. District Good Governance Index (DGGI)

GS Paper 2: Governance and transparency related issues.

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Context:

• Union home minister Amit Shah recently launched the District Good Governance Index (DGGI) in Jammu and Kashmir, which is the first Union Territory to have such an index.

About the index:

• The project has been launched in 20 districts of Jammu and Kashmir.
• It has been created in collaboration with the administration of the Union Territory by the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG).
• Policies, schemes, and programmes of both the federal and state governments have been monitored at the district level as part of the index’s implementation.

The index’s significance may be summarised as follows:

• After launching in Jammu and Kashmir, this index will gradually be expanded to include all other states, and a good governance competition will be launched in every district throughout the country.
• The index included 58 indicators and covered 10 sectors.
• The index will have a significant positive impact on the residents of Jammu and Kashmir because it will work towards improving district machinery, making districts more result-oriented, and improving their delivery mechanism, among other things.

The following are some of the index’s highlights:

• Among the districts of the Jammu Division, Jammu district took the top spot in the composite ranking, followed by Doda and Samba districts.
• After that, the Pulwama district of the Srinagar Division took fourth place, followed by the Srinagar district, which took fifth place.
• The district of Rajouri received the final ranking position, with the districts of Poonch and Shopian also appearing near the bottom of the list of districts.
• The district of Srinagar received the top ranking in the Public Infrastructure and Utilities sector.
• Srinagar was also placed among the top 5 districts in Kashmir Division in terms of Composite GGI, with a score of 5.313 points.
• Kishtwar was ranked first in the ‘Agriculture and Allied Sector’ sector, Pulwama was first in the ‘Human Resource Development’ sector, Reasi was first in the ‘Public Health’ sector, Ramban was first in the ‘Social Welfare and Development’ sector, and Ganderbal was first in the ‘Financial Inclusion’ sector.

The performance of the state of Jammu and Kashmir in the National Good Governance Index is as follows:

• Previously, on December 25, 2017, the Centre issued the National Good Governance Index, which showed that from 2019 to 2021, the state of Jammu and Kashmir had a growth of 3.7 percent in Good Governance Indicators.
• A number of other fields, including commerce and industry, agriculture, the judiciary, and public infrastructure, have also praised J-K for their outstanding performance.

About GGI: (Good Governance Index)

The Department of Administration Reforms and Public Grievances prepared this report (DARPG).

The goals of the GGI are to provide quantifiable data to compare the state of governance in all states and union territories, to assist them in formulating and implementing appropriate strategies for improving governance, and to encourage a shift to result-oriented approaches and administration in all states and union territorial governments.

The GGI 2021 framework had ten sectors and 58 indicators, which were as follows:

• Agriculture and allied sectors, commerce and industries, human resource development, public health, public infrastructure and utilities, economic governance, social welfare and development, judicial and public security, the environment, and citizen-centric governance are some of the sectors that fall under this category.
• The GGI 2020-21 divides states and union territories into four categories, which are as follows:
• North-East and hill states, as well as union territories, are included in Group A. Other states are included in Group B.

The Good Governance Index has some limitations, which are as follows:

The index’s limits are mostly dictated by the availability of data, which can be overcome over time if more data becomes accessible from real and credible official sources, as has happened in the past.

The framework, although acknowledging the relevance of input and process-based indicators, is restricted in that it solely considers outcome/output-based indicators.

The Pros and objectives of GGI are:

• To provide quantifiable data to compare the state of governance in all states and UTs.

• To enable states and UTs to formulate and implement suitable strategies for improving governance.

• To shift to result-oriented approaches and administration.