Tamil Nadu has topped the Good Governance Index among 18 big States in the country. The State was ranked among the top five in six parameters, including public infrastructure, judicial and public security and public health, among others. However, it lagged behind its competitors in the ranking for commerce and industries.
The Good Governance Index was released by the Union Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions on Wednesday.
The Index takes 10 sectors into consideration: agriculture and allied, commerce & industries, human resource development, public health, public infrastructure & utilities, economic governance, social welfare & development, judicial & public security, environment and citizen-centric governance. Performance in these sectors is measured on the basis of 50 indicators.
Tamil Nadu was followed by Maharashtra, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh in the overall ranking of 18 big States.
‘New Year’s gift’
Reacting to the rankings, senior AIADMK leader and Fisheries Minister D. Jayakumar said it had come as a New Year’s gift to the State and its government. “The State has won over 100 awards in various sectors like health, rural development and others. We will win the 2021 Assembly election, and this good performance will continue,” he said.
Mr. Jayakumar claimed that once the projects pledged during the Global Investors’ Meet 2019 come on stream, the State will top the ranking on commerce and industries.
A senior government official said that as regards the ease of doing business, while the State was doing a lot of work on the ground, the important thing was to fulfil the parameters that had been set. The State was working towards that and improving its ranking, the official said.
For the purpose of the rankings, the States and Union Territories (UTs) were divided into three groups - Big States, North-East & Hill States and UTs. The States and UTs were ranked on all indicators separately. At the same time, a composite ranking was also calculated for these States and UTs under their respective groups, based on the indicators.
Among the big States, Tamil Nadu was ranked number one on the Public Infrastructure and Judicial and Public Security parameters.
The indicators for public infrastructure included access to potable water, towns declared open defecation-free, villages declared open defecation-free, connectivity to rural habitations, access to clean cooking fuel (LPG/PNG), availability of 24/7 power supply, energy availability against the requirement and growth in per capita power consumption.
For judicial and public security, the indicators were conviction rate, availability of police personnel, proportion of women police personnel, disposal of court cases and disposal of cases by consumer courts.
Tamil Nadu was followed by Gujarat, Punjab, Maharashtra and Haryana in the public infrastructure rankings, and by Kerala, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra in the rankings for judicial and public security.
While the State managed to find a place in the top 10 when it came to environment (3), human resource development (5), economic governance (5), social welfare and development (7) and agriculture and allied (9), it was ranked 14th in commerce and industries.
The commerce and industries parameter had indicators such as ease of doing business, growth rate of industries and micro, small and medium enterprises. Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Chhattisgarh and Gujarat rounded out the top five in this area.
Tamil Nadu’s relatively low ranking in the commerce and industries parameter comes at a time when the State government has been claiming to have been attracting a lot of investment. The State had signed MoUs with as many as 304 companies, securing investment pledges worth ₹3,00,431 crore during this year’s Global Investors’ Summit. Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami has said that post-GIM 2019, in the past 10 months alone, Tamil Nadu has attracted 63 projects, with an investment of ₹19,000 crore.
