The cynic would say the question to ask is whether 'governance', not even 'good governance', will make a comeback in 2014. In the last few years reforms have been dead and there has been very little to write home about on most governance fronts. Good governance as a concept has been as used as much as abused, and if the four 2014 Assembly results are any indication, the verdict is clearly anti-misgovernance.
The dominant economic strategy for success in good governance appears to be a highly calibrated 80:20 mix of (a) growth-enhancing, competitiveness-creating policies which increase the overall size of the cake and (b) carefully modulated left-of-centre distributive policies, respectively-these will split that cake reasonably fairly as per the political calculus. Economic growth has to be the lynchpin of good governance and this formula is a close approximation of that, provided the 20 is not growth-decimating which impacts the 80.
What does World Bank data show? Between 2004 and 2012, India's per capita income grew from $643 to $1,530. But, during the same period, China's moved from $1,490 to $5,680, Brazil's from $3,610 to $11,630, Russia's from $4,109 to $12,700, war-ravaged Iraq's from $9,57 to $5,870, and Indonesia's from $1,143 to $3,420. Almost 50 countries did better than India. This leads one to ask about what lies beneath: What are the indicators of good governance which underlie this growth data?
There are six key heads that make for an effective assessment but these, by no means, add up to an exhaustive list. However, they are the minimum necessary conditions by which one needs to measure good governance. There are other important pointers like preservation of law and order, civil service reforms, quality of roads and infrastructure, agrarian reforms, to name just a few.
Power and Water
This is one sector which has seen maximum funds and reforms, yet, ironically, with little to show for it. Most states continue to have large debt-laden utilities, huge, unsustainable subsidies as well as poor quality and quantity of power. The metrics which can be counted towards good (or bad) governance are:
Has the separation of agriculture and household feeders been done?
Is free power promised and given?
Are losses from agriculture swept under transmission and distribution (T&D) losses?
Have T&D losses been coming down at the rate of at least 2 percent per annum?
Has true 'open access' been implemented?
What percentage of the population gets water through tankers and how many get piped water?
Is non-revenue water as a percentage of total water supplied declining?
Independent, Effective Lokayukta
Corruption usually declines as a country grows as does poverty, yet the problem of graft appears to be getting worse in India, which has fallen on the Transparency International (an NGO that monitors corporate and political corruption) rankings from 772nd in 2007 to 94th in 2012. Thanks to Anna Hazare's movement, corruption has been brought firmly to centre stage and every Indian is finally waking up to the importance of electing a party which is the 'lesser of all evils'. The markers for assessing this parameter should be:
Does the state have an independently appointed and pro-active anti-corruption watchdog?
Does the state government mandatorily use electronic procurement in all procurements above Rs 5 lakh?
Are serious audit paras (irregularities) and election complaints pursued and acted upon as per law?
(The author is an IAS topper, and an alumnus of Oxford and Harvard business school. He is currently secretary in the Department of IT, Biotechnology and Science, Karnataka.)
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