In fact , the aim of every government should be that its governance mechanism was in tune with the expectations of the people . In democratic set -up , political parties must usually go to the people with the undertaking that they would provide good governance and for that matter, each and every political party must be in a sort of real competition to ensure that or else be voted out of power. Bad governance means invitation to root causes of all sort of evils within the societies including corruption and inefficiency pervading all around retarding growth and development. The term ”decisions” , in simple parlance, may look quite simple and of no import but it is believed that process of decision making and the process of which these decisions are scientifically and scrupulously implemented is all what we mean by governance . It needs no further elucidation as to what good governance , therefore, means. It is to be very particularly noted that the entire gamut of governance must be visited by reforms and innovative approaches and that too, on a persistent basis . Status quo ante and dormancy were core antidotes of good governance.
On the other hand, the concept of governance of whichever quality, is directly related and inversely is proportional to the levels and the quantum of public grievances. A well organised mechanism, therefore, must be there in the system to redress those grievances fast and speedily which again though having sprouted due to some flaw in governance would be deemed to be a purgation due to a good measure of ”good” governance in the system itself that resulted in the redressing process .Day in and day out , we see introducing of slew of new schemes of economic development, social and cultural development, labour development, skill development , human resources development and the list is unending. These schemes largely sponsored by the Central Government and many, even by respective state and UT Governments, however, need invariably to be implemented with precision, speed and with a target oriented approach. How , therefore, on these parameters and other specified factors and areas , at macro and micro levels performance can be evaluated , especially at micro district levels, is sought to be known through the application of Good Governance Index norms through a portal known as District Good Governance Index (DGGI) portal and Dashboard. Having said that, equally, periodic reviews and monitoring are needed to judge the levels of its development and functioning in the UT of Jammu and Kashmir.
There are several given indicators and identified key areas where improvement in and assessment of performance of districts at comparative basis is known. In this connection, what is important to know is whether such an assessment is done just on notional basis or proper formal and informal structures are set in place to have the performance in respect of various decisions taken for implementation precisely known. However, a meeting on it held recently in the UT arrived at a consensus observation and the importance about the objective behind the launch of the portal being enhancement in the levels of efficiency in governance . How it percolated down on the ground in terms of public service delivery could easily be got to be known by the behaviour of the curves of the public grievances. Any upward trend meant the need to go in for measures aimed at improvement and an obverse trend could mean affirmation of an improvement in the public delivery system. This initiative assumes importance from the fact, to call a spade a spade, that people in Jammu and Kashmir have been long yearning for good governance where decisions were taken fast , implemented and public delivery system improved.
What is needed is regular updating of the portal dashboard as also about periodic reckoning of the index standards achieved at district level basis which is bestowed upon with the idea of competitive federalism so that public knows about how the innovative measure introduced worked as also awareness about rewarding good performance and penalising under- performance so that the entire measure may not appear to be just an academic concept. In other words, accountability must form an inalienable part of implementation of reformist and innovative measures aimed at attaining better levels of good governance to restore enhanced levels of trust of the public in the reformist measure so as to get proper feedback from them for consistent improvement and innovation in the DGGI itself, the aim being improving Public Service Delivery mechanism.
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