BENGALURU, Karnataka: In the Public Affairs Index (PAI) 2022 rankings, released on Friday, October 14, by Public Affairs Centre (PAC), a Bengaluru based think tank, the state of Karnataka has been placed in sixth place. Haryana, Tamil Nadu and Kerala were the top three performers in this index.
PAI evaluates the performance of the states in the field of governance on the basis of 22 indicators grouped into three themes: economic justice, political justice and social justice.
G Gurucharan, Director, Public Affairs Centre, noted that this year Government of India has stressed the roles and responsibilities mandated by the Constitution of India to evaluate the quality of their governance. He said, “The themes, sub-themes, and indicators used to measure the governance performance of the states are drawn primarily from the Constitution of India.”
Karnataka has been grouped with the poor performing states in sectors like governance while in terms of social justice the state has been ranked 10th. The performance of social justice was evaluated on the basis of nine indicators, including cooking fuel, land degradation, households with improved sanitation service and premature mortality.
On the other hand, the state was among the best performing states in terms of economic justice where it was ranked third. The good performance of the state is attributed to high labour productivity, low rates of employment and assured standard of living to wage workers. While in political justice, Karnataka’s performance was satisfactory due to which it was ranked 8th. Performance in this parameter was assessed based on five indicators which include crime rate, policy efficiency and functional devolution.