The Vicious Circle of mis-governance
Tavleen Singh, a noted journalist, while describing the situation in Bihar wrote in 2014, “last week I went to Bihar for the first time in 15 years and returned feeling more despondent (helpless/gloomy) about India’s future than I have in a long time. Not because there has not been change and development in Bihar, but because everywhere I went, I saw the failure of the state to address real problems. This is true in other states, but nowhere as true as in Bihar because everything here is amplified ; Poverty, squalour, corruption, environmental degradation, horrific urbanisation and the angry despair that is the mood of this election.”
Now that the fault lines have been exposed and magnified by this pandemic ; poverty, squalor, corruption, anger and despair amongst the citizens…we should also look at some important indicators that tell us about the condition of the governance in the country so as to avoid going the Bihar/UP way.
The SDG Index (Sustainable Development Growth) released by the UNO indicates that on almost 10 parameters out of 17, that includes, hunger, poverty, clean water etc India is not likely to achieve the goals that it set for 2030. The index is aimed at measuring performance vis-a-vis the United Nations-mandated Sustainable Development Goals. A 2019 report of NITI Ayog also indicates that every fifth Indian is still below the poverty line and the country needs to take huge strides to alleviate poverty.
These aspects, for most Indian states and society as a large, though, does not seem to be of any priority. India’s overall rank is 117 out of 161. The Ranking as well as the performance on various parameters is an indication that there is a serious flaw in the system of Governance.
When we look at few other indicators related to Governance like - Infant Mortality rates, Transmission and Distribution losses of power, Poverty, Revenue deficits, Migrant Population and Sick Industrial units we notice that states like UP, Bihar, Assam, Odisha, Bengal are way behind Gujarat, Maharashtra, and states in South India.
Uttar Pradesh and Bihar were the two states with largest number of net migrants migrating out of the state. It’s pertinent to ask, why has there been such a large out-migration from these two states? Among inter-state male migrants, work/employment has been cited as the primary reason for migration (e.g., Uttar Pradesh – 73.0%; Bihar – 79.1%). And where have they migrated to? They have migrated to Maharashtra, Gujarat, Delhi, Haryana i.e Gurgaon for better job prospects. Maharashtra stands at the top of the list with 2.3 million net migrants, followed by Delhi (1.7 million), Gujarat (0.68 million) and Haryana (0.67 million). And when one checks the data one obviously finds that these are the most industrialized states and are receiving maximum foreign and domestic investments.
If these indicators/ data are analysed objectively, one can easily come to a conclusion that there is an issue of mis-governance in these states and they have been like that for almost more than 2-3 decades now. These states of UP, Bihar, Bengal, Assam, etc have arrived at this situation because of communal/ regional politics that led to poor governance.
And once a State gets into that vicious circle of MIS GOVERNANCE, its very difficult to get out of it.
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