Jharkhand : Flop Show, Again

A look at the states current situation, and the reasons for the states poor
performance becomes obvious: an unstable political environment with three new
chief ministers since the last five years seems to be one of the biggest reasons
for the state lagging behind. Any change in leadership leads to delay in project
implementation, and projects in the pipeline.

Political instability coupled with the governments aversion to e-governance
has resulted in the states dismal performance. There has been a drastic fall in
the overall citizen and business satisfaction with citizens citing
Land/Property, Municipal, and Transport as the pain areas when it comes to ease
of interaction. Even though satisfaction over Agriculture services improved last
year, this year it was a different story: from 55% last year, the satisfaction
level has dropped to 45%.

The governments inability to tackle the Naxalite problem in the state has
resulted in citizens expressing dissatisfaction over Police & Security. However,
for the same business category, businesses in the state are fairly satisfied
with Police & Security at 50.6%. Its a tradegy considering Jharkhand was one of
the first to implement biometric security systems in its jails.

The quality of e-governance services among businesses has deteriorated across
categories like government Tenders & Contracts, Incentive & Grants, and Small
Business Assistance. While Financial Assistance improved last year to 61.8%,
this year it has gone down significantly to 42.8%.

Considering that the premise behind e-governance was to reduce corruption
levels and ensure that the benefits of good governance reaches one and all, the
state of Jharkhand has done little. Both citizens and businesses in the state
feel that there have hardly been any reduction in Corruption Level.

Perhaps the state government needs to do some re-thinking on its part and
needs to take into account how. There is an urgent need to complete all pending
projects so that the benefit of governance reaches the masses and businesses.