K'taka best in social protection, ranks 3rd in Public Affairs Index

BENGALURU: Ranked third among all states in governance, Karnataka took the top slot for giving social protection to its citizens. The Public Affairs Index (PAI) 2016 reveals the state scored 0.547 on a scale of 0 to 1, from data analyzed from 2012 to 2015.

The Public Affairs Centre, Bengaluru, studied the governance quotient in each state based on 10 themes, 25 focus subjects and 68 indicators of governance. Kerala tops the country with a PAI of 0.5678, Tamil Nadu is second (0.5498) and Karnataka scores 0.5470 overall.

From employment, social justice and empowerment, public distribution system and minority welfare, clubbed as social protection theme in the study, Karnataka scores the highest, at 0.665. It has excelled in employment index: 0.784. While on one side, it employed 32.4 people in manual casual labour per 100 population, there were 19 unemployed persons per 1,000 population, aged between 15 and 59 years, as per the 2011-12 status.

Karnataka has achieved 276% of its target in giving pre-matric scholarship to students belonging to minority groups, from 2008 to 2015. This gives it a score of 0.687 on the minority welfare indicator alone. While it has 46% households without land holdings, 25.78% of pensioners are covered by the state. The incidence of crime on the SC/ST population is considerably low each year in the past three years, which covers the aggregation of social justice parameter of the social protection theme in the study with 0.55.

Aggregating the granular data on each of the parameters in the theme, Karnataka scores 0.665 on the PAI index, and tops among all big states. Overall, it ranks third followed by Mizoram (0.75) and Sikkim (0.67).

Karnataka also ranks second in environment, transparency and accountability and third in support to human development (includes education and health) themes studied in the report. The literacy percentage in Karnataka is 75.6%, it ranks 12 among states in education as a supportive development index.

Again, the infant mortality rate in the state is 32.66%, and 84% in the state are fully immunized or get immunization facilities, while 1,194 people are served per government hospital bed. All this, when aggregated, Karnataka gets a score of 0.66 and ranks 10th among states in health services delivery through the government. Overall, in health and education, Karnataka is ranked third among the big states.