Context: Recently, Ministry of Finance’s Economic Division have recently found that India’s scores were low in World Bank’s governance indicators

Key highlights

• In June 2020, as per the report by the Ministry of Finance India’s WGI score is much below the BBB Median on all six indicators. 
• BBB is an investment-grade rating issued by global rating agencies.
• India falls below the middle when the scores of countries are arranged in a descending order.
• The Freedom House Report 2020 highlighted that a series of actions by India government in 2019 violated democratic rights in India and Indian Kashmir.
• Kashmir went from partly free in 2019 to not free in 2020.
• It scored 8 (out of 40) in Political Rights, 20 (out of 60) in Civil Liberties. 
• India's score dropped from 27 to 51 in 2019 on Economic Intelligence Unit’s democracy index. India’s overall score fell to 6.90 in 2019.
• As per Heritage Foundation Index, India’s Economic Freedom Score has been mostly unfree.

Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) project

• It is a long-standing research program of the World Bank.
• It is a compilation of the perceptions of a very diverse group of respondents, collected in large number of surveys and other cross-country assessments of governance.

It captures six key dimensions of governance between 1996 and present. It includes-

• Voice & Accountability
• Political Stability and Lack of Violence
• Government Effectiveness
• Regulatory Quality
• Rule of Law
• Control of Corruption.

They measure the quality of governance in over 215 countries, based on close to 40 data sources produced by over 30 organizations worldwide and are updated annually.

• They contribute to the growing empirical research of governance which have provided activists and reformers worldwide with advocacy tools for policy reform and monitoring.
• They are part of the current research and opinions that have reinforced the experiences and observations of reform-minded individuals in government for the development.

By: Shubham Tiwari