Concluding Remarks
In this study we have tried to construct the quality of governance index on the basic of
availability of public goods for 15 major Indian States as well as for India, Sri Lanka
and Pakistan at the national level. The indicators are chosen according to their
availability and also data were obtained on a time series basis since 1980. The
computation of the governance index allows us to rank the states and the nations
during the different time periods. It also indicates the overall performance of the
states.
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Also in the study we try to link public spending and governance with the outcomes
and income. Our aim was to examine the role of governance in development process
of the states and also to check how it affects the relationship between public spending
and outcomes. Using four outcome variables from the road and law and order sector,
the study found that there exists a positive relationship between quality of governance
and development outcomes.
Nevertheless, this study has several shortcomings, Firstly only a limited number of
indicators were used to construct the governance index. Again as desired, we were not
able to construct a meaningful index at country level and could not link them to
developmental outcomes. Also the relationship between governance and other
outcome variables like literacy rate, infant mortality rate etc could not be undertaken
due to data unavailability which would have been otherwise very useful.