 | | Our 2005 cover on States | There is one reliable indication of the credibility and importance of our annual State of the States report: the number of phone calls that I or the editors in India Today get from chief ministers or their aides asking if they have won an award. That is as much of a tribute to the seriousness with which our rankings are taken as it is to the chief ministers who feel that their efforts over the year deserve applause. This is the fourth year since we started the exercise and it has only grown in terms of its impact on the establishment. In a federal system, with a number of parties, Opposition or Congress and its allies ruling various states, the political debate, controversies and differences often drown out performance. I can safely say there is no comparable study which tracks the performance of states across a range of parameters as accurately and credibly as our report does. It is put together meticulously and with careful analysis of uncontestable data and statistics that collectively track the performance of a state government with the aid of our own model of ranking, created by leading economists Bibek Debroy and Laveesh Bhandari. The parameters on which we judge each of the 30 states and five Union territories are constantly upgraded and modified to give us utmost accuracy, and include government spending, infrastructure, environment, education and health, consumer market and law and order. If there is a problem in the survey, which is endemic to the study, it is that as change takes considerable time the present rulers benefit or suffer from the legacy of their predecessors. To put that in perspective we have added some new variation to the ranking idea. Every year we introduce some new element and this year is no exception. One is what we call Fast Movers-states that, based on our calculations, are low in overall ranking but are making a discernible effort to catch up with the top ranked states. While it has thrown up surprises, we felt such states deserved to be given prominence and recognition. Another new criteria is where we have judged performance versus potential. We have quantified a state's economic potential and then benchmarked it to actual performance using data for the past 25 years. States have then been ranked as higher than potential, lower, or performing to potential. Taken together, they reveal the true face of India, how fast the country is changing, where it is changing, the leaders and the laggards and the new priorities and challenges confronting our chief ministers. As a newsmagazine, our primary function is to be a chronicler of change. If our State of the States awards inspire greater competition between states and inspire some to perform better, we will gladly be not just a chronicler but a catalyst for change too. Index
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