The Union Ministry of Panchayati Raj has launched the first-ever Panchayat Advancement Index (PAI) baseline report for FY 2022-23.
About PAI
- The index is aimed to identify gaps and frame evidence-based policies. The index serves as a comprehensive tool to measure the performance of over 2.5 lakh Gram Panchayats across nine localized Sustainable Development Goal (LSDG) themes.
- These nine themes are; rate of poverty, availability of livelihoods, health indices, whether a panchayat is child friendly, water sufficient, clean and green, self-sufficient infrastructure, socially just and socially secured panchayat, good governance and women-friendly.
- It is built on 435 indicators aligned with the National Indicator Framework of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI).
- Based on these, gram panchayats are grouped into one of the categories of performance – achiever: (90+), front runner:(75 to below 90); performer:(60 to below 75); aspirant: (40 to below 60) and beginners (below 40). Of the 2.16 lakh gram panchayats, 699 (0.3%) of gram panchayats are front runner, 77,298 (35.8%) are performer, 1,32,392 (61.2%) are aspirant, and 5,896 (2.7%) are beginners.
- None of the gram panchayat is qualified as an “achiever”. Gujarat with 346 and Telangana with 270 panchayats lead the tally of ‘frontrunner’ panchayats.
- Chhattisgarh leads the tally of ‘beginners’ with 1,449 panchayats under this category and Uttar Pradesh follows closely behind with 1,237 panchayats.
(Source: DD News)
