There is a core concept of good governance, the combination of authority and responsibility to pursue the common good, that has remained stable over millennia. Building on this concept the paper develops several indices of the quality of governance and applies these indices to rank major states in India. The governance indices have been derived from the three main pillars of the government, i e, the legislature, the judiciary and the executive. Performance on each dimension of governance has been measured using indicators that are all based exclusively on factual data, not perceptions.

Jammu and Kashmir has been able to progress gradually in improving the Panchayat Acts, starting from electing the panchayat members by show of hands to direct elections by the people and empowering elected members by means of defining certain powers. However, their functioning in practice demonstrates the glaring deficiencies in the state Panchayat Act and these institutions face a number of problems.

Of late, public-private partnership is meant to encourage private capital to take responsibility for matters that were earlier regarded as primary duties of the State. The centre set up by the Pearson Company in partnership with the Central Board of Secondary Education is meant to enable the latter to progress towards the fulfi lment of longterm policy measures like developing a school-based evaluation system.