District Administration In 2020 Thrives With More Local Initiatives

District administration in 2020 has flourished across India. Every year we conduct the annual State of Governance review to see how states have performed over the past year. We study the triumphs and challenges of governance and the impact of administration on citizens’ lives. Today, over a year since the world came to a crashing halt, we have more insight into the challenges we face, both as a nation and as a global community. We can finally begin to imagine a world freed from the pall of the pandemic. As we undertake our annual review, the most dominant theme, of course, has been the Covid-19 pandemic.

As we studied governance through, despite and in response to the global healthcare crisis, we began to notice a few interesting patterns. It stands to reason that a world-changing phenomenon like this will affect governance at the macro and micro levels – but exactly how did it do so? A new development is the robust manner in which district administration in 2020 really came into its own.

For 2020, a large number of impactful schemes have come from the District Administration niche. Our evaluation process is the most comprehensive, balanced and transparent independent authority of its kind. Expert juries, peer review committees, focus groups and discussions make for a rigorous appraisal and ranking procedure. We welcome participation from all over the country. In fact, a whopping 196 districts participated this year. Nearly a 100 of these projects were found to be transformative. This signals a shift in currents from 2019, with its far more modest showing.

We have ranked states on the basis of district administration in 2020 as well, in addition to our annual states’ ranking. The Top 10 states on the basis of performance at the district level are:

State Rank by District Administration	State Name	No. of Districts Per State	No. of Districts Ranked
1	Tamil Nadu	38	14
2	Gujarat	33	12
3	Andhra Pradesh	13	6
4	Uttar Pradesh	75	24
5	Odisha	30	15
6	Madhya Pradesh	52	13
7	Bihar	38	9
8	Uttarakhand	13	6
9	Telangana	31	7
10	Karnataka	31	6