Karnataka government performance below average: ADR

Performance of the Karnataka government was "below average" on voters' top three priorities - drinking water, employment and healthcare, said a report by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) on Saturday.

"The Karnataka Survey 2018 shows that drinking water (50.42 per cent), better employment opportunities (39.75 per cent) and better hospitals/primary healthcare centres (32.86 per cent) are the voters' top three priorities in overall Karnataka," said ADR.

The performance of the H.D. Kumaraswamy-led government on the issue of drinking water was 2.11 on a scale of 5 point, while better employment opportunities was 2.53 and better hospitals was 2.45.

In rural Karnataka, voters' top priorities were drinking water (49 per cent), availability of water for agriculture (44 per cent) and higher price realization for farm products (41 per cent).

The performance of the government on rural voters' priorities of drinking water was 2.10 on a scale of 5 point, availability of water for agriculture was 1.9, higher price realization for farm products was 2.12. These were rated as below average.

The ADR said that the government has performed poorly on agriculture subsidy for seeds and fertilizers and agricultural loan availability.

It further added that for the urban voters in Karnataka, the top most priorities were drinking water, better employment opportunities and better hospitals.

"The performance of the government on urban voters' priorities of drinking water (2.12 on a scale of 5), better employment opportunities (2.15), better hospitals/primary healthcare centres (2.07) was rated as below average," the report said.

In addition, the government has performed poorly on providing better roads and electricity for domestic use.

The survey report provides an analysis of ten most important governance issues as rated by the voters of Karnataka. The ADR said that the survey covered approximately 14,000 respondents across all 28 parliamentary constituencies of Karnataka.

The ADR had conducted a survey between October 2018 and December 2018, prior to the General Elections in which it covered 534 Lok Sabha constituencies with 2,73,487 voters participating in this exercise spread among various demographics.

The three main objectives of this survey were to identify voters' priorities on specific governance issues, voters' ratings of the government's performance on those issues and factors affecting voting behaviour.

--IANS

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