Good governance not necessarily bring votes: Omar

Good governance may not necessarily bring in votes as issues like religion, caste and region dominate elections in the country, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah today said.
Interacting with delegates at the International Workshop on Government Performance Management here, he said performance of a political government mostly depends on the status of delivery and outcomes of development programmes.
However, he said that the good performance of a government does not necessarily win votes in the elections as "in our country religion, caste, region and other aspects impact the polls".
According to Omar, performance measurement in government involves three factors of inputs, outputs and outcomes.

"It is, however, the outcome which is the most significant," he underlined.
The chief minister said that the status of performance by the ministers and bureaucrats at the end of the year based on the outcomes and results of the programmes targeted by each department for completion and delivery in a particular year impacts public perception and helps to learn from shortcomings.
"In other words, there is an established mechanism for reviewing the performance of political executives every five year while no such mechanism exists for bureaucracy. Therefore, I believe that the performance management has much more to do with the civil servants as well," he said.

He said administrative practices also need to respond to new problems surfacing in the wake of social change and delivery of justice.