Gujarat slips badly in economic legal structure

Economists Bibek Debroy and Laveesh Bhandari have criticized Gujarat for experiencing “a steep fall” in its score of “legal structure and security of property rights”. They find, Gujarat’s score on a scale of 0 to 1 for this has been constantly going from 0.54 in 2009 and 0.52 in 2011 to “just 0.39”, pushing its ranking from No 4 to No 9. The main parameters taken into account while analyzing “legal structure and security of property” include “the efficiency of the government in protecting human life and property”. 

The report says, “The quality of the justice mechanism is measured by the availability of judges, by the completion rate of cases by the courts and investigations by the police. The level of safety in the region is measured by the recovery rate of stolen property, and by the rate of violent and economic crimes.” 

Poor ranking for this happened at a time when, the economists say, “looking at changes since 2011, Bihar, Jammu & Kashmir and Punjab have shown the most improvement.” There has been “substantial improvement in police investigations in Bihar”, while “Punjab’s index scores have been rising over time, and these have been reflected in a sharp improvement in its ranking from 11th position in 2011 to 6th position today.” 

Praising these states, the economists say, “This improvement is mainly on account of a higher rate of recovery of stolen property, a lower ratio of violent crimes to total crime and higher rate of completion of court cases. The efficiency of the government in protecting human life and property is measured by this category.” They say all this in the latest “The State of Economic Freedom in India 2013”, released jointly by the Cato Institute, Friedrich Naumann Foundation, Indicus Analytics, and Academic Foundation.