Kerala has begun the process to measure Panchayat Development Index (PDI) of local bodies to assess the progress of individual panchayats in achieving the Localised Sustainable Development Goals (LSDG), as proposed by the Union Ministry of Panchayati Raj. The index will be measured by taking into consideration achievements in nine broader indicators, including infrastructure, socio-economic, environmental sustainability and governance.
The government has now formed State, district and block-level, steering, monitoring and data validation committees for the process which involves ground-level data collection across various departments.
The PDI is aimed at aiding the panchayats in evidence-based planning in achieving better sustainable development outcomes and providing visibility for novel local initiatives. The PDI will be calculated based on data from multiple sources due to the wide range of local indicators required to cover the LSDGs. The data of gram panchayats will be subjected to rigorous validation at different levels before computation of thematic and composite PDI scores.
