How to Measure What People Feel, Not Just What Files Say
Photo credit Odisha Millet Mission (The Ministry of Women and Child Development celebrated the fifth ‘Poshan Pakhwada' from 20th March to 3rd April 2023 with various activities nationwide. This initiative aims to raise awareness on malnutrition and promote healthy eating habits)
IIAS must resist the temptation to chase a perfect, all-country index on Day One. Instead, start as a living laboratory-small, transparent, and brutally honest about its limits.
By P SESH KUMAR
New Delhi, October 6, 2025 — Every governance index dies the same death if it cannot measure what citizens actually live through. It is easy to count how many laws are passed, budgets presented, schemes announced, outlays sanctioned or websites built; it is much harder to capture whether a sick child gets treated, a widow receives her pension, or a woman feels safe walking home.
The proposed International Governance Index (IGI)—by the International Institute of Administrative Sciences (Brussels) with India as President (2025-28)—will rise or fall on whether it can translate governance on paper into governance in practice.
While creating a practically useful index of “lived-experience” indicators is challenging, how can such indicators be designed and developed with credibility, who can reliably collect them, and why is their implementation feasible—even in complex democracies like India and across the Global South—if approached with realism and rigor?
From Ideals to Indicators: What to Measure
Governance lives in two worlds: the institutional (rules, budgets, accountability systems) and the experiential (the quality of services, safety, and dignity). To capture both, IGI must measure what governments do and how citizens experience it.
For example: A law guaranteeing free healthcare is institutional governance.
The waiting time at a district hospital, or the percentage of mothers receiving postnatal care, is service delivery.
A grievance portal is institutional accountability.
Whether citizens actually get redress within 30 days is experiential governance.
Thus, indicators must straddle both worlds: half from government records and audits; half from citizens’ voices, verified independently.
How to Build the Indicators, Step by Step
Step One: We should start from Outcomes, not Agencies.
Instead of saying, “We will measure education department performance,” say, “We will measure learning outcomes.” Use end-user results-literacy, dropout rates, female enrolment-not process inputs like number of schools opened. Each domain should start with the citizen’s vantage point.
Step Two: Use Dual Lenses-Administrative Data + Field Validation. (This is basic or standard approach- nothing adventurous)
Administrative data give us breadth; field surveys give us truth. For instance, electricity supply data from the Ministry of Power may say “99% electrified,” but household surveys may reveal only 70% have reliable 20-hour supply. Combining them gives a more honest picture.
Step Three: Build the ‘Lived Experience Panel’
In each participating country, partner with national statistics offices or reputable polling agencies (there are many available even in the Global South) to maintain a small, rotating panel-say, 3,000-10,000 households per country—who answer a common set of experience questions every year. This “Voice Module” would ask about satisfaction with healthcare, safety, corruption, grievance redress, water supply, etc. We may think of it as a global “citizens’ barometer,” analogous to Afrobarometer or Latinobarómetro, but with standardized governance themes.
Step Four: Calibrate with External Data
Cross-check national figures with independent datasets: WHO’s health indicators, UNESCO’s education data, World Bank’s SDG dashboards, Transparency International’s corruption surveys, satellite-based data on night lights (for electricity reliability), or mobile signal density (for connectivity). The art is triangulation—one indicator seen from three angles.
Step Five: Validate and Publish
For each indicator, we should publish a “metadata note” stating its source, frequency, quality, and how it was validated. That is how we build credibility. If some data are missing or weak, we should flag them openly instead of masking with imputation. Transparency is stronger than perfection.
Who Can Credibly Do This?
Credibility will not come from a single institution; it will come from distributed legitimacy. Here is how the partnership could possibly work:
IIAS as Convener: Sets the rules, ensures transparency, peer reviews methods, and maintains the global repository. It is not the data collector but the referee.
National Statistical Offices (NSOs): Provide official data for institutional and administrative indicators-budgets, audits, public finance, service coverage.
Independent Data Partners: Global entities like UNDP, World Bank, or OECD can provide existing cross-country data layers (SDGs, service outcomes, corruption perception).
Regional Barometers: Afrobarometer, Latinobarómetro, and similar Asia-Pacific or South Asian survey consortia can plug in the citizen-experience layer.
Universities and Civil-Society Labs: In India, for instance, institutions like NITI’s Data and Analytics Centre, the Indian Statistical Institute, or field survey outfits like CSDS or Lokniti or Janagraha can act as neutral field partners.
The real test of credibility is independence of verification. Government data must be used, but always cross-checked through independent samples and international comparators.
Is It Practical for India and the Global South?
Surprisingly, yes-if we start small and scale smart. India already generates a torrent of governance data- most of it self-congratulatory and not third-party verified:
Health and Family Welfare Ministry’s Health Management Information System (HMIS).
National Sample Surveys (NSS), NFHS, and Periodic Labour Force Surveys.
Jal Jeevan Mission dashboards showing household tap connections.
Saubhagya and Ujjwala data for electricity and LPG access.
National Crime Records Bureau data on law and order.
Audit reports from CAG that track fiscal performance and efficiency.
The issue is not absence of data-it is the absence of integration and validation. The IGI could aggregate these disparate streams, align them on a common year, normalise, and test reliability. Even in lower-income countries, basic data exist through SDG reporting or international household surveys (e.g., DHS, MICS).
The citizen-perception layer is the new frontier, but not unthinkable. Afrobarometer already covers 39 African countries with 1,200–2,400 respondents each, on governance and service delivery. Latinobarómetro covers 18 Latin American countries. India runs its own periodic People’s Pulse surveys through academic partnerships. Building an “Asia Governance Barometer” with IIAS standards is feasible within 2–3 years, especially if piggybacked on existing national surveys.
The Practical Model
So, what does “practical” look like?
We can start with 20–25 pilot countries (including India, Brazil, Kenya, Indonesia, South Africa, etc.) where both administrative and survey data exist.
We may limit domains initially to 4: Fiscal integrity, service delivery (health, education, water, electricity), citizen trust and safety, and digital access.
We may use existing national data for the first three, and add a global mini-survey for the last.
We can publish the first pilot index in end-2026, openly acknowledging data gaps. Transparency, not perfection, earns respect.
Once proof of concept is established, more countries will join, donors will fund the survey component, and IIAS can formalize it into a global governance observatory.
Lessons from Experience
Global South data collection faces real barriers: patchy records, political pressure, and statistical capacity. Yet the biggest obstacle is not data-it is trust. The moment citizens believe their voice counts in shaping how governance is rated, participation and honesty should rise. The IGI can nurture that trust by ensuring local academic partners collect data, international experts audit methods, and everything is published openly.
If done right, a citizen in Nairobi, Dhaka, or Nagpur could one day check how his or her city’s governance fares not in slogans but in service metrics-how many hours of power, how many safe births, how many grievances resolved. That is governance measured by life, not by paperwork.
Be Brutally Honest with Limits
IIAS must resist the temptation to chase a perfect, all-country index on Day One. Instead, start as a living laboratory-small, transparent, and brutally honest about its limits. India, under its presidency, has the data capacity and digital governance backbone to prototype this model: combining official dashboards with periodic citizen-surveys. Once the credibility layer is built, others will follow. Governance measurement will then stop being a contest of perceptions and become a science of lived reality-a mirror that governments cannot easily tilt.
(This is an opinion piece, and views expressed are those of the author only)
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