Leaders Who Run Their Areas Like CEOs

The plan

1. One scorecard, five numbers, every quarter. It covers every state, every district and every city of 10 lakh people or more. Each number carries 20% weight:

Rating after delivery. Every central, state and local service (counter, portal, app or doorstep) sends the citizen a one-tap rating link by SMS or app notification once the delivery is recorded as complete. The score is the share rating 9 or 10 minus the share rating 0 to 6. One rating per transaction, open for 7 days. Results roll up live by office, service, district, state and nation on the public dashboard, and feed the scorecards of mayors, district heads and chief ministers and the performance contracts of officials (Chapter 12).

2. Fair scoring. Areas are ranked on improvement against their own baseline (the Aspirational Districts "delta" method), so a poor district that improves fastest can top the table. Scores are adjusted for rainfall deviation and national cycles (district score minus the state average). A district that breaks the Chapter 21 air-quality limits (the published path to the EU Ambient Air Quality Directive 2030 limits) on more than 30 days in a quarter loses 10 points.
3. An independent scorekeeper. A statutory National Statistics Authority computes and publishes every score. States send raw data, never final scores. It has 7 members on 6-year, non-renewable terms, removable only by Parliament: 5 chosen by a panel of the Chief Justice's nominee, the Leader of the Opposition and the RBI Governor, and 2 nominated by state finance ministers in rotation, who step aside on any decision about their own state. Methods and code are published so anyone can rerun the scores.
4. CEO powers.
   • A district head or mayor may move up to 10% of a budget head between schemes during the year. This is re-appropriation inside the same voted grant, which state finance rules already allow; the state delegates the power by order. Moves across grants go to the legislature in one quarterly supplementary demand.
   • They may freeze any discretionary scheme that met less than 50% of its target for 2 quarters running, publishing reasons within 24 hours. A benefit created by an Act can never be frozen.
   • They may contract out any service under the Chapter 12 rules (How the government buys).
5. Keep what you grow.
   • Baseline. Each state, district and city of 10 lakh or more gets a published baseline: its collections of the transaction tax, GST and property tax in the base year, grown each year at national nominal GDP growth. The baseline is set by the National Statistics Authority, one formula for every area (One country, one law).
   • Growth surplus. Collections above the baseline are the growth surplus. For states, 50% of the surplus in Union-shared taxes returns as an untied grant within the next quarter, on top of the Finance Commission share. For districts and cities, the state passes on 50% of its own surplus from each area, through the State Finance Commission. Property tax growth stays fully with the city or district. The 0.4% rate is the same everywhere and no area can change it, so this growth comes only from a bigger base: more buildings, higher values and better-used land.
   • Free to reinvest. The surplus goes into the area's Growth Fund. The mayor or chief minister may spend it on any capital work or service that the area's plan lists, without fresh central approval. It may not fund new permanent posts (Chapter 12) or cash giveaways.
   • Open books. Every rupee in and out of the Growth Fund is shown on the scorecard dashboard within 7 days and checked by faceless audit (Chapter 13). Surplus inflated by booking false revenue is clawed back in full, and the officer responsible is moved.
6. Copy-the-best.
   • NITI Aayog runs a public Practice Library listing every practice that moved a scorecard number in a top-quartile area, with its cost and its data.
   • Any state, district or city can adopt one by executive order and run a 90-day pilot against a matched comparison district.
   • If the pilot moves its metric, it scales without fresh approval, within powers the adopter already has and money already voted. Anything needing a new law or new money goes to the legislature in its next session as a ready Bill with the pilot data attached.
7. Consequences.
   • Appointed officers (collectors, municipal commissioners, secretaries) in the bottom 10% for 4 quarters in a row are moved out under the Chapter 12 merit rules, after a written review.
   • Each top-10% district team shares a ₹5 crore bonus pool, paid within each member's variable pay (Chapter 12), never above twice the target bonus.
   • Top-quartile states share a performance pool equal to 2% of the Centre's discretionary grants under Article 282. The states' tax share fixed through the Finance Commission is never touched.
   • Elected leaders are never removed by a score. Their name is printed on it, and voters decide.
8. Who builds it. MoSPI and the NSO build the platform under the Aadhaar playbook: open specs and a certification test, and any firm that passes, including startups, can build and run modules anywhere at a published price, paid per verified delivery within 30 days (How the government buys). The data comes through open APIs from GSTN, EPFO, UPI, PFMS (treasury), UDISE+ (schools) and HMIS (health). The code is open source so states can run their own copies.

Cost and return

• State performance pool: budget-neutral, carved out of existing Article 282 grants.
• Return (estimate): if copying best practice lifts growth in the lagging half of districts by 0.5 percentage point, the gain is about ₹350 lakh crore GDP × 40% share in lagging districts × 0.5% ≈ ₹70,000 crore a year, about 43 times the year-1 cost (₹70,000 ÷ ₹1,620).
• Jobs: about 7,800 fixed-term statistics and data roles in districts, filled first from staff of departments closed under Chapter 12, so total government headcount does not rise.

Timeline

First 30 days:

• An executive order adopts the five-number scorecard for all states and the 112 aspirational districts. Data already exists for four of the five numbers.
• The first state-level scorecard is published from existing GSDP, EPFO, HMIS and PLFS data.
• The Practice Library opens with 50 seeded practices, including TS-iPASS, the Aspirational District winners and the fastest state industrial approvals.
• States issue orders giving collectors the 10% re-appropriation power within each grant.
• The citizen phone survey opens to certified call-centre firms.

Within 1 year:

• The National Statistics Authority Act is passed and the Authority is sitting.
• The scorecard covers all districts and all cities of 10 lakh or more. Until quarterly DDP exists, the growth number uses a published proxy built from GST, EPFO, electricity use and night-light satellite data.
• Annual DDP is published for every district on the June 2026 common guideline.
• At least 200 copy-the-best pilots are completed, with results published.
• The first district bonus pool and state performance pool are paid on the year's improvement.

Outcomes after year 1:

• The first bottom-10% officer moves happen after the fourth consecutive scored quarter (from month 13).
• Quarterly DDP replaces the proxy as states' data systems mature.

Guardrails

• Only the National Statistics Authority computes scores. A state that edits source data after submission loses its performance-pool share for that year, and the responsible officer is suspended pending inquiry.
• Every metric is checked each quarter against outside data (night lights, GST and electricity use). A gap of more than 3 points triggers an audit within 30 days.
• The deferred half of any bonus is clawed back if an audit within 3 years finds data inflated by more than 2 points (Chapter 12).
• Money moved by a leader is capped at 10% of a head per year. Nothing may move out of salaries, pensions or the income-tested cash transfer (Chapter 23). Any move that breaks this is void and reversed within 7 days.
• Every freeze order is published within 24 hours with reasons, and the legislature's finance committee can reverse it at its next sitting.
• The survey has 1,000 respondents per district per month (margin of error about ±3 points), drawn from random mobile numbers by the Authority. Local officials never see the sample. Calls are made by certified firms paid per verified call and de-certified within 7 days on a failed audit.
• Growth surplus is paid only on audited collections. The Finance Commission share for every state is never reduced by the surplus rule.
• The after-delivery rating opens only on a verified delivery, once per transaction, on the citizen's own registered phone, never on an official's device or a shared kiosk. Officials never see individual ratings. Asking for or pressuring a rating ends that official's bonus for the year. The Authority flags offices with unusual patterns (bursts of perfect scores, ratings from a few devices, or a gap of more than 15 points from the random survey) and audits each within 30 days; an office found gaming loses its scores for the year.
• A pilot scales only if it beats its matched comparison district.
• An officer is moved only after 4 consecutive bottom-decile quarters and a written review.

Limits to know

Elected chief ministers and mayors cannot be removed for a poor score; only voters, the legislature or state law can do that. The plan publishes their name on every score, and Chapter 28 makes mayors directly elected for 5 years so each city score has one clear owner.

Sources: Gulf News: Dubai launches happiness meter · News on AIR: Andhra Pradesh CM stresses citizen feedback on services · NSO releases uniform DDP guideline, Telangana Today, June 2026 · MoSPI DDP guidelines, Devdiscourse · UNDP appraisal of Aspirational Districts, India Water Portal · NITI baseline ranking, Aspirational Districts · NITI Aayog flags TS-iPASS as benchmark, Telangana Today · Prime Minister's Delivery Unit, Centre for Public Impact · William Bratton and the NYPD, Yale case study · Nominal GDP FY26 ₹357 lakh cr, first advance estimate, Policy Edge