is the southern region of the Asian continent, which comprises the sub-Himalayan countries like Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, Afghanistan and Myanmar. South Asia is comprised of over one fifth of the world's population, and thereby considered as the most populous and the most densely populated geographical region in the world. It is to be noted that the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) is an economic cooperation organization in the region which was established in 1985 with the active cooperation of seven countries — Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
Published in Chapter:
Association between Governance and Human Development in South Asia: A Cross Country Analysis
Arindam Laha (The University of Burdwan, India)
Copyright: © 2016
|Pages: 20
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-0215-9.ch012
Abstract
Good governance could play a catalytic role in creating an enabling working environment where the dream of sustainable human development can be fulfilled, whereas poor governance could erode individual capabilities to meet even the basic needs of sustenance for vulnerable sections of the population. Under this backdrop, this study attempts to explore empirically the association between the governance and human development in the context of South Asian countries. Broadly, a converging trend of both the indices of governance and human development across South Asian countries is noticeable with the passage of time. Moreover, substantial empirical evidences suggest that the state of governance and that of level of human development are positively correlated in the sense that countries having a better functioning of governance system are also the countries with relatively high levels of human development.