Guwahati, Oct. 3: When it comes to delivering governance to the people, Assam has a long way to go.

The Assam Human Development Report, 2014 released today revealed that 77 per cent people in the state were unsatisfied with the governance in the past 15 years, while the overall human development was only half the desired level.

"The human development index in the state was 0.557 - indicating that the level of overall human development is just about half the desired level. However, it has been observed that the overall level of human development in the state has increased from 0.386 in 2001," the report released by chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal here said.

The report, titled Managing Diversities, Achieving Human Development, is based on responses from 40,000 households (1.9 lakh people) in the state that focused on health, education, income and governance.

Omeo Kumar Das Institute of Social Change and Development (OKDISCD), Institute for Human Development, New Delhi, carried out the study on behalf of the planning and development department, Assam. It was supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

"The report found that nearly 30 per cent of potential human development is lost due to the prevailing inequalities underlying achievements in education, health and income. The loss was the highest due to income dimension (about 44 per cent) followed by health (32 per cent) and education (9 per cent). It also found that overall human development of women, in general, is lower than men by nearly 14 per cent," said Joydeep Baruah, principal co-ordinator of the report and associate professor of Omeo Kumar Das institute.

The finding that only 23 per cent people were "satisfied" with the governance in the past 15 years today prompted Sonowal and state health, education, planning and development department minister Himanta Biswa Sarma to stress that the new government's development schemes needed to adopt more innovation to ensure that its benefits reached the common people.

"I was also a minister in the last (Congress) government and we had taken up a large number of schemes thinking that it would improve the people's condition. But this report has proved us wrong as only 23 per cent of them were satisfied. It is time we do a lot of innovation to scale up our efforts and increase the level of human development," Sarma said at today's function.

Sonowal said the Chief Minister's Samagra Gramya Unnayan Yojana, a Rs 30,000 crore scheme announced by the new BJP-led government, would adopt innovative means to address the people's problems. Nearly Rs 1.5 crore would be invested in each of the 25,000 revenue villages in the state to double farm production in the next five years. It focuses on agriculture, land management, fishery, dairy, poultry, piggery and others.

A team comprising experts from Flinders University, Australia, IIT Guwahati and OKDISCD had conducted the subjective well-being analysis of the people, as part of the human development report. It revealed that 56.4 per cent people in the state were found to be "satisfied" with the overall domain of health, education, income and governance. Uday Saikia of Flinders, who was part of the team, today termed the report as significant as Assam is the only state to have carried such an analysis.

The Telegraph, in its July 12 edition, had reported about the well-being index analysis, which was conducted on the line of gross happiness index of Bhutan. Sarma said the present government was aiming at increasing people's satisfaction with governance from 23 to 60 per cent in the next 10 years.