NITI Aayog launched SDG India Index 2019, Kerala topped

NEW DELHI: The second edition of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) India Index, is released today, December 31, by NITI Aayog, which comprehensively documents the progress made by India’s States and Union Territories towards achieving the 2030 SDG targets.

In the SDG India Index, Kerala has retained its top spot in the list followed by Himachal Pradesh which was ranked second in the list. Bihar, Jharkhand and Arunachal Pradesh were the worst performing states acquiring the bottom two positions. In 2019 list, Sikkim, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh showed the maximum improvement whereas no significant improvement was seen in Gujarat as compared to the 2018 scores.

The SDG India Index, was launched by Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog; Dr Rajiv Kumar, Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog; Renata Dessallien, UN Resident Coordinator; Pravin Srivastava, Secretary, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) and Chief Statistician of India and Sanyukta Samaddar, SDG Advisor of NITI Aayog.   

Dr Rajiv Kumar, Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog has said, “NITI Aayog has committed itself to building capacities and monitoring progress at the state level. Close coordination with the states over the next 5 years will further accelerate SDG localisation and ensure greater improvement.”

This year’s report indicated that the composite score of India has improved from 57 in 2018 to 60 in 2019. The maximum progress India has seen are in SDG Goal 6 (clean water and sanitation), Goal 7 (affordable and clean energy) and Goal 9 (industry, innovation, and infrastructure). In India’s SDG index all states were put into four categories, aspirant (score: 0–49), performer (score: 50–64), front runner (score: 65–99) and achiever (score: 100).

The three states Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Assam have now been promoted from ‘Aspirant’ category last year to the ‘Performer’ category in this rankings. Five states—Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Goa, and Sikkim—moved up from the ‘Performer’ category to the ‘Front Runner’ category. Kerala got the highest score of 70 followed by Himachal Pradesh at 69, these two states shared the top position in India SDG Index 2018. Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Tamil Nadu secured the third position with the score of 67.

The SDG India Index 2019 is more robust than the first edition on account of wider coverage of goals, targets, and indicators with greater alignment with the NIF. This year’s SDG Index covered 16 out of 17 SDGs while last year’s Index only covered 13 goals. Additionally, this year, the SDG India Index report has a new section on profiles of all 37 States and UTs, which will be very useful to analyse their performance on all the goals in a lucid manner.

The SDG India Index 2019 is available on an online dashboard, which has cross-sectoral relevance across policy, civil society, business and academia. The Index is designed to function as a tool for focused policy dialogue, formulation and implementation, and moving towards development action pegged to globally recognisable metrics.

(With Inputs from PIB)