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Kerala has retained the top position in the third edition of the sustainable development goals (SDG) index released by the Niti Aayog on Thursday.
Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh share the second spot on the rankings. Bihar has remained at the bottom of the index, immediately preceded by Assam and Jharkhand.
Designed and developed by NITI Aayog in consultation with the UN, the rankings measure states’ performance on the 16 global sustainable development goals. These range from gender equality, for which Chhattisgarh is on top, to life below water, which Odisha has topped.
Mizoram improved its overall performance the most since the previous index in 2019, with sharp boosts to responsible consumption and production goals and good health and well-being. Haryana and Uttarakhand registered the second and third highest overall improvement.
Nine out of the 16 SDGs have driven the positive push nationwide. These are good health and well-being, clean water and sanitation, affordable and clean energy, reduced inequalities, sustainable cities and communities, responsible consumption and production, climate action, life on land, and lastly, peace, justice, and strong institutions. However, “two goals — zero hunger and gender equality — demand special attention,” Niti Aayog’s report said.
The launch of the index was earlier scheduled on March 10 but was postponed when the Election Commission of India enforced the model code of conduct in the run-up to the state elections.
Talking about the report during launch Rajiv Kumar, Vice Chairman of NITI Aayog, said that monitoring SDGs through the SDG India Index & Dashboard is widely noticed and applauded worldwide. “It remains a rare data-driven initiative to rank our States and Union Territories by computing a composite index on the SDGs. We are confident that it will remain a matter of aspiration and emulation and help propel monitoring efforts at the international level, he said.
The SDG India Index 2020–21, developed in collaboration with the United Nations in India. It tracks all States and UTs on 115 indicators aligned to the Statistics Ministry’s National Indicator Framework (NIF). The initiative to refine and improve this important tool with each edition has been steered by the need to continuously benchmark performance and measure progress and to account for the availability of the latest SDG-related data on States and UTs.
According to NITI Aayog, the SDG India Index 2020–21 is more robust than the previous editions on broader coverage of targets and indicators with greater alignment with the NIF. The 115 indicators incorporate16 out of 17 SDGs, with a qualitative assessment on Goal 17, and cover 70 SDG targets. This is an improvement over the 2018–19 and 2019–20 editions of the index, which had utilised 62 indicators across 39 targets and 13 goals, and 100 indicators across 54 targets and 16 goals, respectively.
Top five and bottom five States in SDG index
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