NITI Aayog SDG India Index 2020

• The NITI Aayog launched its index in 2018 to monitor the country’s progress on the goals through data-driven assessment and to foster a competitive spirit among the States and Union Territories in achieving them.
• It provides holistic view on social, economic and environmental status of India and its State's progress regarding SDGs.
• Developed by NITI in Collaboration with MoHFW, Global Green Growth India, UN of India.
• SDG India Index is important for 3 things
  1. States can measure progress regarding targets + strategies;
  2. States can identify priority areas;
  3. They get to know data gaps to develop statistical system of country.
• The SDG India Index 2020–21, developed in collaboration with the United Nations in India, tracks progress of all States and UTs on 115 indicators that are aligned to MoSPI’s National Indicator Framework (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.
• From covering 13 Goals with 62 indicators in its first edition in 2018, the third edition covers 16 Goals on 115 quantitative indicators, with a qualitative assessment on Goal 17.
• States and Union Territories are classified as below based on their SDG India Index score:
  1. Aspirant: 0–49
  2. Performer: 50–64
  3. Front-Runner: 65–99
  4. Achiever: 100

SDG India Index 2020

• India saw significant improvement in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) related to clean energy, urban development and health in 2020, according to the NITI Aayog’s 2020 SDG Index.
• However, there has been a major decline in the areas of industry, innovation and infrastructure as well as decent work and economic growth.
• Although the index shows improvement on the inequality SDGs, the NITI Aayog has omitted key economic indicators used to measure inequality in income and expenditure last year and given greater weightage to social indicators instead.
• Top scorers: Kerala retained its position at the top of the rankings in the third edition of the index, with a score of 75, followed by Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh, both scoring 72.
• Who is at the Bottom? At the other end of the scale, Bihar, Jharkhand and Assam were the worst performing States.
• However, all the States showed some improvement from last year’s scores, with Mizoram and Haryana seeing the biggest gains.
• Developed by a global consultative process on holistic development, the 17 SDGs have a 2030 deadline.
• The NITI Aayog Index shows some improvement in the SDG on inequality, but a look at the indicators used to assess this goal shows that the think tank has changed the goalposts.

Thrust on social equality

• In 2019, the indicators for inequality included the growth rates for household expenditure per capita among the bottom 40% of rural and urban populations, as well as the Gini coefficient — a measure of the distribution of income — in rural and urban India.
• The 2018 indicators included the Palma ratio, another metric for income inequality.
• Such economic measures have been omitted from the indicators used for this SDG in the 2020 edition of the Index.
• Instead, it gives greater weightage to social equality indicators, such as the percentage of women and Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe representatives in State Legislatures and the panchayati raj institutions and the levels of crime against the SC/ST communities.
• The only economic indicator this year is the percentage of population in the lowest two wealth quintiles.