The most important concern of the world for a few years has been to look forward to a future that will not only be progressive but also be environment friendly.
Keeping it in mind the Sustainable Goals Agenda of 2030 was made and India is one of the major players by virtue of being a big country with a colossal amount of population.
India has taken it upon itself to achieve the milestones on its personal level and not to wait for the world to set it in motion. NITI Aayog has started its own measurement mechanism of the progress of the states and Union Territories and its capabilities to achieve the SDG goals of 2030.
The NITI Aayog released its parameters in the form of the SDG India Index- Baseline Report of 2018 for the first time.
The SDG Index India basically focuses on providing a larger perspective on the social, economic, and environmental standing of the country.
According to an analysis published in the Times of India based on the SDG Index report of the NITI Aayog, this is the ranking of the states according to the 2021 SDG India Index report:
Top performers
Kerala: 75 points
Himachal Pradesh: 74 points
Tamil Nadu: 74 points
Worst Performers
Bihar: 52 points
Jharkhand: 56 points
Assam: 57 points
Top-performing Union Territories
Chandigarh: 79
Delhi: 68
Lakshadweep: 68
Top gainers
Mizoram: 12 points gained
Haryana: 10 points gained
Uttarakhand: 8 points gained
New front runners (Score between 65 and 99)
Uttarakhand
Gujarat
Maharashtra
Mizoram
Punjab
Haryana
Tripura
Delhi
Lakshadweep
Andaman and Nicobar Islands
Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh
The SDG Index by NITI Aayog has been facilitating a shared partnership through these milestones and the SDG Index Dashboard of 2020-21 elaborates it in full detail.
Kerala has remained the top performer in 2021 while Bihar continued to be the worst performer with 52 points.
Dr. Rajiv Kumar, Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog said during the initiation, “Our effort of monitoring SDGs through the SDG India Index & Dashboard continues to be widely noticed and applauded around the world.
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.”
Based on the SDG Index India Press Release report of 2021, State and Union territories are organized into a structure by means of the following criteria:
- Aspirant: 0–49
- Performer: 50–64
- Front-Runner: 65–99
- Achiever: 100
However distributed the states are in these categories, the overall performance in terms of SDG scores improved for the country. It increased from 60 in 2019 to 66 in 2021. This rise happened due to good performance in upward slope in two of the goals, Goal 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation) and Goal 7(Affordable and Clean Energy) stated the press release.
- Goal-wise India results, 2019–20 and 2020–21:
- Performance and Ranking of States and UTs on SDGs 2020–21, including change in score from last year:
(Data from SDG India Index Press Release of 2020-21 by NITI Aayog)
In the past year, the whole world had to engross itself in the Pandemic, and solidarity and building partnerships is what helped the whole globe to fight back.
Hence, this year the SDG Index has been themed as “Partnership in the Decade of Action” and has focused on the values of collective response among other things.
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