Kerala again tops sustainable development goals ranking among Indian states

04th June 2021
Kerala again tops sustainable development goals  ranking among Indian states

June 4 2021: The third edition of the SDG India Index and Dashboard 2020–21 was released by NITI Aayog  yesterday. 
Kerala has retained the top rank in NITI Aayog's Sustainable Development Goals India Index 2020-21. Kerala  earned a score of 75. Himachal Pradesh along with Tamil Nadu bagged 74 points to secure the second position, while Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Karnataka and Uttrakhand bagged the joint third position with 72 points. The fourth and fifth positions were bagged by Sikkim (71) and Maharashtra (70), respectively.
Bihar was found to be the worst performing state with a score of 52, while Jharkhand came second from the bottom with 56 points. The other three bottom five states include Assam (57), Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Rajasthan and UP with 60 points, and Chhattisgarh, Nagaland and Odisha with 61 points.
Chandigarh maintained its top spot among the UTs with a score of 79, followed by Delhi (68).
Since its inaugural launch in 2018, the index has been documenting and ranking the progress made by States and Union Territories towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Now in its third year, the index has become the primary tool for monitoring progress on the SDGs in the country and has simultaneously fostered competition among the States and Union Territories.
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 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 latest SDG-related data on States and UTs. The process of selecting these 115 indicators included multipleconsultations with Union Ministries. Feedback was sought from all States and UTs and as the essential stakeholder and audience of this localisation tool, they played a crucial role in shaping the index by enriching the feedback process with localised insights and experience from the ground.
The SDG India Index 2020–21 is more robust than the previous editions on account of wider 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,andcover 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.
The Index computes goal-wise scores onthe 16 SDGs for each State and Union Territory. Overall State and UT scores are generated from goal-wise scores to measure aggregate performance of the sub-national unit based on its performance across the 16 SDGs. These scores range between 0–100, and if a State/UT achieves a score of 100, it signifies it has achieved the 2030 targets. The higher the score of a State/UT, the greater the distance to target achieved.
States and Union Territories are classified as below based on their SDG India Index score:
Aspirant: 0–49
Performer: 50–64
Front-Runner: 65–99
Achiever: 100
The country’s overall SDG score improved by 6 points—from 60 in 2019 to 66 in 2020–21. This positive stride towards achieving the targets is largely driven by exemplary country-wide performance in Goal 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation) and Goal 7(Affordable and Clean Energy), where the composite Goal scoresare 83 and 92, respectively.

Full details in the government's release here.
Full document here: SDG India Index 2021