Northeast States Emerge Front Runners In Eliminating Poverty In NITI Aayog Report; Telangana, West Bengal Underperform

NITI Aayog’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Index for India has rated northeastern states of Meghalaya, Mizoram, Tripura as front runners in combating poverty and eradicating it. These states were joined by the southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Tamil Nadu and the Northern State of Uttarakhand, in a report by The Hindu BusinessLine

Incidentally, in the same report for 2018 none of the northeast states were in the front runner category.

The other states Gujarat and Maharashtra along with Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Manipur, Jharkhand, Chandigarh and Delhi, are ranked as ‘aspirants’ while the newly formed state of Telangana, along with West Bengal, Rajasthan, Karnataka are ranked as under-performers.

Kerala and Himachal Pradesh were ranked at the top along with Chandigarh in terms of the Composite Index. Kerala gained points for its efforts to reduce hunger, achieving gender equality and quality education while Himachal’s rank was boosted for providing clean water and sanitation, and for reducing inequalities and preserving the mountain ecosystem.

The current phase is based on the performance of the states and UTs across 13 of the 17 identified sustainable development goals (SDG).

The SDG Index is designed to promote healthy competition among states by evaluating their progress in social, economic and environmental terms that can help India in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) by 2030. The category under which each state is rated is based on the points they earn across the 17 SDGs. The rating categories are achiever (100), front runner (65-99), underperformer (50-64) and aspirant (0-49).

It is estimated that India needs $2.5 trillion for achieving the SDG 7 - access to affordable and clean energy till 2030.