Context: According to the NITI Aayog's 4th edition of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) India Index 2023-24, India's overall Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) score increased to 71 in 2023-24, compared to 66 in 2020-21.
About SDG India Index
- The SDG India Index, which evaluates progress made across 16 goals on a scale of 1 to 100, and if a State/UT achieves a score of 100, it signifies it has achieved the targets. The higher the score of a State/UT, the greater the distance covered to the target.
- Assesses sustainable development across states on the basis of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).
- The latest SDG India Index, now in its fourth edition since its inception in 2018, uses 113 indicators to evaluate the performance of each state aligned to the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation’s (MoSPI) National Indicator Framework (NIF).
Key finding of the report:
- Overall SDG score for the country is 71 for 2023-24, significant improvement from 66 in 2020-21 and 57 in 2018.
- Kerala and Uttarakhand as the best performing states with a score of 79 points each followed by Tamil Nadu, Goa and Himachal Pradesh , while Bihar emerged as a laggard with 57 points, followed by Jharkhand at 62 points. While Chandigarh took the top spot among Union Territories.
- Significant progress in Goals 1 (No Poverty), 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth), 13 (Climate Action) and 15 (Life on Land)
- Goal 13 (Climate Action) records highest increase in score from 54 in 2020-21 to 67 in 2023-24 followed by Goal 1 (No Poverty) from 60 to 72
- While goals like “Gender Equality” (Goal 5) and “Peace, Justice, and Strong Institution” (Goal 16) saw the smallest increase in points.
- Gender Equality goal received the lowest score of 49 points among all goals, recording a marginal increase of 1 point from 2020-21.
- “Reduced Inequalities” (Goal 10) was the only goal to record a reduction in points to 65 in 2022-23 from 67 in 2020-21.