New Delhi, Jun 2 (FN Agency) The third rendition of India’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Index will be launched by NITI Aayog on Thursday. Launched in December 2018, 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 by ranking them on the Global Goals, NITI Aayog said in a statement here on Wednesday.
Dr Rajiv Kumar, Vice-Chairman, NITI Aayog, will launch the SDG India Index and Dashboard, 2020-21 in the presence of Dr Vinod Paul, Member (Health), NITI Aayog, Mr Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog, and Ms Sanyukta Samaddar, Adviser (SDG), NITI Aayog. Designed and developed by NITI Aayog, the preparation of the index follows extensive consultations with the primary stakeholders -the states and Union Territories; the UN agencies led by United Nations in India, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), and the key Union Ministries.
The index, developed in collaboration with the United Nations in India, measures the progress at the national and sub-national level in the country’s journey towards meeting the Global Goals and targets and has been successful as an advocacy tool to propagate the messages of sustainability, resilience, and partnerships, as well. With one-third of the journey towards achieving the 2030 agenda behind us, this edition of the index report focuses on the significance of partnerships and is titled ‘SDG India Index and Dashboard, 2020-21: Partnerships in The Decade of Action’.
The initiative to further refine and improve this important tool, with each edition, has been steered by the need to continuously benchmark performance and measure progress, and account for the availability of latest SDG related data on states and UTs. From covering 13 Goals, 39 targets, and 62 indicators in the first edition in 2018-19 to 17 Goals, 54 targets and 100 indicators in the second; this third edition of the index covers 17 goals, 70 targets, and 115 indicators.