SDG India Index, Dashboard for 2020-21 to be launched on Thursday: NITI Aayog

Tribune News Service
New Delhi, June 2

The government’s top think-tank NITTI Aayog on Wednesday said that it is going to release the third edition of India’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Index and dashboard for 2020-21 on Thursday.

Since the first exercises were done in December 2018, the SDG index has become a primary tool for monitoring progress on different counts in the country, and it has also instilled a sense of competition among the states and Union territories—as they are ranked as per their achievements.

“Dr Rajiv Kumar, Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog, will launch the SDG India Index and Dashboard, 2020-21 in the presence of Member (Health) Dr Vinod Paul, CEO Amitabh Kant and Sanyukta Samaddar, Adviser (SDG) in the think tank,” read the official release.

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 other key Ministries of the central government, it said.

“SDG India Index & Dashboard, 2020-21: Partnerships in The Decade of Action”, which is going to be launched tomorrow 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, NITI Aayog said in the official statement.

“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,” it added.

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 the 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,” it said.