Niti Aayog

The Sustainable Development Goal India Index released by NITI Aayog continues to attract public attention. This article highlights a few problems in SDG India Index—the method of aggregation, capping normalised score to be 100 when states perform better than the targeted level, data gaps, and lack of sensitivity analysis of the composite index—which need to be relooked.

The article notes that the north-eastern states have taken many initiatives to implement and localise the Sustainable Development Goals. But achieving the targets require a multipronged approach, concerted and coordinated efforts, and focus on sectors where the region has inherent advantages. Unfortunately, the pandemic has cast some doubts on the feasibility of achieving the goals as per the original timelines.

Based on the National Family Health Survey data for 2015–16 and 2019–20, the article shows the precarious sexual and reproductive health of women in Bihar. While there are some improvements in this period, multiple indicators emerging from social and institutional determinants continue to show poor SRH of women in the state.

The second edition (2019) of the Sustainable Development Goals Index India Report released by the NITI Aayog is an enhanced version that builds on the baseline report of 2018. However, the second edition could not address the methodological issues sufficiently. The justifications and coverage on several aspects, such as proxy indicator identification, target setting, state categorisation, imputation of indicators, data gaps are found to be weak. This commentary highlights some of the problems identified in the report and suggests possible solutions, which can bring more credibility and statistical acceptance to the future SDG index reports.

Based on a critical review of the NITI Aayog’s recently published “Healthy States, Progressive India,” it is argued that the report provides only a superficial insight into the overall health attainment. Much deeper and careful analysis is required if one aims to unfold the complexity and varied contexts provided by Indian states, let alone ranking them on health attainment. The method of calculating the index in the report compromises scientific rigour, and the inferences drawn are highly misleading.