In the reports released by NITI Aayog which analyzed all the 29 states and 7 Union Territories (UTs) of India, it was found that Southern Indian states like Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana were among the top 5 states in the India Innovation Index (III). All the southern states including Andhra Pradesh and Kerela have made their presence felt in the top 10 list.
NITI (National Institution for Transforming India) Aayog is a think tank established by the Government of India, to work with the UN in achieving the SDG goals. NITI Aayog, established in 2015, has been working with 23 different verticals like Agriculture, Human Resource Development, etc.
For III, NITI Aayog classified the 29 states and 7 UTs into three sub-categories. These sub-categories were made so that the assessment would be fair. These three categories were namely the major states, North-eastern and other hilly states, and finally the UTs and smaller states.
7 factors taken into account by NITI Aayog
NITI Aayog’s main areas of assessment for III were the 5 ‘enablers’ for innovation. These are human capital, workers, business environment, investment, and finally a safe and legal atmosphere. Apart from this, two other parameters were taken. These are called the ‘performance indicators’. These were the number of patents registered and articles published in the STEM category and the number of IT workers in the state/UT. All these parameters are taken into consideration and the final score is the aggregate score.
Delhi scored the highest score in while in the major states category Karnataka took the prime spot. The reason being, Karnataka and Delhi have a lot of quality higher education institutes and are a hub for the majority of startups and businesses. As far as ‘safe and legal environment’ is considered, the southern states scored pretty low in that particular parameter.
In the case of Hilly States, Sikkim achieved the first position followed by Himachal Pradesh. If only the performance indicators are considered, Karnataka bagged the top spot again followed by Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra.
