National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog released India Innovation Index 2021 on July 21, 2022. This index evaluates the innovation performance of all the states in union territories in India. Its third edition highlighted the scope of innovation analysis in the nation.
Before this, NITI Aayog released the first and second editions of the innovation index in October 2019 and January 2021, respectively.
What does Innovation Index 2021 stand for?
An innovation Index is a comprehensive tool for evaluating the development of the country’s innovation ecosystem. It is an annual report representing state rankings based on the innovation landscape and performance of states and union territories in respect of innovation.
In this process of measuring the innovation of India, the number of states in union territories gets divided. Similarly, the Indian state and Union territories got segregated into various categories, which are as follows :
- 17 major States
- 10 North East and the Hill States
- 9 Union Territories and the City States
Major states
Among the central states of India, Karnataka topped with a score of 18.05, followed by Telangana and Haryana. However, Karnataka’s success is attributed to its good performance in attracting foreign direct investment and many venture capital deals.
On the other hand, some of the states did not perform well. Hence, they were at the bottom of the list: Bihar, Odisha, and Chattisgarh. Chattisgarh was in the last position among significant states, scoring 10.97.
Northeast and hill states
Among the 10 Northeast states of India, Manipur held first place, while Uttarakhand and Meghalaya were the leading states.
Nagaland, which also falls under the category of Northeast states, has secured the last position.
Union Territories
Union Territory Chandigarh performed very well with a score of 27.88, while Delhi was no other than a competitor, which was a leading Union Territory.
Among 9 Union Territories, Ladakh ranked in the last position.
Innovation Index Pillars
The innovation index, released by Niti Aayog and their Vice Chairman Suman Bery, was based on seven pillars.
These pillars are as follows:
1. Human Capital
2. Investment
3. Knowledge
4. Business Environment
5. Knowledge Diffusion
6. Safety and Legal Environment
7. Knowledge Output
Here are its loopholes/challenges:
Unexpected performance
According to the Specialists, the country has not performed well as expected. They further say that India has done as per its capabilities neither in the knowledge worker pillar nor in the human capital pillar.
Lack of Knowledge
The expenditure on human capital has been unable to create that knowledge base in the country. Somewhere there is a lack of knowledge in this field. There is a gap between knowledge regarding this and human capital.
Missing Middle
Some believe that India could perform better, and there should not be any missing part in the middle. Here middle parts depict tiny, informal enterprises and too few large, formal ones to employ thousands of people.
