India's best and worst states on social development goals are...

Uttarakhand and Kerala have emerged as the top performer states in NITI Aayog’s SDG India Index 2023-24, which evaluates progress of states and union territories on social, economic and environmental parameters, while Bihar has been adjudged as the worst performer.

According to the NITI Aayog’s SDG India Index 2023-24, India’s overall Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) score increased to 71 in 2023-24, compared to 66 in 2020-21, supported by significant progress on eliminating poverty, providing decent work, economic growth, climate action and life on land.

Among states, Uttarakhand and Kerala have emerged as joint top performing states with a score of 79, followed by Tamil Nadu (78) and Goa (77). On the contrary, Bihar (57), Jharkhand (62) and Nagaland (63) were the worst performing states in this year’s index.

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Among the union territories, Chandigarh, Jammu and Kashmir, Puducherry, Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Delhi were the top five performers. “Targetted intervention by the government has helped India achieve significant improvements across 16 goals set under the SDGs,” NITI Aayog CEO BVR Subrahmanyam said after releasing the report.

“India is not only on track and ahead of others in achieving most of the targets under SDGs,” he said, adding government hopes to achieve targets before 2030 across some of these goals.

The index shows that out of the 16 goals, India’s overall score is below 50 only on the ‘Goal 5’ (gender equality).