NITI Aayog will launch the second edition of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) India Index, which documents the progress made by India’s States and Union Territories towards implementing the 2030 SDG targets, on 30 December 2019 at NITI Aayog, New Delhi.

The SDG India Index and Dashboard 2019–20 have been developed in collaboration with the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), the United Nations in India, and the Global Green Growth Institute. It will be launched by Dr Rajiv Kumar, Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog, in the presence of Members Dr Ramesh Chand, Dr VK Paul and Dr VK Saraswat, CEO Amitabh Kant, UN Resident Coordinator Renata Lok-Dessallien, MoSPI Secretary and Chief Statistician of India Pravin Srivastava, and NITI Aayog Adviser (SDGs) Sanyukta Samaddar.

NITI Aayog has the mandate of overseeing the adoption and monitoring of SDGs in the country, at the national and sub-national level. The SDG India Index, whose first edition was launched in December 2018, was the first tool developed by any large country to monitor the progress towards achieving SDGs at the sub-national level.

The SDG India Index and Dashboard 2019 tracks the progress of and ranks all States and UTs on 100 indicators drawn from MoSPI’s National Indicator Framework, comprising 306 indicators. It indicates where the country and its States and UTs currently are on SDG implementation, and charts the distance to be travelled to reach the SDG targets. The Index covers 16 out of 17 SDGs and a qualitative assessment on Goal 17. This marks an improvement over the 2018 Index, which covered only 13 goals.

SDG monitoring at the sub national level: new Index ranks and diagnoses state progress to inform policy prioritisation. The summary announces NITI Aayog's SDG India Index and Dashboard 2019-20 as a sub national monitoring tool developed with MoSPI, the UN in India, and the Global Green Growth Institute to measure and rank States and Union Territories on progress toward the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. NITI Aayog's mandate to oversee SDG adoption and monitoring is linked to the Index, which uses a targeted set of indicators from MoSPI's National Indicator Framework, expands goal coverage from the prior edition, and combines quantitative rankings with a qualitative assessment of implementation architecture.