MPSC 2025 Prelims Paper-I · Question 38 of 100

Correct — option (1), 117th, is India's ranking in the global Sustainable Development Report (Sustainable Development Goals Index) for 2020, prepared by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) and the Bertelsmann Stiftung. India was placed 117th among the countries assessed, with an overall index score of roughly 61.9%, meaning the country was estimated to have achieved just under two-thirds of the way towards full attainment of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals on the composite measures used. This global index should not be confused with NITI Aayog's separate 'SDG India Index,' which ranks India's own states and union territories against each other rather than ranking countries globally — the question here asks about India's position as a country, which is the SDSN/Bertelsmann global ranking, and 117th is the figure that index reported for 2020.

• (2)17th — This number is easy to confuse with the count of Sustainable Development Goals themselves — there are 17 SDGs — but it is not India's rank in the 2020 index. Mistaking the total number of goals for a country's ranking position is a natural but incorrect association for a candidate who has memorised 'SDG' as shorthand for '17 goals' without separately tracking India's actual index standing.
• (3)40th — 40th is not India's position in the 2020 global SDG Index; it does not correspond to any commonly cited figure for India in this index around this period and appears here simply as a plausible middling rank a candidate might guess at without having the actual number.
• (4)125th — 125th is not India's 2020 ranking; it overstates how far down the list India stood that year. India's rank fluctuated across nearby years of this same index (for instance, dropping to around 120th in a subsequent year's edition), so a candidate who recalls a broadly similar but different year's figure could mistakenly select this number for 2020 specifically.

The global Sustainable Development Report, published annually by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) together with the Bertelsmann Stiftung, ranks nearly all UN member states on a composite index measuring progress towards the 17 Sustainable Development Goals adopted in 2015. It is distinct from NITI Aayog's domestically focused 'SDG India Index,' which instead ranks India's states and union territories against one another using India-specific indicators. In the 2020 edition of the global report, India ranked 117th with a score of roughly 61.9%, reflecting persistent gaps on goals such as poverty, hunger, gender equality and environmental sustainability even as the country made progress on others.

MPSC and UPSC both like precise-rank current-affairs questions of this kind because they test whether a candidate tracks India's standing on major global indices year to year, rather than only knowing that such indices exist. The trap in this question is the presence of two very different but similarly-named indices — the global SDSN/Bertelsmann SDG Index (which ranks countries) and NITI Aayog's SDG India Index (which ranks Indian states) — plus a distractor (17) that echoes the number of goals rather than any actual rank, both of which can pull an under-prepared candidate away from the correct figure.

• India ranked 117th in the 2020 global Sustainable Development Report (SDG Index), published by SDSN and the Bertelsmann Stiftung, with a score of roughly 61.9%.
• This global index is separate from NITI Aayog's 'SDG India Index,' which ranks India's own states and union territories, not countries.
• There are 17 Sustainable Development Goals in total, adopted by UN member states in 2015 as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
• India's rank on the global SDG Index has fluctuated across editions of the report, moving both up and down in different years relative to 117th in 2020.
• Countries topping the global SDG Index in this period were typically Nordic nations such as Sweden, Denmark and Finland.

• Confusing the global SDG Index (ranking countries, published by SDSN/Bertelsmann Stiftung) with NITI Aayog's SDG India Index (ranking Indian states)
• Mistaking the number of Sustainable Development Goals themselves (17) for India's rank on the index
• Citing a rank from a different year's edition of the same index instead of the specific year the question asks about, since India's position shifts from year to year

MPSC's Paper-I current-affairs and environment sections regularly test India's exact rank on major global indices for a named year, and the SDG Index recurs across editions with the year changed. The safest preparation is to track India's rank on this index year by year rather than memorising a single figure, since the correct answer depends entirely on which year's edition the question specifies.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The global Sustainable Development Report (SDG Index) that ranks countries, including India, on progress towards the SDGs is jointly published by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network and which other organisation ?

  • (a)The World Bank
  • (b)The Bertelsmann Stiftung
  • (c)The United Nations Development Programme
  • (d)The World Economic Forum

  Answer(b) The Bertelsmann Stiftung — this German foundation co-publishes the annual global SDG Index/Sustainable Development Report together with SDSN.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  NITI Aayog's 'SDG India Index' primarily ranks which of the following ?

  • (a)Countries globally on SDG progress
  • (b)India's states and union territories against each other
  • (c)Indian cities on urban sustainability
  • (d)Indian corporations on ESG compliance

  Answer(b) India's states and union territories against each other — unlike the global SDG Index, NITI Aayog's version is a domestic tool comparing sub-national performance on the SDGs.