Goal-wise performance of India by NITI Aayog SDG India Index Report (2020 – 21) reveals that ________ .
(a) India's overall score improved to 66 in 2020 – 21 from 60 in 2019 – 20 and 57 in 2018 – 19.

Question

Goal-wise performance of India by NITI Aayog SDG India Index Report (2020 – 21) reveals that ________ .
(a) India's overall score improved to 66 in 2020 – 21 from 60 in 2019 – 20 and 57 in 2018 – 19.
(b) Despite 2020 – 21 being a pandemic year, India performed well on eight of the 15 SDGs.
Which of the above options is/are correct ?

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — option (3), Both the options. Only two statements are printed here, labelled (a) and (b), and the key treats both as correct. Statement (a) reproduces the headline finding of NITI Aayog's SDG India Index for 2020 to 2021 exactly: India's composite score stood at 66, having been 60 in the 2019 to 2020 edition and 57 in the baseline-plus edition of 2018 to 2019. A six-point gain in a single year is large for a composite index of this kind, and the report attributed it chiefly to the country's performance on Goal 6, on clean water and sanitation, and Goal 7, on affordable and clean energy, where the goal scores were the strongest in the whole index. The improvement showed up in the distribution of states as well as in the national number, since the count of states and union territories in the Front Runner band, meaning a score between 65 and 99, rose to twenty-two from ten in the previous edition. Statement (b) reports the same edition's other widely quoted finding — that despite 2020 to 2021 being a pandemic year, India performed well on eight of the goals covered by the index, the eight generally listed being good health and well-being, clean water and sanitation, affordable and clean energy, reduced inequalities, sustainable cities and communities, responsible consumption and production, life on land, and peace, justice and strong institutions. The word despite carries the sense of the statement: the index's reference period overlapped the first year of the pandemic, when much of the underlying data collection and much of the activity being measured were disrupted, and the finding of gains across a majority of goals was reported as notable for that reason. It is worth adding one clarification, not as a challenge to the statement but so that the underlying facts are held correctly: the 2020 to 2021 edition of the index itself tracked 115 indicators covering 16 of the 17 goals, with Goal 17 on partnerships assessed qualitatively rather than scored, so the denominator of fifteen in statement (b) comes from the commentary the statement reproduces rather than from the index's own coverage count. Nor was the progress uniform — the same edition recorded declines on the goals concerning decent work and economic growth and industry, innovation and infrastructure, which is exactly what a pandemic year would be expected to produce. Both printed statements being correct, option (3) is the answer.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) This option accepts statement (a) and rejects statement (b). It is the choice of a candidate who has memorised the three scores — 66, 60 and 57 — and is unwilling to accept a second statement whose numbers are less familiar. The reasoning is understandable but wrong twice over. First, the second statement is a genuine and widely reported finding of the same edition of the index, so there is nothing to reject. Second, the instinct itself is the problem: in a two-statement question the candidate is being asked to judge each statement independently, and refusing a statement merely because it is unfamiliar converts an assessment into a guess. Where a statement reports a qualitative finding rather than a number, the test to apply is whether it is consistent with what is known of the same source, and a report of improvement across a majority of goals is exactly consistent with a six-point rise in the composite score.  (b) This option accepts statement (b) and rejects the composite scores in statement (a), which is the harder error to defend because those three figures are the most quoted numbers in the entire report. India's score of 66 in 2020 to 2021, up from 60 in 2019 to 2020 and 57 in 2018 to 2019, appears in NITI Aayog's own release and was repeated in the Economic Survey. A candidate who rejects the statement is usually doing so because he recalls a different number from a different edition of the index — the fourth edition, for 2023 to 2024, put India at 71 — and has not noticed which edition the stem names. Index scores are revised and re-based between editions and the series is only meaningful when each figure is attached to its year, which is precisely why the statement lists all three years rather than one.  (d) This option rejects both statements, and it is untenable because each of them reports a documented finding of the SDG India Index for 2020 to 2021. It is chosen by a candidate who has not read the report at all and prefers a clean rejection to a coin toss, and occasionally by one who has noticed a genuine imprecision in the second statement — the index covered sixteen goals with a qualitative assessment on the seventeenth, so the denominator of fifteen is the commentary's rather than the report's — and has over-generalised from that observation to reject everything on the page. A single loose figure inside one statement is not a reason to reject a second statement that is precisely and verifiably correct, and it is not enough to overturn the substance of the first. Judge each statement on its own, and reject only what actually fails.

Concept: The SDG India Index is the country's principal instrument for measuring progress on the Sustainable Development Goals at the national and, more importantly, the sub-national level. It is prepared by NITI Aayog in collaboration with the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation and the United Nations in India, and its distinctive contribution is that it scores every state and union territory as well as the country, which turns a global goal framework into an instrument of comparison and competition between Indian states. Each goal is scored from zero to one hundred against national targets, the goal scores are combined into a composite score on the same scale, and states are placed in bands: Aspirant from zero to forty-nine, Performer from fifty to sixty-four, Front Runner from sixty-five to ninety-nine, and Achiever at one hundred. The coverage has widened with each edition, which is why scores are not strictly comparable across editions and why the report itself presents the series with care: the baseline edition of 2018 covered thirteen goals through sixty-two indicators, the 2019 to 2020 edition covered sixteen goals through one hundred indicators, and the 2020 to 2021 edition covered sixteen goals and seventy targets through one hundred and fifteen indicators, with Goal 17 on partnerships assessed qualitatively rather than scored. In the 2020 to 2021 edition India scored 66, with Kerala leading the states and the number of Front Runners rising to twenty-two; the strongest goal scores were on clean water and sanitation and on affordable and clean energy, and the clearest declines were on decent work and economic growth and on industry, innovation and infrastructure — the two goals most exposed to the economic contraction of the pandemic year. The index sits within a wider architecture in which the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation maintains the National Indicator Framework, states build their own indicator frameworks, and NITI Aayog acts as the nodal institution for the goals in India.

State PCS 2022 Q31 — Economy PYQ with Answer

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