According to NITI Aayog which of the following states is at the top in the India Innovation Index 2019 ?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — D, Karnataka. The India Innovation Index was released for the first time on 18 October 2019 by NITI Aayog together with the Institute for Competitiveness. Karnataka finished first, ahead of Tamil Nadu in second place and Maharashtra in third among the major States. The index is built on two broad dimensions — 'Enablers', which measure the inputs a State supplies to innovation, and 'Performance', which measures what actually comes out of them. Karnataka topped the overall ranking and also led the Performance dimension, while Maharashtra scored best on Enablers. That split is the interesting part of the result: the State with the best innovation inputs was not the State converting them into the most output, and Karnataka won because it did well on both sides and outstandingly on output.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Tamil Nadu ranked second among the major States in the India Innovation Index 2019 — a strong showing, and the most tempting wrong answer, but not the top. A candidate who remembers only 'a southern State led it' has a one-in-two chance here, which is exactly the margin the paper-setter wanted.  (b) Maharashtra was third overall among the major States. It did top one of the two dimensions — 'Enablers', the input side covering things like human capital, investment and the business environment — so it is genuinely associated with a first place, just not the first place the question asks about. Mixing up a dimension topper with the overall topper is the specific error this option is fishing for.  (c) Haryana was one of the major States ranked in the 2019 index but was not among the top three; the top three among the major States were Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra in that order. Haryana is a plausible-sounding option because of its high per-capita income and NCR industrial belt, but per-capita income is not what this index measures.

Concept: The India Innovation Index is NITI Aayog's attempt to do for innovation what the SDG India Index does for the Sustainable Development Goals — turn a diffuse policy goal into a comparable score across States and Union Territories so that governments can be ranked, benchmarked and nudged. Its structure is the standard composite-index design: a set of 'Enabler' pillars measuring the inputs a State provides to innovation, and a set of 'Performance' pillars measuring the knowledge and value that come out. States are compared within like-with-like groups rather than all thrown together, so that a small hill State is not judged against Maharashtra. The first edition was prepared with the Institute for Competitiveness and released on 18 October 2019.

State PCS 2019 Q77 — Economy PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2019 Q77 — Economy PYQ with Answer