Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) is widely accepted as a crude measure of the overall health of a region. Measured as the infant deaths (less than one year) per 1000 live births in a given time period and for a given region, it’s been used as a measure to gauge inter-state development disparity.

One recent use of IMR to measure development across states was in a report prepared by the finance ministry in 2013 under the guidance of the then chief economic advisor Raghuram Rajan.

India’s census office recently released it May 2020 bulletin of the Sample Registration System. A section of the bulletin dealt with the progress India has made in reducing IMR over time. The national average (for 2018) is 32.

The performance of states shows an interesting trend. Among the large states, as classified by the bulletin, Kerala with an IMR of 7, NCT Delhi with 13 and Tamil Nadu at 15 are the best performers.

Among the smaller states, Goa has an IMR of  7. Goa is, in the Indian context, one of the most developed and richest states in terms of per capita income.

Arguably, the most impressive performance is by some states in the Northeast. Sikkim, a highly developed and wealthy state by most measures, has an IMR of 7. The best performers are Mizoram with an IMR of 5 and Nagaland which tops with an IMR of 4. 

Another state in the region, Manipur, is also one of India’s best performers by this measure.

Since IMR is a rough indicator of overall health, many of India’s bigger and wealthier states have something to learn from the states of the Northeast, perhaps.

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