Jammu and Kashmir graduates among front-runners, surpasses top states and UTs: NITI Aayog index

SRINAGAR: Jammu and Kashmir has performed better than many states and Union Territories (UTs), according to NITI Aayog index of states on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Launched in December 2018, the index has become the primary tool for monitoring progress on the SDGs in the country and has simultaneously fostered competition among the states and UTs by ranking them on the global goals.
The index, developed in collaboration with the United Nations in India, measures the progress at the national and sub-national level in the country’s journey towards meeting the global goals and targets and has been successful as an advocacy tool to propagate the messages of sustainability, resilience, and partnerships, as well.
The index evaluates progress of states and UTs on social, economic and environmental parameters. The third rendition of India’s SDG Index was launched by NITI Aayog vice-chairman Rajiv Kumar .
The report reveals that Jammu and Kashmir has even left states like Maharashtra, Telangana, West Bengal and several others behind in the NITI index.
“J&K has improved its ranking in almost all sectors, its performance is excellent in the sectors like health, agricultural productions, education, renewal energy, providing civic amenities, enhancing forest cover, and ensuring gender equality during the last year,” NITI Aayog report reflects.
“This positive stride towards achieving the targets is largely driven by exemplary country-wide performance in clean water and sanitation, and affordable and clean energy,” the NITI Aayog said in a statement.
“Health Sector performance improved according to the routine Immunization Programme Dashboard (Health Management Information System), during April 2019-March 2020 period; 91% of children in India in the age group of 9-11 months were fully immunized (one dose of BCG, 3 doses of DPT and OPV and one dose of measles vaccine),” it said.
The national target is to increase it to 100 per cent. Jammu and Kashmir has achieved the target. HIV incidence per 1,000 uninfected population is estimated to have declined from 0.07 in 2017 to 0.05 in 2019. Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh lead the UTs with HIV incidence as low as 0.02 per 1,000 uninfected people, said NITI Aayog index reelects.
“In 2019, the mortality rate of children under the age group was 38 among 1,00,000 but this has now come down to 23. Furthermore, during the last one-year percentage of institutional deliveries has increased from 66.2 percent to 94.60 percent.”
Similarly , the school drop-out cased deceased since 2019 . The index said, in year 2019, annual drop cases in the secondary level were 24.81 percent but these cases have come down to 17.81 percent during the last year. Furthermore, the pupil-teacher ratio at the secondary level is also improved to 12:1 in the UT and 84% of schools in Jammu and Kashmir have electricity and drinking water facilities.
Like other parts of the country, Jammu and Kashmir is also confronting the problem of the gap of the ratio of male and female. The ratio had improved the last year.
Furthermore, crime against women also declined during last year. India has one of the largest and most ambitious renewable capacity expansion programmes in the world. India has committed to an Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) target of achieving 40 per cent of its total electricity generation from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030, with an ambitious target of 450 GW from renewable sources.
As of 2020, 36.37 per cent of India’s total electricity generation is from renewable energy. With power generation close to 2.5 GW, Jammu and Kashmir leads the UTs in the generation of renewable power.
As per the index report of NITI Aayog, forest cover Jammu and Kashmir has increased by 20 per cent during the last year. As per the report, in 2019, the total forest area in the UT was 10.46 per cent, which increased to 39.66 per cent in 2020. A total of 42 forest types are found in the UT - the highest in the country - and denote the diversity of forest ecosystems in Jammu and Kashmir.