NITI Aayog Releases India Innovation Index 2021 – 3rd Edition: Karnataka, Telangana & Haryana Grabs Top 3 Position

On July 21, 2022, Suman Bery, Vice Chairman of NITI Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India), released the third edition of the India Innovation Index 2021 at NITI Bhawan in New Delhi, Delhi.

• The India Innovation Index 2021 analyses subnational innovation ecosystems and capacities, emphasizing recent factors and catalysts for crisis-driven innovation.
• Karnataka has topped the Major States’ category in the current edition, followed by Telangana and Haryana. Among the North-Eastern India Innovation Index 2021 and Hilly States, Manipur is the best performer, followed by Uttarakhand and Meghalaya. For the Union Territories and City-States, Chandigarh is the top performer, followed by Delhi.

Every year, the NITI Aayog and its knowledge partner, the Institute for Competitiveness, India, publish the India Innovation Index.

• It is a comprehensive tool for the assessment and development of India’s innovation ecosystem.

Dignitaries

Parameswaran Iyer, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), NITI Aayog, Dr. V K Saraswat, Member, NITI Aayog; Neeraj Sinha, Senior Adviser, and Dr. Amit Kapoor, Chairman, Institute for Competitiveness, and others.

India Innovation Index 2021: 3rd edition

i. The third edition of the index enhances the scope of innovation analysis in India by leveraging the framework of the Global Innovation Index (GII), which is released by WIPO(World Intellectual Property Organization) on a yearly basis.

• The India Innovation Index’s first and second editions were released in October 2019 and January 2021, respectively.
• In Global Innovation Index (GII) India reached the 46th spot in 2021 from the 60th position in 2017. India was ranked 1st among the Central and South Asian nations and 2nd among the lower-middle-income countries.

ii.In comparison to the 36 indicators utilized in the previous edition i.e., India Innovation Index 2020, the third edition of India Innovation Index 2021 features 66 new unique indicators.

• The innovation index is based on 7 pillars: human capital, investment, knowledge workers, business environment, safety and legal environment, knowledge output, and knowledge diffusion. These pillars were divided across 66 indicators to determine the innovation capacity of states/UTs.
• The indications are now distributed across 16 sub-pillars, which together make up the seven key pillars.

iii. Using this comprehensive framework, the index offers a performance score for each States/Union Territories (UTs) in India.

• It identifies the strengths and weaknesses of States/UTs, which in turn will help policymakers to include and frame relevant measures to foster innovation-led growth at the sub-national level.

iv.The States/UTs have been divided into 17 ‘Major States’, 10 ‘North-East and Hill States’, and 9 ‘Union Territories and City States’, for effectively comparing their performance.

v.The India Innovation Index 2021 also includes a special section that highlights the detailed analysis of the drivers of innovation, by evaluating the improvement in the indicators.

Performance of States/UTs:

i.Among the 17 Major States, Karnataka topped the India Innovation Index 2021 and also held its top spot in the India Innovation Index in the ‘Major States’ category for the third year in a row. It is followed by Telangana and Haryana.Chhattisgarh has scored the
least, 10.97.

ii.The North-Eastern and Hill States’ category comprises 10 states.In the North-Eastern and hilly states, Manipur has emerged as the best performer, followed by Meghalaya and Uttarakhand.Nagaland is at the bottom.

iii. Amongst the 9 Union Territories and City-States,Chandigarh is the top performer among UTs and City-States, followed by Delhi.Ladakh was at the bottom.

India Innovation Index 2021: Category Wise Rankings of States

Recent Related News:

On June 27, 2022, NITI Aayog’s report titled ‘India’s Booming Gig and Platform Economy- Perspectives and Recommendations on the Future of Work’ was launched by its Vice Chairman Suman Bery.

• It is a first-of-its-kind study that presents comprehensive perspectives and recommendations on the Indian gig–platform economy.

Gig Economy /Sector is a labour market in which instead of a traditional, in-office, full-time job with a single company, gig workers work as short-term, temporary/freelance, or independent contractors for one or a variety of employers.

About NITI Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India):

CEO – Parameswaran Iyer
Establishment – 2015
Headquarters – New Delhi, Delhi