On December 26, 2018, NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant released the Second Delta Ranking of the Aspirational Districts Programme.
i.The ranking shows the incremental progress achieved by 111 aspirational districts (out of 115) during June 1, 2018 to October 31, 2018, across six key development sectors.
ii.Three aspirational districts from West Bengal did not participate, while one district of Kerala could not take part because of floods.
iii.The Ranking is based on 6 developmental sectors,they are: Health and Nutrition, Education, Agriculture and Water Resources, Financial Inclusion, Skill Development, and Basic Infrastructure.
iv.The data has been received from household surveys conducted by NITI Aayog’s knowledge partners, namely, TATA Trusts and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (IDInsight).
v.The Surveys were carried out in all Aspirational Districts during the month of June 2018 covering more than 1,00,000 households.
vi.The ranking is based on following categorises:
- The Most Improved Districts,
- The Least Improved Districts,
- Fast Movers: The districts which have shown great initiative and displayed a qualitative jump in their scores between June and October 2018.
About the rankings:
The Most Improved Districts:
| Rank | District | State |
| 1 | Virudhunagar | Tamil Nadu |
| 2 | Nuapada | Odisha |
| 3 | Siddharthnagar | Uttar Pradesh |
| 4 | Aurangabad | Bihar |
| 5 | Koraput | Odisha |
The Least Improved Districts:
| Rank | District | State |
| 107 | Kiphire | Nagaland |
| 108 | Giridih | Jharkhand |
| 109 | Chatra | Jharkhand |
| 110 | Hailakandi | Assam |
| 111 | Pakur | Jharkhand |
Fast Movers:
| District | State | June 2018 rank | October 2018 rank |
| Kupwara | Jammu and Kashmir | 108 | 7 |
| Ranchi | Jharkhand | 106 | 10 |
| Siddharthnagar | Uttar Pradesh | 103 | 3 |
| Jamui | Bihar | 99 | 9 |
| Fatehpur | Uttar Pradesh | 82 | 25 |
About Transformation of Aspirational Districts’ programme:
- Launched: January 2018.
- The ‘Transformation of Aspirational Districts’ programme aims to quickly and effectively transform these districts.
- Health & Nutrition, Education, Agriculture & Water Resources, Financial Inclusion & Skill Development, and Basic Infrastructure are this programme’s core areas of focus.
- 49 key performance indicators have been chosen to measure progress of the districts.
- NITI Aayog in partnership with the Government of Andhra Pradesh has created a dashboard for monitoring the real-time progress of the districts.
Background:
The First delta rankings were released in June 30, 2018. It was based on the data of the districts from March 31, 2018 to May 1, 2018. Out of 112 districts, 108 districts participated in the rankings.
For more info on First Delta Rankings:Â Click Here
NITI Aayog:
- Chairman: PM Narendra Modi.
- Vice-Chairman: Rajiv Kumar.
- CEO: Amitabh Kant.