Our Reporter
Dimapur, July 21 (EMN): Nagaland is at the bottom of NITI Aayog’s India Innovation Index in the north-eastern and hill states category, with a score of 11.
The category, which comprises 10 states, is topped by Manipur with a score of 19.37.
Karnataka, Manipur and Chandigarh topped their respective categories in the third edition of the Index, NITI Aayog updated in a tweet. The index was released on Thursday, July 21.
The index benchmarks the performance of the states and union territories against their peers, to better understand the reasons for differential performance and the areas of strengths and weaknesses and has been developed on the lines of the Global Innovation Index.
Manipur scored best in knowledge workers, safety and legal environment pillars. Nagaland and Tripura scored the lowest due to their “unutilised talent” as indicated by their low performance in human capital and business environment, which reveals that their innovation capabilities have not been harnessed to their full potential, the report stated.
In the performance of states in investment, Arunachal Pradesh with a score of 17.12 and Manipur with a score of 11.44 are among the top performers in the north-eastern and hilly states. Manipur scored the highest on indicators like R&D expenditure as a percentage of GSDP whereas Arunachal Pradesh scored the highest on indicators like expenditure on science, technology and environment as a percentage of GSDP. It also received high FDI inflow in the category.
It is observed that north-eastern and hilly states’ performance was relatively poor. Their respective scores were even lower than the average pillar score of 6.26. For example, Nagaland, Tripura and Meghalaya scored 2.15, 1.32 and 1.54, respectively.
“It must be noted that the performance of these states is greatly affected due to their geographical location. While, geographical disadvantage is a challenge, measures can be roped in to enhance overall performance, with respect to improvement in performance under this pillar,” it read.
In the performance of states in business environment some of the North-East and Hilly states and union territories have performed low on this pillar. Their scores have been less than the national average of the pillar. For example, there are no incubators in Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh.
Likewise, while only about 11 per cent of bank accounts were seeded with Aadhaar in Meghalaya (lowest in the country), the percentage of villages with internet connectivity was lowest in Arunachal Pradesh (about 57 per cent).
In learning and recommendations, the report stated that low performing states performed lower in terms of investment and knowledge workers. For example, Nagaland and Lakshadweep’s expenditure on science, technology, and environment (as a percentage of GSDP) was zero. Tripura’s share was low at 0.01%. Nagaland and Tripura received no FDI inflows and no venture capital deals. Both of them had 33 and 38 NGOs involved in knowledge-intensive areas, respectively, which is much below the national average of 240. Chhattisgarh had about 0.08 number of private R&D units in the state (per lakh population), much below the national average of 0.49.
In contrast, Nagaland and Tripura had zero such units. Their performance on percentage of females employed with advanced degrees out of total employed was also average. On the contrary, their counterparts like Manipur and Arunachal were among the top performers in the investment pillar. Similarly, Jharkhand, a close neighbour of Chhattisgarh, performed exceedingly well in the investment pillar.
"Poor performance in ‘enablers’ is bound to reflect in ‘performers’. This is what happened with the low-performing states/UTs, showing poor performance in both outcome pillars," the report maintained.
Uttarakhand had the second highest score due to the state government’s high R&D investment. Uttarakhand also registered the highest expenditure on school education – 20.10% of its GSDP.
The index has been divided into major states, north-east and hill states, UT and city states.
The India Innovation Index ranks 36 Indian states based on innovation scores calculated by measuring the enabler (human capital, investment, knowledge workers, business environment, and safety and legal environment) and performer (knowledge output and knowledge diffusion) dimensions.
Chandigarh was the best performer, with a score of 27.88 and topped the overall rankings, followed by Delhi with a score of 27.00. Ladakh was at the bottom with a score of 5.91.
Among the 17 major states, Karnataka, with a score of 18.01, is the top performer, followed by Telangana and Haryana. Chhattisgarh has scored the least, 10.97.
Karnataka’s high score can be attributed to its peak performance in attracting FDI and a large number of venture capital deals. Karnataka also scores high in the ‘Performer’ dimension, with the highest share of ICT exports and GI registrations, it stated. Uttar Pradesh and Haryana have registered significant gains in promoting an innovative business environment with a large base of internet subscribers and a safe ecosystem for further investment in the region.