Niti Innovation Index: Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu top 3 states in innovation

Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Kerala have been ranked as top five states in innovation in Niti Aayog’s second Innovation Index released on Wednesday.

Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Bihar were ranked at the bottom of the Index.

Karnataka topped the Index for the second year in a row. Among Union Territories, Delhi topped the chart, while in the North-Eastern and Hill States category Himachal Pradesh occupied the top spot.

Maharashtra was ranked second with an innovation score of 38, while Bihar finished last at 14.5.

“The case for the southern states as the top performers has also become stronger as four of them occupy the top-five spots within the major states,” it added.

According to the index, the North-Eastern and Hill states achieved an average innovation score of 17.89, with Himachal Pradesh as the best performer with a score of 25, followed by Manipur (22.77) and Sikkim (22.28), respectively.

“With 31.9 percent of its total employment generated being knowledge-intensive, Himachal Pradesh benefits from a high number of knowledge workers,” it said.

The Index noted that the innovation score of Union Territories and city-states averages at 26.01. Delhi was the best performer among all groups.

ALSO READ

Speaking at the event, Kumar said the office of the Principal Scientific Advisor and Niti Aayog are working closely to create a seamless interaction among institutions that are there in any city to improve India’s innovation ecosystem.

He also said that with the partnership with the Principal Scientific Advisor K Vijay Raghavan, the Niti Aayog is working very hard to try and bring back and attract Indian talent from abroad.

“There are some schemes (to bring back Indian talent) already, we want to sharpen them, we want to improve them,” the Niti Aayog vice-chairman said.

“Maybe that will also become an indicator… Which state is able to attract a larger number of Indian talent back to the country, making our system more flexible, less red tape and by making our environment far more attractive,” he added.

The India Innovation Index 2020, ranks the states and union territories based on their relative performance of supporting innovation, and aims to empower them to improve their innovation policies by highlighting their strengths and weaknesses.

The states and union territories have been divided into 17 ‘major states’, 10 ‘North-Eastern and hill states’, and 9 ‘city-states and Union Territories’, for effectively comparing their performance.

Overall, the framework of India Innovation Index 2020, consists of 36 indicators, which include hard data (32 indicators) and four composite indicators.