Do Indian states and UTs support innovation? Second edition of India Innovation Index to be launched on Wednesday

The NITI Aayog is set to release on Wednesday the second edition of the India Innovation Index 2020 that seeks to rank the states and Union Territories (UTs) based on their relative performance of supporting innovation.

The release of the second edition of the index demonstrates the government's continued commitment towards transforming the country into an innovation-driven economy.

The index also seeks to empower the states and UTs to improve their innovation policies by highlighting their strengths and weaknesses. The ranking methodology is designed in a way that states can draw lessons from the national leaders in innovation.

NITI Aayog hopes that the index will lead to a healthy competition among the states and the UTs, thereby fostering competitive federalism.

The states and the UTs have been divided into 17 'Major States', 10 'North-East and Hill States', and nine 'City-States and Union Territories', for effectively comparing their performance.

The states and the UTs have been ranked on two broad categories: outcome and governance. Overall, the framework of the India Innovation Index 2020 consists of 36 indicators, which include hard data (32 indicators) and four composite indicators.

READ MORE: Here's all about the idea that took these 16-year-olds from Hyderabad to the United Nations

India Innovation Index 2020 builds on the previous year's methodology by introducing more metrics and providing a holistic outlook of the Indian innovation ecosystem.

The framework has been updated to include globally considered parameters for measuring innovation (such as the percentage of gross domestic product spent on research and development), while also retaining the parameters specific to the Indian economy.

The index captures the trends and provides detailed analyses of the various factors that drive innovation at the country, state, and district levels. It is believed that these analyses would enable policymakers in identifying catalysts and inhibitors of innovation at the national and sub-national levels.

The index will be released in a virtual event by NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar in the presence of NITI Aayog Member V.K. Saraswat and CEO Amitabh Kant. The first India Innovation Index was launched in October 2019.