NITI Aayog launches India Innovation Index 2019

The National Institution for Transforming India, or the NITI Aayog, a policy think tank of the Government of India, and the Indian Institute for Competitiveness, a subsidiary of the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard Business School, released the India Innovation Index 2019 on October 17. The Index, which examines the innovation ecosystem of Indian states and union territories (UTs), found Karnataka as the most innovative major state in India. Following which, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Telangana, Haryana, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Gujarat, and Andhra Pradesh formed the remaining top ten major states, respectively. The index was released by Dr. Rajiv Kumar, Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog; Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog; Ashutosh Sharma, Secretary, Department of Science; Renu Swarup, Secretary, Department of Biotechnology and Vaidya Rajesh Kotecha, Secretary, AYUSH.

“India has a unique opportunity among its myriad challenges to become the innovation leader in the world,” Mr Kant said while launching the Index. The India Innovation Index is intended to create synergies between different stakeholders in the innovation ecosystem and help India shift to competitive good governance. It will help set up cluster-based innovation to serve as the centre of competitiveness. The Index is a strong beginning to improve the environment of innovation in the country as it focuses on both the input and output components of an idea. The Index will help benchmark the performance of the state with each other and promote competitive federalism. A strong innovation ecosystem helps to better weather cyclical downturns, strengthening the core of the economy. Besides promising enhanced return on investment, strong innovations delivers comprehensive socio-economic development. 

The India Innovation Index attempts to create an extensive framework for the continual evaluation of the innovation environment of 29 states and seven UTs in India and intends to perform the following three functions – 1) ranking of states and UTs based on their index scores, 2) recognizing opportunities and challenges, and 3) assisting in tailoring governmental policies to foster innovation.

The India Innovation Index 2019 is calculated as the average of the scores of its two dimensions – Enablers and Performance.

The Enablers are the factors that underpin innovative capacities, grouped in five pillars: (1) Human Capital, (2) Investment, (3) Knowledge Workers, (4) Business Environment, and (5) Safety and Legal Environment. The Performance dimension captures benefits that a nation derives from the inputs, divided in two pillars: (6) Knowledge Output and (7) Knowledge Diffusion.

In its efforts to empower the states and UTs, last year, Government of India had rolled out ranking of Indian states in Ease of Doing Business. In the report, brought out by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, the top five ranks were secured by Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Haryana, Jharkhand and Gujarat, respectively. The report came after the DIPP and the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, along with the World Bank conducted an annual reform exercise for all 29 Indian states and 7 union territories (UTs) under the Business Reform Action Plan (BRAP). The aim of this move has been to improve delivery of Central Government provisions and services in an efficient manner in order to promote foreign and private trade and investment. Initiatives like these have helped India jump 79 spots to reach 63rd place in the World Bank 2020 Ease of Doing Business ranking.