Puducherry, Lakshadweep, Goa Best-performing States In Centre's Social Progress Index

Puducherry, Lakshadweep and Goa emerged as best-performing states and Aizawl (Mizoram), Solan and Shimla (Himachal Pradesh) are the top three districts in Social Progress Index (SPI) released by Economic Advisory Council-Prime Minister (EAC-PM) on Tuesday. 

Puducherry has the highest SPI score of 65.99, Lakshadweep and Goa closely follow it with scores of 65.89 and 65.53, respectively. 

Jharkhand and Bihar scored the lowest, 43.95 and 44.47, respectively, according to the report. 

For the dimension of basic human needs, Goa, Puducherry, Lakshadweep and Chandigarh are the top four states with the best performance in water, sanitation and shelter. 

Mizoram, Himachal Pradesh, Ladakh and Goa have emerged as the best-performing states for the foundations of well-being. 

Within the dimension for the access to basic knowledge component, Punjab topped with a score of 62.92, while Delhi is first in the list for access to information and communication with a score of 71.30. 

Lastly, Tamil Nadu has achieved the highest component score of 72.00 for the opportunity dimension. 

Within this dimension, Andaman and Nicobar Islands have the highest component score for personal rights, while Sikkim has topped the list for inclusiveness. 

Meanwhile, Puducherry attained the highest scores across two components in this dimension, i.e., personal freedom and choice and access to advanced education. 

Bibek Debroy, Chairman, EAC-PM said that the report is based extensively on objective data and is primarily a normative and prescriptive exercise. 

"It presents a cross-section of data across states and districts and the focus is on looking at various tiers of development by grouping the states rather than the individual rankings of the selected states and districts," he added. 

Commenting on the methodology, Michael Green, CEO, Social Progress Imperative said that one of the design decisions on the social programs index is that we're measuring outcomes, not inputs. We don't want to measure how much a country or a state spends on education. 

"We want to measure the educational outcomes. We don't want to measure whether you pass laws against discrimination but how many people actually face discrimination. This takes us away from a whole set of complex policy and political debates in the category of measuring outcomes. The only way to change the social index is to improve the outcomes,” added Green.

The EAC-PM along with the Institute for Competitiveness and Social Progress Imperative released the SPI for states and districts of India. 

The index assesses states and districts based on 12 components across three critical dimensions of social progress— basic human needs, foundations of well-being and opportunity.