BHUBANESWAR: Two districts of Odisha figured in the list of five that championed development narrative in fundamental parameters of social progress as per the Second Delta Ranking of the Aspirational Districts Programme released by NITI Aayog on Thursday.
Virudhunagar district in Tamil Nadu showed the most overall improvement followed by Nuapada in Odisha, Siddarthnagar in Uttar Pradesh, Aurangabad in Bihar and Koraput in Odisha.
The delta ranking measured the incremental progress made by 111 aspirational districts between June 1 and October 31 across six developmental areas - health and nutrition, education, agriculture and water resources, financial inclusion, skill development and basic infrastructure.
The Aspirational District Programme was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in January this year with an aim to rapidly transform the districts that have shown relatively lesser progress in key social areas.
In education, Nuapada has shown most improvement after Virudhunagar in Tamil Nadu. Students in Nuapada improved their average marks in both Mathematics and Language compared to National Achievement Survey 2017. Average marks scored by students of Class III has seen significant improvement, indicating rising standards of elementary education.
While Gajapati district of Odisha was ranked second for showing most improvement after Sitamarhi of Bihar in agriculture and water resources, Rayagada has been placed at fourth position in skill development.
Rayagada has also reported reduced incidence of stunting compared to the estimates of National Family Health Survey 2015-16. Nuapada and Koraput have been ranked second and fifth for improvement in basic infrastructure.
“The rankings are a key metric which aims to capture qualitative improvement happening in fundamental governance structures across the aspirational districts,” NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said after releasing the rankings at New Delhi.
The first delta ranking for aspirational districts was released in June. It ranked aspirational districts on improved performance across the six developmental areas.