MUMBAI: Kerala and Uttarakhand lead the sustainable development goals (SDGs) for the fourth time with scoring 79 each, followed by Tamil Nadu at 78 and with the third slot being shared by Goa, Chandigarh and Himachal Pradesh with a score of 77, while the national average is a low 71 and Bihar has the lowest at 57.
According to a study by the Reserve Bank’s ‘Handbook of statistics on states’ which it has been publishing annually since 2016, these states have been steadily increasing their scores since 2018, when Kerala’s scores stood at 69 (the highest then also) rising to 70 in 2019 and further to 75 in 2020 and 79 in 2023. Similarly Uttarakhand had 60, 64 and 72 respectively, in these years while Tamil Nadu’s was 66, 67 and 74 respectively.
National average was 57 in 2018, 60 in 2019 and 66 in 2020 while for Bihar this was 48, 50, and 52 respectively.
Other key states such as Delhi fares badly with very low scores (62, 61, 68, 70) Gujarat (64, 64, 69, 74) Maharashtra (64, 64, 70, 73) UP (42, 55, 60, 67) and Bengal at 56, 60, 62, 70, respectively.
This is the 10th edition of the handbook containing updates of the existing data series and has been prepared in the regional economy monitoring division of the department of economic and policy research under the supervision and overall guidance of Mallavarapu Ramaiah and his team led by Monika Sethi, Pratibha Kedia, Shivam, Sonal Yadav and Arunraj Essar.