HYDERABAD: Telangana has maintained its fourth spot in the recent India Innovation 2020 Report released by the Niti Aayog on Wednesday. In the 2019 report too, the state had stood fourth.
The report adjudges states based on their performance in the categories of innovation, enablers, human capital and investment, among others.
For instance, in the innovation category, Telangana is at the fourth spot with 33.23 (out of 100), behind Karnataka which is first, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, respectively.
Despite the seemingly ‘low’ score, the Niti Aayog adjudged the state ‘overperforming’ in innovation, performance, knowledge output and knowledge diffusion.
For Telangana’s good performance in the knowledge output category, the Niti Aayog said, “Much of the high scores attained by these States can be attributed to the good performance across all indicators, barring grassroots innovation.”
However, it adjudged Telangana as ‘underperforming’ in the key sector of creating ‘business environment’ — which takes into cognisance the number of incubator centres and the strength of the business cluster in the state.
It also categorised the state as underperforming in ‘investment’ which takes into account the expenditure on higher and technical education, on research and development, FDI inflow and so on. In safety and legal environment too, TS was adjuged as underperforming.
“Major top-performing States such as Maharashtra, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Telangana do not feature among the top in this pillar (safety and legal security), which is a concern from an investment and business standpoint,” the Niti Aayog report stated.
Top 10 States in India Innovation Index 2020
The top 10 major States are primarily concentrated in Southern and Western India. Sikkim and Delhi have taken the top spots among the North-Eastern and hill States, and UTs/city States/small States, respectively. Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh are the most efficient in translating inputs into output.
What does NITI Aayog say about TS performance
Innovation: Overperforming
Performance: Overperforming
Knowledge output: Overperforming
Knowledge diffusion: Overperforming
Enablers: Underperforming
Knowledge workers: Underperforming
Business environment: Underperforming
Investment: Underperforming
Safety & legal environment: Underperforming