Sustainable Development Goals and India: A Cross-Sectional Analysis

Abstract

On 25 September 2015, 193 countries of the UN General Assembly embraced the 2030 Development Agenda titled "Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development". Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were built on the success as well as on the shortcomings of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Over the years there has been an argument of MDGs being unfair as a parameter for all the countries alike. Few of the countries with required resources were able to strive towards the achievement of MDGs whereas those with substantially fewer resources were not able to catch up. As Ban-Ki-Moon rightly said, "We don't have plan B because there is no planet B!". This thought has paved the way for the development of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which are an amalgamation of various goals covering every aspect of human development globally. The MDGs concentrated on curbing extreme poverty, hunger, and preventable disease, and were the most significant global development goals in the history of the United Nations. The SDGs will resume the fight against extreme poverty but will add the challenges of ensuring more fair development and environmental sustainability, specifically the key goal of curbing the dangers of human-induced climate change.

This paper deals with the status of SDGs in India with the help of recent data. The analysis is based on the data collected from various sources for every Indian state. Every SDG has been attributed a variable which signifies the status of the specific goal. Preliminary analysis shows that India has grown substantially in last 15 years for few of the basic parameters and are on the track of achieving the goals, but when we look deeply into the state-wise data a wide disparity is clearly visible. Some parameters which are acceptable overall is driven by few of the selected states whereas other states are substantially lagging. The paper attempts to rank each of the states based on the SDG Index. On the basis of the analysis, we find that the policy which may look sufficient on a national basis might not be appropriate on the state level. The state-wise index also helps to understand the key areas where the policymakers should pay attention to. The index shows the clear disparity between India states and a lot must be done to achieve uniform success across states.

Keywords: Human development, Index, India,Policy, Sustainable Development Goals