Puducherry Lakshadweep Goa Social Progress Index Best performing State at the Centre | Popgen Tech

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

Puducherry has the highest SPI score of 65.99, closely followed by Lakshadweep and Goa 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 basic human needs dimension, 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 emerged as the best performing states for the foundations of welfare.

In the dimension for access to basic knowledge elements, Punjab had 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 achieved the highest component score of 72.00 for the opportunity dimension.

In this dimension, Andaman and Nicobar Islands has the highest score in the element for personal rights, while Sikkim topped the list for inclusiveness.

Meanwhile, Puducherry achieved the highest score across two components of this dimension, i.e., personal freedom and choice and access to advanced education.

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

“It presents a cross-section of data across states and districts and focuses on looking at various levels of development by grouping states rather than individual rankings of 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 program index is that we are measuring outcomes, not inputs. We do not want to measure how much a country or state spends on education.

“We want to measure the results of education. We do not want to measure whether you pass or discriminate. This takes us away from a series of complex policies and political debates in the category of measuring the results. The only way to change the social index is to improve the results ,” Green added.

EAC-PM along with Institute for Competitiveness and Social Progress is imperative to release the SPI for states and districts in India.

The index rates states and districts based on 12 elements across three important dimensions of social progress—basic human needs, foundation of well-being and opportunity.