• India
  • Jan 20

Karnataka tops Innovation Index 2020

• Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Kerala have been ranked as top five states in innovation in NITI Aayog’s second Innovation Index released on January 20.

• The index, released by NITI Aayog’s vice chairman Rajiv Kumar and CEO Amitabh Kant, has been developed in the lines of Global Innovation Index.

• Karnataka topped the index for the second year in a row. Among Union Territories, Delhi topped the chart, while in the North-Eastern and Hill States category Himachal Pradesh occupied the top spot. Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Bihar were ranked at the bottom of the Index.

India Innovation Index

The first edition of the India Innovation Index, released in October 2019, was a first-of-its-kind metric for assessing the innovation capabilities of Indian states and Union Territories. Since then, India, and the world, have undergone a tectonic shift due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With the pandemic triggering an economic shutdown, the role of innovation to revitalize the economy, has never been more important.

The India Innovation Index is a reliable benchmark that highlights the impact of the above measures at a sub-national level. The first edition of the index has managed to guide and support policymakers in improving local innovation ecosystems. This drive to enhance the innovative tendencies has resulted in India breaking into the top 50 nations of the Global Innovation Index 2020, with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) declaring India as one of the leading innovation achievers of 2019-20 in the central and southern Asian region. 

The India Innovation Index 2020 examines the existing innovation landscape in India. In a diverse country such as India, it must be understood that its innovative capabilities significantly vary across different states and UTs. The index identifies the strengths and weaknesses of the Indian innovation landscape that could provide an impetus to different stakeholders to encapsulate these insights into decision-making.

The index provides an extensive framework for the constant evaluation of the innovation ecosystem of the 28 Indian states and 9 UTs. 

The three functions of the index:

1) Rank all states and Union Territories based on their index score. 

2) Identify opportunities and challenges. 

3) Assist in modifying governmental policies to foster innovation.

How is the index prepared?

• The India Innovation Index 2020, ranks the states and UTs based on their relative performance of supporting innovation, and aims to empower them to improve their innovation policies by highlighting their strengths and weaknesses.

• The states and UTs have been divided into 17 Major States, 10 North-Eastern and Hill States, and 9 Union Territories and City States, for effectively comparing their performance.

• These regions are categorised based on the area, as spatial homogeneity across states makes for fair comparison for innovative capacity. 

• The India Innovation Index is a combination of two dimensions — Enablers and Performance — with seven pillars and 36 indicators between them. The findings from the index provide some interesting insights that would help in understanding the innovation landscape of the country at both national and sub-national levels.

• Enablers are the factors that reinforce innovative capacities, such as institutions and policies, human capacity, infrastructure, technological adoption, and business markets and capital. Enablers pillars define aspects of the environment instrumental in fostering innovation within a State/UT. Together these pillars measure the degree to which a state has created an environment conducive to innovation. 

• Performance captures the benefits that a nation derives from the inputs in terms of knowledge creation, competitiveness and wealth generation. This sub-index provides the results of innovation within a State/UT.

Highlights of India Innovation Index 2020 

• Indian states have achieved an average score of 23.4 in the Innovation Index that ranges from a scale of 0 (worst-case scenario) to 100 (best-case scenario). The score shows that India has immense scope for improvement in the space of innovation, but it needs to be put into perspective by analysing the factors making up the score. 

• Among the Major States, the average innovation score is 25.35. 

• Karnataka tops at 42.5, which is attributable to its strong number of venture capital deals, registered GIs (Geographical Indications) and ICT (Information and Communication Technology) exports. Karnataka’s high FDI inflow has also enhanced the innovation capabilities of the state.

• Maharashtra follows second at 38, while Bihar finished last at 14.5.

• The case for the southern states as the top performers has also become stronger as four of them occupy the top-five spots within the Major States. 

• The NE and Hill States achieve an average innovation score of 17.89, with Himachal Pradesh as the best performer with a score of 25, followed by Manipur (22.77) and Sikkim (22.28), respectively. 

• With 31.9 per cent of its total employment generated being knowledge-intensive, Himachal Pradesh benefits from a high number of knowledge workers. Another characteristic that boosts the state’s level of innovation is its industry-friendly policies and incentives, which are reflected in its high rank (7) in the Ease of Doing Business Index. However, Himachal Pradesh still has a lot of untapped potential, since the high score gap of 23.4 between Enablers and Performance shows that its innovation capabilities are not harnessed efficiently. 

• Delhi, the best performer among all groups, tops the ranking in the group of Union Territories as well. Chandigarh follows second with a score of 38.57, whereas Lakshadweep and Jammu & Kashmir occupy the last two positions in the group respectively. 

The way ahead

As India heads into an uncertain future where the global economy is still reeling from the pandemic, innovation holds the key to transition any economy from a developing one toward the developed category. India has the potential and capacity to be such a nation that can transform its economic identity by relying on innovation. The central government consulted stakeholders to formulate the STIP 2020. This is a crucial step to allow a decentralised focus on innovation where policies are inclusive and the benefits follow the bottom-up approach. A policy such as the STIP holds the promise that would allow successful leverage of the strengths of each state and thus convert their Enablers into Performance.

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