Guwahati: Districts from Mizoram, Tripura, and Nagaland have emerged as top performers in the second edition of NITI Aayog’s North Eastern Region (NER) District SDG Index 2023-24.
Hnahthial and Champhai in Mizoram, Gomati and West Tripura in Tripura, and Mokokchung in Nagaland have been ranked the top five districts of the northeast in the 2023-24 North Eastern Region (NER) District SDG Index report released on Monday.
The index, which covered 131 (92 percent) districts of the eight north-eastern states—Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura and Sikkim—measured their performance across 15 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) comprising 84 indicators.
These include poverty, hunger, health, quality of education, gender equality, access to clean water and sanitation, clean energy, industry, innovation and infrastructure, economic growth, responsible consumption and production among others.
SDG 14 and 17 were excluded because of their limited or no applicability at the district-level.
The districts have been ranked based on a composite score that ranges from 0 to 100 and denotes the district’s overall achievement in realising the targets under the SDGs. A score of 100 implies that the district has achieved the targets set for identified 82 indicators; a score of 0 implies that the district is at the bottom.
Based on the score, each district is categorised into one of the four categories: Achiever (when the score equals 100), Front Runner (when the score is between 65 and 100 excluding 100), Performer (when the Index score is between 50 and 65, excluding 65) and Aspirant (when the Index score is less than 50).
Overall, 85 percent of the NER districts are in the front runner category compared to the previous edition, where 62 percent of the districts were in this category.
Of the eight north-eastern states, Mizoram, Sikkim and Tripura are right at the top, with all their districts falling in the front runner category. Hnahthial district in Mizoram has got the highest-score of 81.43 while Longding at 58.71 has the lowest score in the entire north-eastern region.
Nagaland exhibits widest range (15.07 points between its highest and lowest performing
districts), indicating the significant intra-state disparity. Sikkim has the narrowest range (5.5 points), showing the most consistent performance, while Tripura has the distinction of having some of the highest-scoring districts with minimum intra-state disparities (6.5 points).
Mizoram and Nagaland have some of the highest-scoring districts, but also show significant intra-state variation (ranges of 13.72 and 15.07, respectively).
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Overall, of the 131 districts covered,10 were not considered for computation as data for various indicators was not available.
This is the second edition of the report and has come out after two years. The first edition was released in August 2021 and covered 103 of the 120 districts (86 percent).
