NITI Aayog’s India Innovation Index-2021

About the Index-

• Prepared by NITI Aayog and the Institute for Competitiveness, the India Innovation Index is a comprehensive tool for the evaluation and development of the country’s innovation ecosystem. 
• The third edition highlights the scope of innovation analysis in the country by drawing on the framework of the Global Innovation Index. 
• It presents a comprehensive outlook for measuring innovation performance in India, with the introduction of 66 unique indicators, as compared to the 36 indicators used in the preceding edition. 
• The index is based on 7 pillars: human capital, investment, knowledge workers, business environment, safety and legal environment, knowledge output, and knowledge diffusion. These pillars were divided across 66 indicators to determine the innovation capacity of states/UTs.
• Through this, the index evaluates the innovation performance of all the states and union territories in India. 
• The states and the union territories have been divided into 17 ‘Major States’, 10 ‘North-East and Hill States’, and 9 ‘Union Territories and the City States’, to effectively compare their performance.
• A special section has also been introduced in the India Innovation Index 2021 for showcasing the detailed analysis of the drivers of innovation, by evaluating the improvement in the indicators. 
• The states can assess their position and the factors that led to a change in their ranking vis-à-vis that in the India Innovation Index 2020.
• Similar to the previous edition, the five ‘Enabler’ pillars measure inputs and the two ‘Performance’ pillars measure output. 
• All the indicators in the Enabler pillars cover features crucial for promoting innovation within a state/union territory. 
• Indicators in the Performance pillars represent a nation’s output in knowledge creation and competitiveness.
• The index also draws some international parallels, which will add to India’s learnings and how we can be on a par with our counterparts.
• The Index also contributes to the Government’s effort to monitor select global indices through the Global Indices to drive Reform and Growth (GIRG) mechanism, for which the NITI Aayog is the nodal organization.
• According to the index, Karnataka has topped yet again in the ‘Major States’ category, followed by Telangana and Haryana. 
• Manipur is leading the ‘North East and Hill States’ category and Chandigarh is the top performer in the ‘Union Territories and City States’ category.