Syllabus subtopic: Statutory, regulatory and various quasi-judicial bodies.

Prelims and Mains focus: About NITI Aayog’s SDG India Index and performance of various states

News: Kerala tops the States in progress towards the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), while Bihar is at the bottom of the NITI Aayog’s SDG Index, released on Monday.

Background

The SDG India Index was developed in collaboration with the Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation (MoSPI), Global Green Growth Institute and United Nations in India.

• The index comprises a composite score for each State and Union Territory based on their aggregate performance across 13 of the 17 SDGs. The score, ranging between 0 and 100, denotes the average performance of the State/UT towards achieving the 13 SDGs and their respective targets.
• The aim of the index is to instill competition among States to improve their performance across social indices as the States’ progress will determine India’s progress towards achieving the set goals by 2030. Using the index, States will be monitored on a real-time basis.

What are Sustainable development Goals (SDGs)

• The SDGs are a set of 17 broad­based global goals adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015, and intended to be achieved by 2030.
• With one­sixth of the world’s population, India is key to the achievement of the goals. The UN has developed 232 indicators to measure compliance by member nations. The NITI Aayog has adapted the monitoring approach to the Indian context, with 100 indicators of its own for the Index.
• Only 40% of these indicators were used for last year’s baseline index and hence, the two indices are not directly comparable. However, it is still interesting to note that Kerala has retained its top slot, while Uttar Pradesh, Odisha and Sikkim have shown the most improvement.

Performance of other states

• Himachal Pradesh and Sikkim have joined the four southern States among the front­runners, which scored over 65 points out of a possible 100.
• Ending hunger and achieving gender equality are the areas where most States fall far short, with the all­India scores at a dismal 35 and 42 points respectively.
• On the other hand, the NITI Aayog has given India an overall score of 60 points, driven mostly by progress in energy and sanitation (88); peace, justice and strong institutions(72); and affordable and clean energy (70).

SDG-wise analysis

• The second SDG — zero hunger — shows sharp divergence in the performance of States, with little middle ground. Kerala, Goa and parts of the north­east, including Mizoram, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim, have scored above 65, with Goa at 75 points.
• However, 22 of the States and Union Territories have scored below 50, with the central Indian States of Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Chhattisgarh scoring below 30, showing high levels of hunger and malnutrition.

• On the fifth SDG — gender equality — almost all States fare poorly. Only Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Kerala have managed to cross 50 points. The indicators considered include crimes against women, eradicating sex selection and discrimination against daughters, and access to reproductive health schemes, as well as indicators showing women’s economic and political empowerment and leadership.
• A sex ratio of 896 females per 1000 males, a 17.5% female labour participation rate, and the fact that one in three women experience spousal violence all contribute to a low score countrywide.

• The Swachh Bharat Mission has contributed largely to the high scores on the sixth SDG — clean water and sanitation — although that was helped by the fact that four out of seven indicators dealt with toilets and sanitation, while only one indicator was related to safe and affordable drinking water.
• All States and Union Territories except for Delhi have scored above 65, with the national capital scoring poorly on the percentage of urban households with individual household toilets (less than 1%) and, oddly, providing no data on districts verified to be open defecation free.

Syllabus subtopic: Welfare schemes for vulnerable sections of the population by the Centre and States and the performance of these schemes; mechanisms, laws, institutions and bodies constituted for the protection and betterment of these vulnerable sections

Prelims and Mains focus: about the Ujjwala scheme and its significance; key findings of the ISFR, 2019

News: The Union Environment Ministry has credited the Ujjwala scheme, which provides free cooking gas to extremely poor families, with ‘possibly’ reducing the demand for fuelwood.

Context: The India State of Forest Report, 2019, — that biannually also assesses the tree cover — also surveyed 1,110 villages, which are on the fringes of forests, to assess how much fuelwood, fodder, small timber and bamboo villagers use.

The use of these products— according to the Forest Survey of India — was a major source of “impairment to forest productivity” but wasn’t adequately assessed.

What did the report find?

• In their assessment of villages in 31 States and Union Territories, nearly 8,52,90,000 tonnes of fuel-wood, 105,30,39,000 tonnes off fodder, 584,8204 cubic metres of small timber and 18,34,000 tonnes of bamboo were collected annually by those living in the forest fringes.
• The maximum fuelwood was removed in Maharashtra — 95,39000 tonnes — followed by Odisha and Rajasthan.
• The highest removal, per person, was in Nagaland followed by Himachal Pradesh and Tripura.

About Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY):

• It aims to provide LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) connections to poor households.

• Who is eligible? Under the scheme, an adult woman member of a below poverty line family identified through the Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) is given a deposit-free LPG connection with financial assistance of Rs 1,600 per connection by the Centre.

• Identification of households: Eligible households will be identified in consultation with state governments and Union territories. The scheme is being implemented by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas.

Key objectives of the scheme are:

• Empowering women and protecting their health.
• Reducing the serious health hazards associated with cooking based on fossil fuel.
• Reducing the number of deaths in India due to unclean cooking fuel.
• Preventing young children from significant number of acute respiratory illnesses caused due to indoor air pollution by burning the fossil fuel.

Syllabus subtopic: Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation

Prelims and Mains focus: about the significance of the govt.’s move to waive carbon tax on coal

News: Prime Minister’s office (PMO) has proposed waiving a tax on coal to help finance pollution­curbing equipment, according to documents, but the move would also make coal more competitive in price with solar and wind energy.

• The PMO has proposed waiving the carbon tax of R.400 per tonne that was levied on the production and import of coal.

Background

• Despite struggling with some of the world’s worst air pollution levels, India has already pushed back a deadline to cut emission levels to up to 2022.
• Over half of India’s coal-fired plants are already set to miss a phased deadline starting December 2019 to cut emissions of sulphur oxides, which have been proven to contribute to lung disease.

Significance of the move

• The savings would improve the financial health of utilities and distribution companies, and help power producers to install pollution curbing equipment.
• The proposal is a big win for India’s coal industry, which has lobbied for government help, citing high debt levels and burgeoning payment dues from government­owned power distribution companies.

COAL VS RENEWABLES

• The proposal comes at a time when India is set to open up coal mining to global mining companies for the first time. An implementation of the proposal would provide a fillip to state-run Coal India, whose stock has lost a fifth of its value over the last 12 months. Thermal power companies, in addition to emitting greenhouse gases, account for 80 percent of all industrial emissions of particulate matter, sulfur and nitrous oxides in India.

• The average rate at which coal-fired power is sold to distribution companies stands at about 3.50 rupees per unit, according to a Reuters analysis of data provided to the power ministry by many Indian utilities in October. That compares with an average cost of 2.50 rupees to 3.00 rupees for renewable energy projects. The current carbon tax on coal contributes to 0.25 rupees per unit, according to industry estimates.

• If implemented, the move would reduce the price gap between coal-fired power and renewable, and potentially impact Modi's plan to increase adoption of green energy. Cutting taxes on coal would impact growth of renewable energy as well as the transition away from coal.

Syllabus subtopic: Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation

Prelims and Mains focus: About the SDG India Index report 2019 and its significance; NITI Aayog and its composition

News: Government think tank NITI Aayog plans to conduct a financing exercise with states that have been “historically backward” in development to ensure that India can achieve its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on time.

• India will be presenting its second Voluntary National Review during the United Nations’ High Level Political Forum in July 2020.

Context: “There is consensus on all levels that unless these States make significant progress, India will find it challenging to achieve its SDG targets on time. NITI Aayog has started working closely with these States, enabling them in establishing SDG monitoring systems and supporting them in forging partnerships for building institutions, capacity, knowledge and convergence,” stated the body in its SDG India Index 2019 report.

• Bihar, Jharkhand, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Uttar Pradesh and Assam were among the worst performers in terms of their progress towards achieving these SDGs, shows the report.

Efforts made by NITI Aayog

• NITI Aayog has already begun estimating the financial cost of achieving “key” SDGs in collaboration with the International Monetary Fund.
• As the next step of the collaboration, SDG financing exercise with select states is planned. Special attention is being given to the adoption, implementation, monitoring and financing of SDGs in states, which have been historically backward in development.
• A comprehensive capacity building programme for the States, UTs, and local governments is being designed in partnership with the UN system. The training modules will extensively cover developing SDG monitoring framework, identifying and designing indicators, localisation, and dashboards.

Findings of SDG India Index report, 2019

• The SDG India Index 2019 report, which evaluates the progress of states and Union Territories on social, economic and environmental parameters, found that India has managed to improve its average score on the back of improvements in five goals.

• However, it has stated that two goals — nutrition and gender — continued to be problem areas and demand special attention. In nutrition, food wastage and loss due to inefficient supply chain management remain a “major” concern, according to the report.

• While significant levels of food losses occur upstream, at harvest and during post-harvest handling, a considerable quantity of food is lost or wasted during the distribution and consumption stages. Such food could be salvaged by timely withdrawing it from the distribution network, aggregating it and then redirecting it to the people in need.

• Challenges remain for wider adoption of climate-adaptive sustainable agriculture practices, new technology as well as agricultural development plans involving large swathes of land by small farmers, who often lack assets and resources and constitute more than 82 per cent of all farmers.

• Crimes against women stood at around 3.60 lakh in 2017, with the crime rate increasing to 57.9 then, as against 56.6 in 2014; “several” legislations have been enacted towards reforms to ensure gender rights and equality.

• Several challenges still remain in achieving gender equality, including an “acute” data gap for gender equality in several sectors, especially for transgender people, stated the report. Other issues include declining female labour force participation, which currently stands at 17.5 per cent, and is characterised by aspects like a gender wage gap across sectors as high as 50-75 per cent.

• The agriculture sector still has the “largest” share of women, and a “large” proportion of the population involved in informal employment also consists of women “with little or no social protection”.

• There is also inequality in women’s access to and ownership of land. In rural India, while 75 per cent of rural women workers are engaged in agriculture, women’s operational landholding is only 13.96 per cent. The absence of land ownership limits their access to inputs, seeds, fertilisers, credit and agricultural extension services.

About NITI Aayog

• The Government, in January 2015, replaced Planning Commission with NITI Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India).

• Aim: to achieve Sustainable Development Goals and to enhance cooperative federalism by fostering the involvement of State Governments of India in the economic policy-making process using a bottom-up approach.

Composition of NITI Aayog:

• Chairperson: Prime Minister of India as the Chairperson.
• Governing Council comprising the Chief Ministers of all the States and Lt. Governors of Union Territories.
• Regional Councils will be formed to address specific issues and contingencies impacting more than one state or a region. These will be formed for a specified tenure.
• The Regional Councils will be convened by the Prime Minister and will comprise of the Chief Ministers of States and Lt. Governors of Union Territories in the region. These will be chaired by the Chairperson of the NITI Aayog or his nominee.
• Experts, specialists and practitioners with relevant domain knowledge as special invitees nominated by the Prime Minister.