SPR 2020: Indices in News part-1

About: 

• The SDG India Index has been developed in collaboration with the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), the United Nations in India, and the Global Green Growth Institute. 
• It comprehensively tracks the progress of all States and UTs on 100 indicators drawn from the MoSPI’s National Indicator Framework (NIF). 
• It has been constructed spanning across 16 out of 17 SDGs with a qualitative assessment on SDG 17.
• NITI Aayog has the twin mandate to oversee the implementation of SDGs in the country and promote competitive and cooperative federalism among States and UTs.
• The SDG India Index acts as a bridge between these mandates.

Classification criteria based on SDG India Index score is as follows:

• Aspirant: 0–49
• Performer: 50–64
• Front Runner: 65–99
• Achiever: 100

Performance: 

• India’s composite score has improved from 57 in 2018 to 60 in 2019, thereby showing noticeable progress.
• The maximum gains have been made in:
  • Goal 6 (clean water and sanitation),
  • Goal 9 (industry, innovation, and infrastructure) and
  • Goal 7 (affordable and clean energy).
• All three states that were in the ‘Aspirant’ category-Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Assam-have graduated to the ‘Performer’ category.
• Five states-Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Goa, and Sikkim- moved up from the ‘Performer’ category to the ‘Front Runner’ category.
• Kerala achieved the first rank in the composite SDG Index with a score of 70, followed by Himachal Pradesh at 69.
• Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Tamil Nadu ranked at the third position with the score of 67.
• The biggest improvers since 2018 are UP (which has moved from the 29th position to the 23rd), Orissa (23rd to 15th), and Sikkim (15th to 7th).
• While Bihar improved its score from 48 in 2018 to 50 in 2019, it still has a long way to go in achieving the targets.

About:

• The Good Governance Day was observed on 25th Dec to mark the birth anniversary of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
• On this occasion 2019,  a number of initiatives were taken by the government viz. the launch of Atal Bhujal Yojana (ATAL JAL), naming of the tunnel under Rohtang Pass as Atal Tunnel and the launch of Good Governance Index (GGI).
• The Index assesses the impact of various interventions taken up by the State Government and UTs.
• The States and UTs are divided into three groups- the Big States, North-East and Hill States, and Union Territories.

Objectives:

• Provide quantifiable data to compare the State of Governance in the States and UTs.
• Enable States and UTs to formulate and implement suitable strategies for improving governance.
• Shift to result-oriented approaches and administration.

The GGI takes into consideration the following ten sectors:

1. Agriculture and Allied Sectors,
2. Commerce & Industries,
3. Human Resource Development,
4. Public Health,
5. Public Infrastructure & Utilities,
6. Economic Governance,
7. Social Welfare & Development,
8. Judicial & Public Security,
9. Environment
10. Citizen-Centric Governance

Major Findings:

• Big States: Tamil Nadu topped the index followed by Maharashtra, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh whereas Odisha, Bihar, Goa, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand are poor performers.
• North-East and Hill States: Himachal Pradesh ranked first, followed by Uttarakhand, Tripura, Mizoram and Sikkim. Jammu and Kashmir, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland, and Arunachal Pradesh are the worst performers in this group.
• Union Territories: Puducherry is the best-governed UT followed by Chandigarh and Delhi. Lakshadweep is the worst performing UT.

About:

• The index is developed by BEE in association with Alliance for an Energy-Efficient Economy (AEEE).
• The first State Energy Efficiency Preparedness Index was launched in 2018. 

Parameters:

• The Index tracks the progress of Energy Efficiency (EE) initiatives in states and union territories based on 97 significant indicators.
• Assessment is based on their efforts and achievements in policy and regulation, financing mechanisms, institutional capacity, adoption of energy efficiency measures and energy savings achieved.
• The index incorporates qualitative, quantitative and outcome-based indicators to assess energy efficiency initiatives, programs and outcomes in five distinct sectors – buildings, industry, municipalities, transport, agriculture, and DISCOMs.
• The 2019 index has included new indicators like the adoption of Energy Conservation Building Code (ECBC) 2017, energy efficiency in MSME clusters, etc.
• The index categorises states as ‘Front Runner’, ‘Achiever’, ‘Contender’ and ‘Aspirant’ based on their efforts and achievements towards energy efficiency implementation.

Major Findings:

• The top-performing states for 2019 are Haryana, Kerala and Karnataka, are in the ‘Achiever’ category.
• Manipur, Jammu & Kashmir, Jharkhand and Rajasthan performed the worst in the Aspirant groups.
• Since there isn’t state in the ‘Front runner’ category, it can be inferred that a lot more can be done at the state level to realise energy savings from energy efficiency.

International Index

About:

• The WEF published its first gender gap index in 2006.
• The Index aims to serve as a compass to track progress on relative gaps between women and men on health, education, economy and politics.
• Through this annual yardstick, the stakeholders within each country are able to set priorities relevant in each specific economic, political and cultural context.

Parameters:

• The Global Gender Gap Index benchmarks 153 countries on their progress towards gender parity across four pillars-
  1. economic opportunity,
  2. political empowerment,
  3. educational attainment, and
  4. health and survival.
• Over the Index, the highest possible score is 1 (equality) and the lowest possible score is 0 (inequality).

Global Performance:

• Globally, the average (population-weighted) distance completed to gender parity is at 68.6%, which is an improvement since the last edition.
• The largest gender disparity is in political empowerment.
• The second-largest gap is on Economic Participation and Opportunity.
• Progress towards closing the Educational Attainment and Health and Survival gaps is more advanced.
• Iceland has been the frontrunner on the Global Gender Gap Index for 11 years in a row.
• It has closed almost 88% of its gender gap, followed by Nordic neighbours Norway, Finland and Sweden.
• Yemen is ranked the worst (153rd), while Iraq is 152nd and Pakistan 151st.

India's Performance:

• India has slipped to the 112th spot from its 108th position in the last edition.
• India was ranked relatively higher at 98th place in the 2006 Report.
• India has been ranked below countries like China (106th), Sri Lanka (102nd), Nepal (101st), Brazil (92nd), Indonesia (85th) and Bangladesh (50th).
• Performance on Four Indicators:
  • India has improved to 18th place on political empowerment but it has slipped to 150th on health and survival, to 149th in terms of economic participation and opportunity and to 112th place for educational attainment.
  • Among the 153 countries studied, India is the only country where the economic gender gap (0.354) is larger than the political gender gap (0.411).
  • India is among the countries with very low women representation on company boards (13.8%), while it was even worse in China (9.7%).
  • On health and survival, four large countries- Pakistan, India, Vietnam and China- fare badly with millions of women there not getting the same access to health as men.

About:

• CCPI is an annual publication designed by the German environmental and development organisation Germanwatch e.V.
• It is published in cooperation with the New Climate Institute and Climate Action Network International and with financial support from Barthel Foundation.
• Its aim is to put political and social pressure on those countries that have, until now, failed to take ambitious action on climate protection and to highlight those countries with best-practice climate policies.
• It evaluates the climate protection performance of 60 countries, responsible for over 90% of global energy-related CO2 emissions.
• First published in 2005 and an updated version is presented at the UN Climate Change Conference annually. 
• CCPI 2020 was released at the ‘COP 25’ climate change conference in the Spanish capital Madrid.
• In 2017, the underlying methodology of the CCPI was revised and adapted to the new climate policy framework of the Paris Agreement from 2015.
• The CCPI was extended in order to include the measurement of a country’s progress towards the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and the country’s 2030 targets.

Parameters:

• The national performances are assessed based on 14 indicators in the following four categories:
  1. GHG Emissions (weighting 40%).
  2. Renewable Energy (weighting 20%).
  3. Energy Use (weighting 20%).
  4. Climate Policy (weighting 20%).

The categories “GHG Emissions”, “ Renewable Energy” and “Energy Use” are each defined by four indicators:

1. Current Level
2. Past Trend
3. Well-Below-2°C Compatibility of the Current Level
4. Well-Below-2°C Compatibility of the Countries’ 2030 Target.

Global Performance:

• No country performs well enough in all index categories to achieve an overall very high rating in the index.
• Therefore, once again the first three ranks of the overall ranking remain empty.
• Only two G20 countries rank among high performers (UK and India), while eight G20 countries rank under very low performers.
• Eight EU countries rank under high performers, while the EU as a whole falls six places and ranks under the group of medium performers in this year’s index.

Top three:

• Sweden is leading tHe group of high performing countries, as it has in the past two years.
• Denmark moves up ten ranks to become the second-best performing country in this year’s CCPI.
• Morocco falls one place in the overall ranking but keeps its overall high performance.

Bottom three:

• Chinese Taipei falls three places and now ranks 59th.
• Saudi Arabia still ranks very low, but for the first time does not occupy the bottom rank of the index.
• The United States, after falling three positions in last year’s ranking, continues the downwards trend, sinking to the bottom of the ranking.

India's Performance:

• India ranks 9th in this year’s CCPI.
• India is walking the talk by cutting down emission intensity by 21 per cent of its GDP.
• Moreover, it is on track to achieve the goal of 35% emission reduction as promised in the Paris summit in 2015.
• While India has stayed true to its commitments on reducing its carbon footprint, advanced nations like the United States have been included in the worst-performing countries for the first time.

About:

• HDI is part of the Human Development Report published annually by UNDP.
• It is a statistical tool used to measure a country’s overall achievement in its social and economic dimensions.
• The focus of the 2019 Report is on ‘Inequality in Human Development’.

Indicators:

• Human Development Index is scored using indicators including
  1. expectancy,
  2. per capita income, and
  3. education.
• Nations that rank higher on this index have a higher level of education, a higher lifespan, and a higher gross national income per capita than nations with a lower score.
• HDI is ranked on a scale from 0 to 1.0, with 1.0 being the highest human development.
• HDI is broken down into four tiers: very high human development (0.8-1.0), high human development (0.7-0.79), medium human development (0.55-.70), and low human development (below 0.55).

The other indices that form the part of the 2019 Report are:

• Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI),
• Gender Development Index (GDI),
• Gender Inequality Index (GII) and
• Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI).

Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index

• The IHDI indicates percentage loss in HDI due to inequality.
• As the number of people coming out of poverty is increasing, the world is veering towards another type of poverty.
• The old inequalities were based on access to health services and education whereas the next generation of poverty is based on technology, education and climate.
• India’s position worsened by one position to 130 (as compared to the HDI Index 2019- 129) with a score of 0.477.
• Although, the IHDI score has improved from 0.468 in 2018.

Gender Development Index

• GDI measures disparities on the HDI by gender.
• India is only marginally better than the South Asian average on the Gender Development Index (0.829 vs 0.828).

Gender Inequality Index

• GII presents a composite measure of gender inequality using three dimensions:
  1. Reproductive health,
  2. Empowerment and
  3. The labour market.

Multidimensional Poverty Index

• MPI captures the multiple deprivations that people in developing countries face in their health, education and standard of living.

Global Performance:

• Norway, Switzerland, Ireland occupied the top three positions in that order.
• Germany is placed fourth along with Hong Kong, and Australia secured the fifth rank on the global ranking.
• Among India’s neighbours, Sri Lanka (71) and China (85) are higher up the rank scale while Bhutan (134), Bangladesh (135), Myanmar (145), Nepal (147), Pakistan (152) and Afghanistan (170) were ranked lower on the list.
• The least developed country in the world with the lowest HDI is Niger, with an HDI of .354.

India’s Performance:

• India’s HDI value increased by 50% (from 0.431 to 0.647), which places it above the average for other South Asian countries (0.642).
• In India, between 1990 and 2018, life expectancy at birth increased by 11.6 years, mean years of schooling increased by 3.5 years and expected years of schooling increased by 4.7 years. Per capita incomes rose by over 250%.
• In GII, India is at 122 out of 162 countries.
• Neighbours China (39), Sri Lanka (86), Bhutan (99), Myanmar (106) were placed above India.
• Despite lifting 271 million people out of poverty between 2005-15, India accounts for 28% of the 1.3 billion multidimensional poor.

About:

• The Democracy Index (began in 2006) provides a snapshot of the state of democracy worldwide in 165 independent states and two territories.
• The Economist Intelligence Unit is the research and analysis division of The Economist Group, which is the sister company to The Economist newspaper.

Parameters:

• The Index is based on five categories:
  1. Electoral process and pluralism.
  2. Civil liberties.
  3. The functioning of government.
  4. Political participation.
  5. Political culture.
• The countries are scored on a scale of 0 to 10 on 60 indicators within the above categories.
• Based on their scores, each country is classified as one of four types of regimes:
  • Full democracy (scores greater than 8);
  • Flawed democracy (greater than 6 and up to 8);
  • Hybrid regime (greater than 4 and up to 6); and
  • Authoritarian regime (less than or equal to 4).

Global Performance:

• The average global score has fallen from 5.48 in 2018 to 5.44 in 2019. This is the worst average global score since 2006.
• There are only 22 “full democracies” as compared to 54 “authoritarian regimes” and as many “flawed democracies”.
• Almost one-half (48.4%) of the world’s population live in a democracy of some sort, although only 5.7% reside in a “full democracy”, down from 8.9% in 2015 as a result of the US being demoted from a “full democracy” to a “flawed democracy” in 2016.
• The total score of some 68 countries declined from 2018, but almost as many (65) recorded an improvement.
• Thailand registered the biggest improvement in score owing to an election in March 2019, which was the first since the military coup d’état in May 2014.
• China registered the greatest decline because of discrimination against minorities, especially in Xinjiang, and digital surveillance of the population.

India's Performance:

• In 2019, India slipped 10 places to 51st position.
• India’s score is down from 7.23 in 2018 to 6.90 in 2019. This is the lowest score since 2006.
• It is placed in the “flawed democracy” category, which also includes Bangladesh (5.88).
• Flawed democracies are countries that hold free and fair elections and where basic civil liberties are respected but have significant weaknesses in aspects of democracy, such as problems in governance, an underdeveloped political culture and low levels of political participation.

About:

• It is a composite index that draws from 12 surveys to rank nations around the globe.
• It has become a benchmark gauge of perceptions of corruption and is used by analysts and investors.
• First launched in 1995, the Index has been widely credited with putting the issue of corruption on the international policy agenda.
• It uses a scale of zero to 100, where zero is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean.

Global performance:

• More than two-thirds of countries score below 50 on this year’s CPI, with an average score of just 43.
• A majority of countries are showing little to no improvement in tackling corruption.
• In the last eight years, only 22 countries significantly improved their CPI scores, including Greece, Guyana and Estonia.
• In the same period, among the 21 countries that saw a significant fall in their scores are Canada, Australia and Nicaragua.
• In the remaining 137 countries, the levels of corruption show little to no change.
• Corruption is more pervasive in countries:
  • where money can flow freely into electoral campaigns and
  • where governments only listen to the voices of wealthy or well-connected individuals.
• The vibrant economic powers like China (41), Indonesia (40), Vietnam (37), the Philippines (34) and others continue to struggle to tackle corruption.
• The reasons include keeping decision-making out of public scrutiny and silencing dissenting voices.

Top Rankers:

• New Zealand and Denmark, with scores of 87 each, followed by Finland (86), Singapore (85), Sweden (85) and Switzerland (85).

Bottom Rankers:

• The countries ranked at the bottom of the list are Somalia, South Sudan and Syria with scores of 9, 12 and 13 respectively.

India’s Performance:

• India’s score of 41 out of 100 remains the same as that in 2018.
• It has been ranked at number 80.
• The rank is also shared by China, Benin, Ghana, and Morocco.
• In democracies like India, unfair and opaque political financing, undue influence in decision-making and lobbying by powerful corporate interest groups, has resulted in stagnation or decline in the control of corruption.

About:

• It was started in 2013 with an annual benchmarking report that measures the ability of countries to compete for talent, their ability to grow, attract and retain talent.
• The theme for 2020 was ‘Global Talent in the Age of Artificial Intelligence’.
• It explores how the development of artificial intelligence (AI) is not only changing the nature of work but also forcing a re-evaluation of workplace practices, corporate structures and innovation ecosystems.

Parameters:

• The GTCI report covers national and organisational parameters and generates insights to inspire action
• It covered 70 variables for this the year 2020.
• GTCI 2020 has compared performances of the countries over two three-year periods: 2015–2017 against 2018–2020
• Input-Output model is used to conclude this index; which is composed of 6 pillars:

Global performance:

• The report noted that the gap between high income, talent-rich nations and the rest of the world is widening.
• A similar gap is also seen in the universe of artificial intelligence.
• AI talent is scarce and unequally distributed across industries, sectors, and nations.
• More than half of the population in the developing world lack basic digital skills.
• Some developing countries (e.g., China, Costa Rica, and Malaysia) can become talent champions in their respective regions.
• Switzerland topped the list of 132 nations, followed by the US and Singapore.

India's performance:

• India is placed at no. 72.
• Although more could be done to improve the country’s educational system (68th in Formal Education), India’s key strength relates to growing (44th) talent, due to its levels of lifelong learning (40th) and access to growth opportunities (39th).
• India's GTCI score and GDP per capita are both lower than the other emerging market economies such as BRICS – Brazil (80th), Russia (48th), China (42nd), and South Africa (70th).
• The country’s highest-ranked sub-pillar is employability, but the ability to match labour market demand and supply stands in contrast to the country’s poor mid-level skills.
• India faces the challenge of attracting and retaining talent and hence can be labelled talent mover.

About:

• Henley & Partners, the residence and citizenship planning firm has published the HPI for 2020 according to the number of destinations the respective passport holders can access without a prior visa.
• The Henley Passport Index was launched in 2006 with the aim of providing a global picture of freedom of travelling.

Parameters:

• The ranking is based on exclusive data from the International Air Transport Association (IATA), which maintains the world’s largest and most accurate database of travel information and enhanced by the Henley & Partners Research Department.
• The Index lists the world’s passports “according to the number of destinations their holders can access without a prior visa”.
• The index includes 199 different passports and 227 different travel destinations.

Global performance:

• Japan has the world’s strongest passport whereas Afghanistan (107th rank) has the weakest.
• Japan has been topping the Index for three years continuously.
• Its citizens are able to access 191 destinations without having to obtain a visa in advance.
• Singapore, in second place (same as in 2019), has a visa-free/visa-on-arrival score of 190.
• Germany is No. 3 (same position as in 2019), with access to 189 destinations;
• The USA and the UK both countries are in eighth place in 2020; a significant decline from the rank 1 they jointly held in 2015.
• The top 10 most powerful passports for 2020 are Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Germany, Italy, Finland, Spain, USA and UK, Luxembourg, Denmark.

India's performance: 

• The Indian passport is closer to the bottom, ranked 84th in the world.
• This translates into visa-free access to 58 destinations, including 33 which give Indians visas on arrival.
• Twenty of the 58 visa-free access destinations in the 2020 list are in Africa and 11 each in Asia and the Caribbean.
• Serbia is the only European country to which Indian passport holders can travel visa-free.