INDIA AND SDG GOALS – INTERNATIONAL
News: India,
its SDG pledge goal, and the strategy to apply
What's in the news?
● The
Prime Minister addressed the first meeting of Finance Ministers and Central
Bank Governors under India’s G20 Presidency (held on February 24-25, 2023).
● He
expressed concern that “progress on
Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) seems to be slowing down”.
SDG Framework and India:
● The
SDGs framework sets targets for 231
unique indicators across 17 SDG goals related to economic development,
social welfare and environmental sustainability, to be met by 2030.
● India’s progress
(On 33 welfare indicators, covering nine SDGs) - India is ‘On-Target’ to
meeting 14 of the 33 SDGs, including indicators for:
○ neonatal
and under-five mortality
○ full
vaccination
○ improved
sanitation
○ electricity
access.
Positives:
● Indicators
such as eliminating adolescent
pregnancy, reducing multidimensional poverty, and women having bank accounts
have improved across a vast majority of the districts between the years 2016
and 2021.
Issues:
● The
national ‘On-Target’ designation does not apply equally across all districts.
Neonatal and under-five mortality
are currently both ‘On-Target’ for the country, 286 and 208 districts (out of
707 districts), respectively, are not.
● Significant
progress on access to improved
sanitation excludes 129 districts that are not on course to meet this SDG
indicator.
● 19
of the 33 SDG indicators, the current pace of improvement is not enough to meet
SDG targets.
● Despite
a national policy push for clean fuel
for cooking, more than two-thirds (479) of districts remain ‘Off-Target’.
Some 415 and 278 districts are ‘Off-Target’ for improved water and handwashing
facilities.
● Major concerns regarding
women - No district in India has yet succeeded
in eliminating the practice of girl child marriage before the legal age of 18
years.
● At
the current pace, more than three-fourths (539) of districts will not be able
to reduce the prevalence of girl child
marriage to the SDG target of 5 (0.5%) by 2030.
● Critical
and related indicators such as teenage
pregnancy (15-19 years) and partner violence (physical and sexual)
continues.
● Despite
the overall expansion of mobile phone
access in India (93% of households), only 56% women report owning a mobile
phone, with 567 districts remaining ‘OffTarget’.
Reasons for India's Poor Performance:
1. Slow world growth rate:
● To
reach the SDGs, the world needs to grow by 2.5 percentage points every year.
But the world has only grown by 0.36 percentage points up to 2021. This is
almost seven times slower than the United States.
● The
covid pandemic stopped all progress around the world from 2019 to 2021.
2. Impossible to focus:
● Having
169 aims is like having no priorities, so promising everything makes it
impossible to focus. Most countries are either not able or not willing to set
aside enough money to keep all their promises.
3. Worsening period:
● According
to the Lancet report many districts will never meet the targets on the SDGs
even after 2030 due to a worsening trend observed between 2016 and 2021.
4. Financing SDGs:
● SDG
targets like zero hunger, poverty etc require significant investments to
eliminate them.
● Being
home to one-third of the world’s 1.2 billion extremely poor, the Indian
government alone cannot fund these SDG targets.
5. Monitoring & Ownership of Implementation
Process:
● Although
NITI Aayog is expected to play an important role, the members of the Aayog have
expressed their concerns time and again about the limited manpower they have to
handle such a Herculean task.
Initiatives taken by India to achieve SDG Targets:
1. JAM trinity
- Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and mobile proved to be helpful in forming the Digital
Public Goods (DPGs) and Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) which would be
helpful in driving financial inclusion and helping improve benefits targeting
which have been crucial to India’s progress on SDG 1, namely No Poverty.
2.
The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) is being used to give unskilled workers jobs and raise
their standard of living.
3.
The National Food Security Act is
being used to make sure that food grains are subsidized.
4.
Healthcare sector initiatives which
are helpful in achieving sustainable development goals are – The Rashtriya
Kishor Swasthya Karyakram, Ayushman Bharat, National digital health mission
(NDHM), etc.
5.
Government of India has taken several steps to mitigate the effects of climate change, like – National Action Plan
on Climate Change (NAPCC), National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), National
Cyclone Risk Mitigation Project (NCRMP), The Net Zero Commitment.
6.
The government also supports the 10-Year
Framework Programme on Sustainable Consumption and Production. For that the
Ministry has published a draft notification of regulation on Extended Producer
Responsibility (EPR) for Waste Tyre for receiving comments from the public and
‘Guidelines on the EPR for Plastic Packaging’ under Plastic Waste Management
Rules, 2016 has been notified.
7.
Apart from the above-mentioned initiative, other
initiatives include the Swachh Bharat mission, Beti Bacho Beti Padhao,
Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, Smart Cities, Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, Deen
Dayal Upadhyay Gram Jyoti Yojana and Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, among
others.
8.
NITI Aayog “SDG India Index” - It is
the world’s first government-led sub-national measure of SDG development. It
was launched in 2018 and has been developed to capture the progress of all
states and union territories (UTs) in their journey towards achieving the SDGs.
This index is based on the idea of cooperative and competitive federalism,
which says that action needs to be taken at all levels. The index shows how the
Global Goals of the 2030 Agenda cover a wide range of issues while also taking
into account national priorities.
WAY FORWARD:
1. Appraisal of the policies and programs:
● India
needs to urgently conduct an appraisal of the policies and programs that relate
to SDGs, especially those that relate to four SDG targets relating to no
poverty, zero hunger, good health and well-being and gender equality.
2. Identifying and prioritizing districts:
● On
critical indicators of health and social determinants of health, there is a
need for a greater degree of precision in identifying and prioritizing
districts for intervention. Meeting these goals will require prioritizing and
targeting specific areas within India
3. Inter-ministerial initiatives:
● Since
the different SDGs fall under tightly organized ministries, there is a need to
establish inter-ministerial initiatives, with clear governance structures under
the Prime Minister’s Office. Similar structures could be developed at the state
level under the respective chief minister’s office.
4. Conduct economic cost-benefit analysis:
● This
will aid in setting priorities and directing more resources to the policy that
offers the greatest return for each additional rupee spent.