India Innovation Index 2019

• 18 Oct 2019

NITI (National Institution for Transforming India) Ayog with the Institute for Competitiveness has released the India Innovation Index 2019.

• The index, developed on the lines of the Global Innovation Index, would help the innovation ecosystem of Indian states and Union Territories (UTs) to design policies to drive innovation across regions.
  
  • For a country as large as India, the state of innovation needs to be understood at the regional level for effective policy formulation.
  • Based on the index each state needs to formulate its own policy, based on its unique resources and strengths and which caters to its specific needs.
• The index goes beyond traditional approaches for measuring innovation such as patents per million of population, publication in scientific journals, percentage of GDP spending on research and adds parameters that are specific to the Indian economy (eg. Demographic dividend), to give it a more holistic coverage.
• The India Innovation Index 2019 is calculated as the average of the scores of its two dimensions - Enablers and Performance.
  
  • The Enablers examine innovative capacities: Human Capital, Investment, Knowledge Workers, Business Environment, and Safety and Legal Environment.
  • The Performance captures benefits that a nation derives from the inputs: Knowledge Output and Knowledge Diffusion.

Key Findings

• The states have been bifurcated into three categories:
  
  • Major states,
  • North-east and hill states,
  • Union territories/Small states
• Karnataka emerged topper in the overall rankings in the category of major states. with Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra in the second and third positions.
  
  • Karnataka’s top position is partly attributed to its top rank in the Performance dimension.
  • It is also among the top performers in Infrastructure, Knowledge Workers, Knowledge Output and Business Environment.
• Maharashtra performs the best in the dimension of Enablers.
  
  • This implies that it has the best enabling environment for innovation, even though the state comes in at the third position in the overall innovation index.
• The top ten major states are majorly concentrated in southern and western India.
• Among the North-Eastern states and Union territories, Sikkim and Delhi occupy the top spots respectively.
• Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh are the most efficient states in translating inputs into output.
• In terms of attracting investment, Karnataka topped the index among major states, followed by Maharashtra, Haryana, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Telangana, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh.
  
  • Bihar, Jharkhand, and Punjab were the least attractive states for investment.
  • Among North East and the Hill States, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, and Tripura were the top three states; while among the UTs, Lakshadweep, Delhi and Goa were the top three regions.

Way Forward

• There is a need to broaden and improve the capability of top rung educational institutions in the country to produce greater innovation outputs.
• Increased spending on research and development with greater collaboration between the industry and educational institutions may help to enhance innovation capability.
• A collaborative platform consisting of all the stakeholders of innovation - innovators, researchers, and investors from the industry should be developed.
  
  • It will help to strengthen the industry-academia linkages and will ease the process of technology transfer by providing a platform for innovators to showcase their inventions.

Source: PIB