Sustainable development: NITI Aayog set to take up financing exercise with ‘historically backward’ states

The Indian Express

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.
“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.
NITI Aayog has already begun estimating the financial cost of achieving “key” SDGs in collaboration with the International Monetary Fund, stated the report. “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,” it stated.
“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,” it added.
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,” stated the report. “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,” it added.
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, according to the report, which adds that “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,” as per the report. India will be presenting its second Voluntary National Review during the United Nations’ High Level Political Forum in July 2020.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

India Joins Russia in Voting Against West-Backed Move to Expand Powers of OPCW

The Wire: June 28, 2018 New Delhi: India voted against a UK-backed move that will allow the global chemical weapons watchdog to apportion blame for illegal attacks, criticising the decision to grant “unchecked powers” to the head of the group which could be used for “partisan” purposes. On Wednesday, more than two-thirds of the member states of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) voted to authorise the international body to identify the perpetrators and sponsors of a chemical weapons attack. It also specifically called on the OPCW’s technical secretariat to begin work on identifying the perpetrators behind the use of chemical weapons in Syria. The draft decision, sponsored by 30 countries, was adopted at the fourth special session of the conference of the states parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention at the Hague, with 82 in favour and 24 negative votes. While Europe, the United States and their allies voted ‘yes’, there was strong oppo...
Read more

As financial insecurity rises in urban India, so does investment in insurance

Image
Scroll.in March 13, 2020 Urban Indians are becoming less confident about their financial security. Up to 58% of them fret over financial independence post retirement, which is a 4% increase from last year. An equal share of urban Indians worry about meeting their daily medical expenses and sustaining their current lifestyle once they stop working. The findings are part of a survey published by Delhi-based Max Life Insurance in association with London-based consultancy Kantar. The firms surveyed 7,014 respondents in 25 cities, including six metros, nine tier-1 cities, and 10 tier-2 cities, between December 2019 and January 2020. Source: Max Life Insurance via Quartz The trends Source: Max Life Insurance via Quartz Source: Max Life Insurance via Quartz Source: Max Life Insurance via Quartz A significant share of urban Indians also say their families will have no financial support in the event of the breadwinner’s death. In such a scenario, around 57% believe the family sav...
Read more

ED tracks Swiss Bank A/Cs of Agusta scamster

The Poineer February 10,2019 Rakesh K Singh The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has tracked a dozen Swiss bank accounts in the name of Rajiv Saxena, who is key accused in the Rs 3,600 crore AgustaWestland VVIP chopper scam. The ED has also found out accounts held by  his family members and associates where the kickbacks in the now scrapped deal were allegedly parked. Two bank accounts are in the name of Rajiv Saxena’s  associates Pankaj Jain and Sumita Jain who are also the authorised signatories. The  third is in the name of another associate Ajit Singh Bubber, but Rajiv and his family members are authorised signatories. The remaining nine accounts are largely owned and operated by Rajiv, his family members and associates. Rajiv Saxena was deported by the UAE authorities on January 30 and the ED formally arrested him the next day and a court later granted his remand to the agency. He is currently undergoing custodial interrogation by the ED. The agency had in 2017...
Read more