Context

• Recently the NITI Aayog with Institute for Competitiveness as the knowledge partner released the India Innovation Index (III) 2019. 

About the Index

• The Index is calculated as the average of the scores of its two dimensions Enablers and Performance.
• The Enablers are the factors that underpin innovative capacities, grouped into five pillars: Human Capital, Investment,  Knowledge Workers, Business Environment, and Safety and Legal Environment.
• The Performance dimension captures benefits that a nation derives from the inputs, divided into two pillars  Knowledge Output and Knowledge Diffusion.
• The objective is to create a holistic tool which can be used by policymakers across the country to identify the challenges to be addressed and strengths to build on when designing the economic growth policies for their regions.
• The states have been bifurcated into three categories: the Major States, North-East & Hill states, and Union territories/City-States/Small States.
• Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh are the most efficient states in translating inputs into output. 
• Karnataka is the most innovative major state in India. Karnataka’s number one position in the overall ranking is partly attributed to its top rank in the Performance dimension.

• Among the major states, Maharashtra performs the best in the dimension of Enablers. Sikkim and Delhi take the top spots among the northeastern & hill states, and union territories/city-states/small states respectively.

Source: PIB