In the recent months various government bodies have released data on different socio-economic parameters. The Annual PLFS report 2017-18 which focuses on employment scenario have been published in the end of May, 2019. This report not only talks about the employment-unemployment scenario across the country, it also gives a view on education attainment across individuals. The NITI Aayog has published the Healthy State Progressive India report on health index. The per capita GDP across various states of the country is provided by CSO. With all of this data available let us look into how major Indian states have performed across various socio -economic parameters.
Composite Index
IPD has created a composite index across major 18 states of the country, which in total account for 502 seats in Loksabha out of a total of 543 seats, based on the above mentioned data sources. Four important dimensions were considered for creating the composite index. The four dimensions are education, health, per capita NSDP and unemployment. The index ranges from 0 to 100, 100 being the best.
Maharashtra tops the list followed by Kerala and Gujarat. While Maharashtra has been consistent across all the four dimensions of the index, Kerala has out performed the other states in terms of its performance in education and health outcomes. Gujarat on the other hand had the lowest urban unemployment rate. Two of the most populous states of India; Bihar and Uttar Pradesh hold the bottom two position in terms of the composite index.
What has been the drivers for each of the dimensions of the composite index? Let us look into this.
Education
The Annual PLFS report gives the literacy rates for male and female separately across different states of the country. Also the percentage of male and female attaining different levels of education is reported. For the composite index, ranking of states based on literacy rate separately for male and female and the ranking of states based on percentage of people attaining secondary or above education separately for male and female is considered.
Kerala holds the top spot in three of the four measures of education with Maharashtra topping in terms of percentage of male attaining education above secondary level.
While Assam has one of the highest literacy rates for both male and female, it also has one of the lowest percentage of males attaining secondary education and above. The reverse is the case for Telangana.
Health
NITI Aayog published the Healthy State Progressive India report which gives the health index across states and union territories. This measure is used for the above mentioned composite index.
Similar to education, Kerala holds the top position in terms of the Health Index. The erstwhile economically backward states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Odhisa hold the bottom three position.
Per Capita NSDP
The Central Statistical Organization reports the per capita NSDP for different states of India. For the composite index the per capita NSDP numbers as of 2016-17 has been used as the information for all the major 18 states were available.
Haryana has the highest per capita GDP among the states followed by Maharashtra and Kerala. It needs to be noted that Kerala hold top position in education and health also. Maharashtra is also among the top states in terms of education and fourth in terms of health. Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have the lowest per capita NSDP among all the states.
Unemployment
The recently published Annual Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), 2017-18 reports the unemployment rate for all states and union territories. As the overall unemployment rate has significantly increased, same phenomenon is witnessed across all states and union territories. Certain states have unemployment rates below the national average , while certain other states have unemployment rates higher than the national average. For the composite index rural and urban unemployment rates for both male and female separately has been considered.
Gujarat has the lowest unemployment rate in urban India for both male and female. Kerala on the other hand has the highest unemployment rate for both rural and urban female. Hatyana, which has the highest per capita NSDP reports to have one of the highest unemployment rate in rural India.
Indian Political Debate 
One comment