Chief Executive Officer. NITI Aayog
India is the fastest growing major economy in the world today and is home to more than 1.3 billion people. The Prime Minister’s vision 2022 of ‘A New Inclusive India’ for poor, middle class and women is attainable if the accelerated and inclusive economic growth is led by innovation. Technology and innovation are at the heart of the transformation of India.
We have taken substantial steps towards transforming India towards an innovation-driven economy. The governments initiatives such as easing the business environment for start-ups, removing regulatory barriers for MSMEs, and building infrastructural platforms to facilitate technology solutions, to setting up 2000 tinkering labs in schools and 31 Atal Incubation Centres across the country are aimed at promoting a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship.
Taking another major step in this direction, NITI Aayog has come up with the India Innovation Index as a useful tool to analyse and enhance the innovation environment at the State level in India. The index examines both the conduciveness of the state environment to foster innovation and the results of its innovative practices. The index will be useful to states and union territories by benchmarking their performance against their peers to understand reasons for differential performance and devise better strategies towards creating an environment which fosters innovation.
NITI Aayog will continue to pursue such interventions that play an important role in developing cooperative and competitive federalism. I am sure this India Innovation Index will provide much-needed inputs and insights to the States / UT’s and encourage them to enhance their innovation eco-system in its entire facets viz. human capital, investment or IP environment.
I congratulate Dr. C. Murlikrishna Kumar, Sr. Consultant, NITI Aayog who led the process of bringing out this timely report. I must compliment the Knowledge partners, Institute for Competitiveness, stakeholders and the officials who have contributed to making this report.
