INDIA INNOVATION INDEX, 2022

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Context

Karnataka has bagged the top rank in NITI Aayog’s India Innovation Index, 2022.

About

Prepared by NITI Aayog and the Institute for Competitiveness, the India Innovation Index is a comprehensive tool for the evaluation and development of the country's innovation ecosystem. It ranks the states and the union territories on their innovation performance to build healthy competition amongst them.

2022 Report

Manipur secured the lead in the Northeast and Hill States category, while Chandigarh was the top performer in the Union Territories and City States category.
Karnataka has held first position, under the Major States category, in all three editions of the Index so far.
Karnataka was followed by Telangana, Haryana, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Bihar and Gujarat were at the bottom of the index.
Pointing out that India’s average innovation score is insufficient, given the country’s ambitious targets to be named among the top 25 nations in the Global Innovation Index, the report has recommended some measures such as: increasing Gross Domestic Expenditure on R&D (GDERD), promoting private sector participation in R&D and closing the gap between industry demand and what the country produces through its education systems.
Finding: countries that spend less on GDERD fail to retain their human capital in the long run and the ability to innovate is dependent on the quality of human capital; India’s GDERD as a percentage of GDP stood at about 0.7%.
Therefore, GDERD needs considerable improvement and should touch at least 2%, which would play an instrumental role in India achieving the goal of 5 trillion economy. The private sector needs to pick up pace in R&D.
Public expenditure is productive up to some extent; once the growth follows a trajectory, it is desirable to shift to R&D mostly drive by the private sector. Therefore, it is important for India to find that inflexion point after which private sector takes over the government sector.