Chandigarh second best among UTs on innovation index

Naina Mishra
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, January 22

Chandigarh has been ranked second among UTs with the innovation score of 38.57 in the ‘India Innovation Index 2020’ released by NITI Aayog. Delhi has retained the top rank.

The city was ranked fifth in the 2019 index.

The overall rank of Chandigarh is third in the country after Delhi and Karnataka. It replaced Tamil Nadu on the position to become a new entrant to the top ranks.

Chandigarh has outperformed the other states in four indicators each of human capital, knowledge workers and safety and legal environment, but has underperformed in knowledge diffusion, which reflects the degree to which a state can develop and apply knowledge to increase the value-added components and move toward an innovation-driven economy.

Chandigarh emerged as the best performer with a score of 74.82 in human capital, owing to the high enrolment rate in PhD programs and provision of quality education in schools and colleges. With 40.74 per cent of institutions in the city having grade A and above in the NAAC, it topped the ranking in this indicator.

The India Innovation Index relies on two dimensions, ‘Enablers’ and ‘Performance’, and within each dimension are pillars. There are five ‘enabler’ pillars that capture elements of the state economy that act as inputs for the innovation environment – human capital, investment, knowledge workers, business environment and safety and legal environment. Besides, there are two ‘performance’ pillars that include knowledge output and knowledge diffusion. Each pillar comprises relevant indicators.