Journal of Global Resources
doi.org/10.46587/JGR.2020.v06i02.012

Volume 6 (02)

July 2020
Page 81-91
ISSN: 2395-3160 (Print), 2455-2445 (Online)

12
ASSESSING THE PROGRESS OF INDIA TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENTGOALS BY 2030
Radhika Bhanja1 and Koel Roychowdhury2
1
Research Scholar, 2Assistant Professor,
Department of Geography, Presidency University, Kolkata (West Bengal) India
Email: koel.geog@presiuniv.ac.in. radhika.rs@presiuniv.ac.in
Abstract: The United Nations has taken an important decision to go forward with pursuingsustainable development by introducing the 2030 Global Agenda in 2015. The Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs) are universal policy agenda to envisage a world free of poverty,
hunger, disease and violence, where all forms of life can thrive and promises to build a safe,
resilient and sustainable world. To assess the performance of India in achieving sustainability
by 2030, the study aims to understand how far India is from achieving SDGs at both the nationaland subnational level. In this study, the present status of India’s primary targets of SDGs isanalyzed with the help of a composite index. A cluster analysis was also performed to examine
the region-specific and issue-specific problems of sustainable development in India. At the subnational level, 14 out of 29 states have performed well in the composite index. This study has
identified the arenas India needs to focus on to achieve sustainability by 2030.
Key words: SDG, Cluster Analysis, Region-Specific Problem, Issue-Specific Problems
Introduction
The concept of sustainability dates back many centuries. However, with the recent global
awareness of the fact that the impact of human interventions on nature is out-weighing its
renewal process, this idea has been incorporated in the global political agenda (Leal Filho et al.,2018). So much so, that the United Nations in 2015 proposed a set of 17 goals with 169 targets
popularly known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030 by allits member states. Prior to this, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were incorporated
between 2000 and 2015. MDGs consist of eight goals to reduce poverty, and child mortality,
HIV/AIDS and other diseases, improve maternal health, promote education, gender equality andto conserve the environment, and promote global partnership among nations. The MDGs werestructured to achieve positive trajectories of social and economic development by initiating aninternational consensus among both rich and poor countries to improve the lives of the poorest
people in the world (Fukuda-Parr, 2004). Although many countries have achieved remarkableprogress in some indicators of MDGs, the progress is very uneven among different countries
and population groups. The SDGs, also known as the 2030 Agenda, on the other hand,
primarily aims to deliver more importance to the provision of food and water, inequality in the
distribution and allocation of resources, environmental problems and importance of policy
implementation as a means to achieve sustainability more effectively than the MDGs (Pradhan,
Costa, Rybski, Lucht, & Kropp, 2017).
In order to help policy-makers address various challenges of governing andimplementing the SDGs in a systematic manner, it is necessary to focus on the interactions
between different goals of SDGs. Concerns regarding proper monitoring and evaluation of the
progress of each SDG have surfaced (Lu, Nakicenovic, Visbeck, & Stevance, 2015; Reyers,
Stafford-Smith, Erb, Scholes, & Selomane, 2017). The poor performance of many East andSouth Asian countries in the SDG Index and Dashboard global report 2017 highlights their81

failure to provide adequate basic infrastructure, equality and environmental sustainability to its
population. In order to overcome these challenges, it has been recommended to device
practical metrics such as establishing monitoring mechanisms, choosing standards to evaluate
progress of each target and goal, increase infrastructure capacity to track progress in humandimensions and societal changes and finally to standardize the data for all nations to become
verifiable at high-level political forums (Allen, Metternicht, & Wiedmann, 2018)
According to the SDG Index and Dashboard global report 2017, India ranked 110 and
116 out of 157 nations in 2016 and 2017 respectively, behind Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and
China. Like many other developing countries, India’s role to promote sustainable development
has been overshadowed by the unavailability of basic infrastructure (Rao, 2015), rising foodinsecurity (Vani et al., 2017) and degrading environment quality (Gurjar, Ravindra, & Nagpure,2016). Panda & Mohanty (2018) have computed the required rate of progress for selected
health indicators of SDGs throughout 2005 to 2015 and developed a composite index of healthto study how India at a sub-national level has progressed in providing health related amenities
and infrastructure to its population. It was observed that if India can maintain this rate ofprogress, then achieving the maternal health target of SDG is possible by 2030, but achieving
the nutrition and other health targets by 2030 will be difficult. At a sub-national level, Kwatra etal. (2016) have combined social, economic and environmental sustainability index to formulatea Sustainable Development Index of India and have concluded that better performance ofsustainable development is visible in states with higher economic sustainability. There exist
rural-urban inequalities at both state and district level in the allocation of sustainable access towater and sanitation infrastructure (Chaudhuri & Roy, 2017). Although India’s performance inproviding access to improved water is achieved at a national level, the condition needs
inspection at its lower administration level, especially in rural areas. A national level time series
map of land use-land cover change in India at a decadal interval of 1985, 1995 and 2005 havenoted a decrease of around 34881 sq. km of forest cover (Roy et al., 2015). Maharashtra andMadhya Pradesh, parts of north east India and Cauvery river basin have witnessed the
maximum conversion of forest cover to agricultural land. However, the increase in mangrove
forest was noticed from 1995-2005, which can be attributed to the imposition of strict coastal
legislation programmes initiated by the Government of India.
Objectives
To ascertain whether India will be able to achieve SDGs by 2030, it is necessary to visualize therole of the nation in attaining the primary targets of different sustainable development goals at
both national and sub-national level. Overall development in the social, economic andenvironmental sectors requires an inclusive planning strategy, designed around the needs ofthe primary stakeholders of the country that will benefit both the present and the future
generations. The objectives of the research are as follows:
1. To assess the performance of India, at state level, in the primary indicators of sustainable
development and simultaneously analyses the development trends of these indicators.
2. To identify region-specific and issue-specific challenges affecting India at both national andsub-national level.
Datasets
In order to identify the policies implemented at both national and subnational levels to reduce
disparity and bring about overall development, variables defining the primary targets of thepreviously mentioned SDGs were considered and depicted in table 1. Data were obtained for2011 from Census of India, Central Statistical Office, Ministry of Environment, Forest andClimate Change, National Crime Records Bureau and National Family Health Survey 2015-16.
In this study, only nine indicators were selected to assess the progress of India towards
82sustainable development because it not only involves creation of indices to analyse theachievement in the basic level of development but also takes an attempt to project the issues
that can limit the progress of India from achieving these indicators by 2030.
MethodComposite Index
The indicators representing the primary targets of SDG were selected and aggregated toassess their performance at state level. In order to calculate the SDG Index, Sachs et al. (2016)used the data available for at least 80 percent of the 149 UN Member States with a national
population greater than 1 million. Same methodology was used to calculate the PSDG index ofIndian states. Some of the indicators rejected the normality hypothesis at 5 percent significancelevel, therefore rescaling of the data was done from 0 to 100 using minimum-maximum method
for each indicator, where 0 denoted worst performance and 100 denoted the best performance,
given by the formula;
Xnew = ((Xi – Xmin) / (Xmax – Xmin))*100(1)where, Xnew is the normalized value of the indicator,
Xi is the original value of the indicator,
Xmin and Xmax are the minimum and maximum value of the indicator from the total
observations.
Table 01: Selected Indicators to Study Performance of India in Primary Targets of SDGs

Source: (United Nations, 2016)

In this study equal weightage was given to all the indicators to derive the composite
SDG index. Thresholding of the data for upper boundary was followed using the method
provided by Sachs et al., (2016). The threshold value which was already mentioned in thetargets of SDGs was set as the upper boundary of the targets for rescaling. Some targets did
not mention any threshold condition, for them, the average values of the top five best
performances of the indicators were chosen as the threshold for upper boundary. Sachs et al.
(2016) had considered arithmetic mean and geometric mean to aggregate the SDG scores.
However, both yielded similar results with a correlation coefficient of 0.977 and very similar83

rankings. To calculate the Primary Sustainable Development Goal Index (PSDG) for India, themethodology used is as follows: the indicators were normalized using the minimum-maximum
method. The upper boundary was set at 100 percent for indicators measured in percentage. An
equal weightage was given to all the indicators and an arithmetic mean was used for
aggregating their scores.
Cluster Analysis
A cluster analysis was done to examine the possibility of spatial clustering of different states ofIndia on the basis of their pattern of achieving the basic goals of sustainable development. To
hierarchically arrange the indicators according to their progress in India at a sub-national level,
the same method was applied to segregate the indicators according to their rate of achievement
in different states of India. Many application of cluster analysis for country level assessment withrespect to global indicators have been reported (Hirschberg, Maasoumi, & Slottje, 1991; SaintArnaud & Bernard, 2003; Omorou et al., 2016; Sulkowski & White, 2016; Kwon, Lee, & Lee,2018). This method classifies cases into groups that are relatively homogeneous withinthemselves and heterogeneous between each other, on the basis of a defined set of variables.
The identified groups are called clusters.
In the current study, first, hierarchical clustering was performed to classify cases into
homogeneous groups and then from the explored number of clusters, a non-hierarchical kmeans clustering was used to classify the states into the clusters of similar performance (Fraley& Raftery, 1998). Hierarchical clustering is an agglomerative process that iterates n times
starting from n clusters to a single cluster and in this process, it stores the coefficients of the
distance between each iteration (Sarstedt & Mooi, 2014). To group the cases that are alike, thedistance measures are small and similarity measures are large. The variables selected arecontinuous in nature but have different units and therefore, standardization of data wasconducted using the minimum-maximum method to scale the numeric variables in the range of
0 and 100. The upper and lower boundaries for standardization was selected using the
rescaling methodology for calculating the composite index provided by Sachs et al. (2016). In
this study, the minimum-maximum method used for cluster separation provided the best resultswith respect to near spacing and distance spacing and therefore, this method was used forstandardization (Milligan & Cooper, 1988). In hierarchical clustering, Ward's method combinedwith squared Euclidean distance interval measure for clustering the similar observations wasused.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
India’s Performance at the Sub-National Level
Although at the national level, India seemed to have performed fairly well in some indicators, adetailed study at the sub-national level revealed that many of the states are lagging far behind
the targets in those indicators of sustainable development goals. The indicators of access safe
drinking water facility and intentional homicide that seem to be achieved at the national level are
only partially achieved at the sub-national level. The indicators that are in transition for India
have performed moderately at the sub-national level. The indicators of undernourishment andmaternal mortality rate have performed poorly for the majority of the states. In India, 194.6
million people were undernourished in the year 2014-2016 (FAO, 2016). Five out of 29 states
having the least development in this sector are Uttar Pradesh (23.2 percent), Chhattisgarh(26.10 percent), Bihar (29.20 percent), Jharkhand (29.60 percent) and Madhya Pradesh (30.20
percent). Maternal mortality ratio of India, as a whole, was 181 per 100,000 populations in 2014.
However, at the state level, this was 328 for Assam, 292 for Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh
while 235 for both Rajasthan and Odisha. On the other hand, for indicators that are in transition
phase such as access to electricity, it was noted that for states such as Goa, Himachal Pradesh
84and Punjab, 95 percent of the households have access to electricity compared to Bihar, UP,
Assam, Odisha and Jharkhand where more than half of its population do not have access to thesame. The urban slum population, which is in transition for India at national level, seems to be
on track at its sub-national level.
The indicators that are lagging behind for India at the national level have also performed
poorly at the sub-national level. The percentages of households with access to improved
sanitation facilities in rural areas have increased from 21.92 percent in 2001 to 30.7 percent in2011, while for urban areas the percentage had increased from 73.72 percent in 2001 to 81.4
percent in 2011. An overall increase of 10 percent is witnessed in the percentages of householdwith access to improved sanitation facility in India from 2001 to 2011. The economic growth ofIndia is not limited to GDP growth rate, investment, income inequality, demographic changes
and productivity of workforce of the country. Maharashtra earns the highest Gross State
Domestic Product, followed by Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh. The data also highlights that
Uttar Pradesh though earns higher than 27 states of India, yet it lacks to fulfill the basic
infrastructural needs of the population living there. Forests form an integral part in maintaining
harmony between the ecological environment, economically viable and socially just forest
communities. Forest areas are found in abundance in the states of North-east India, mainly
Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Meghalaya and Manipur. Apart from that, thepercentages of forest areas are less than 50 percent in 23 states and less than 15 percent in 7
states of West and North India. Table 2 shows a comparison of the performance of India at bothnational and sub-national level on the selected indicators of SDGs, while figure 2 shows the
PSDG Index score of all the states of India.
Table 02: Comparison of the Performance of India in the PSDG Index at Both Nationaland Sub-National Level
Indicators
Performance at the State Level
Access to an improved
water source
Intentional homicide
Undernourishment
Maternal mortality ratio
Access to electricity
Urban slum population
Access to improved
sanitation facilities
GDP per employedpersonForest area

Only 34 percent of the states are on track
Only 5 out of 29 states are lagging behind to reduce homicide rates
Lagging for most states
On an average about 19.5 percent of the population of all the statesis undernourished.
60 percent of the states can provide 75 percent of its population
with access to electricity
The state with the highest percentage of urban slum population is
Maharashtra with only 12 percent of its population living in slums
All the states have performed poorly, except Kerala and Mizoram
40 percent of the total number of states need to provide more
employment opportunities to its population
Most of the states have lower forest cover. Only 5 out of 29 states
have 75 percent of their land covered with forest

Source: Author’s calculation

Identification of patterns of hindrances in the development
The study uses cluster analysis to identify the region-specific problems and issue-specificproblems hindering the development of India at its sub-national level. The states were grouped
into homogeneous cases that exhibit the same socio-economic and environmental development
progress. Therefore, from the hierarchical cluster analysis, five clusters were identified. Figure
1a represents the performance of Indian states in PSDG Index and figure 1b presents a visual
representation of the states that have been clubbed together according to their performance ofIndia in the PSDG Index at a sub-national level.
85

Region-specific Hindrances
The variations in achieving sustainable development of India are reflected at the sub-national
level, when the indicators of development, which were studied for India as a whole, were
measured for different states of India. The states were first, grouped based on the similar levelsof achievement in PSDG index with the help of cluster analysis (as shown in figure 1b) and thenthe effectiveness and implementation progress of the developmental policies of each states
belonging to different groups were examined. From the cluster analysis, it was observed that
11 out of 29 states that belonged to Group 1 experience higher levels of achievement inindicators of access to improved water and electricity. The states of Karnataka, Maharashtra,
Uttarakhand and West Bengal have lower rates of undernourishment than the neighbouring
states. The performance of the states belonging to Group 1 show varied results for labour
productivity. Although the states of Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and Karnataka show low
progress in GDP per employed population, their share in employment in major sectors ofagriculture, manufacturing and service sectors together are more than 6 percent each while
Delhi, the leading state in the economic indicator of GDP per employed population, has
contributed to only 3.62 percent of India’s total employed population in the above mentioned
sectors. These states have very little forest cover and wetlands (Reserve Bank of India, 2018).
These states need to introduce strong environment protection acts to manage their natural
resources.
The North East states, which mainly belong to Group 2 have very poor access to safe
and improved drinking water facility and therefore a total of Rs. 842.50 crore was released by
Ministry of Water and Sanitation under NRDWP (Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation,2013). In the following year, NRDWP had targeted to fully recover 4104 rural households andpartially recover 5826 rural households from a total of 118189 rural households, which are
suffering from poor water quality status. Out of this target, 2521 fully and 5030 partially affectedrural habitations were achieved. The 2017 Electricity Statistics reports that only 1 percent of
installed generation capacity of electricity is concentrated in northeast India while the westernregion accounts for the highest share (36 percent), followed by northern region (26 percent),
southern region (24 percent) and eastern region (13 percent). The states have huge potential
for drawing hydropower and therefore, efforts have been initiated to develop its energy,
generating potential into reality (Mahanta, 2010). These states, apart from Kerala, are also
facing major challenges in developing their economy. Their agriculture productivity has
declined, their share from the manufacturing sector in the GDP is negligible, unstable law andorder in few of the northeast states, restrictions on the issue of trade licenses and ownership ofland has led to a development setback in these northeast states.
The states belonging to group 3 are interestingly very small in terms of their area, butthey are very densely populated. Group 3 has performed the best in all the indicators ofsustainable development except the ones belonging to environmental conservation andmanagement. Delhi, being the capital of India has witnessed massive rate of urbanization andeconomic growth in India and simultaneously it has been able to provide its population withbasic amenities, employment opportunities and world-class infrastructure of health andeducation, but has extensively compromised on its environmental aspects. Sikkim, on the other
hand, is very rural, yet because of its low population, it is self-sufficient. Goa, a small coastal
state in western India, is more urban than rural and its performance in achieving primary goalsof sustainable development is excellent. These states have almost achieved the basic goals ofsustainability and should concentrate on the other goals and targets of the 2030 Agenda.
The states belonging to group 4 and 5 have performed the worst in all the indicators of
the PSDG index. The composite scores for these states, as shown in figure 1a, are very low.
The states have the lowest rate of access to basic amenities, the worst performance in Human86

Development Index (Mukherjee & Chakraborty, 2014), and a poor economy. Over the years,
many government initiatives have been introduced to improve their conditions. To encourage
positive outcomes from rural sanitation programmes few states have converged Nirmal Bharat
Abhiyan and Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. According to
the Annual Report 2013-14 of Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, the states of Haryana,West Bengal, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar and Madhya
Pradesh have converged these two programmes and are trying to develop more toilet inschools and Anganwadi to provide a safe and hygienic environment in schools. The percentage
of population living below poverty line in India was 21.9 percent in 2011-2012 and the stateswith percentage greater than that of national average belonged to Bihar and Uttar Pradesh fromGroup D and Madhya Pradesh, Assam, Orissa, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh from Group E(Planning Commission, 2014). Undernourishment among children between 0-60 months is very
critical in India and the states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, along with Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand,
Meghalaya, Chhattisgarh and Gujarat have a greater percentage of children suffering fromundernourishment than the national average.
Figure 01: (a) PSDG Index Score of all the states of India; (b) Clustering of Indian States into
different groups according to their performance in the PSDG Index

Source: Based on Author’s calculation

Therefore, at a subnational level, states belonging to group 3 are superior to all thestates with respect to their performance in PSDG Index, while group 2 and 1 have performed
satisfactorily and group 4 and 5 have performed the worst and need more government
interventions to help progress in achieving sustainability by 2030.
Issue-specific Hindrances
The indicators were clustered together according to their level of achievement at India’s subnational level. The hierarchical arrangement of the indicators in the dendogram in figure 2
explains which of the primary sustainable development targets need the least, intermediate andmost attention in India at sub-national level. Over the years, India has witnessed a remarkableincrease in the water sector to provide water not only to its growing population but also for
agriculture and irrigation purposes and industrial development. In 2010, the water consumption
capacity was approximately 581 trillion litres, where 89 percent was accounted for irrigation
purposes, 7 percent for domestic use and 4 percent for industrial development (KPMG, 2010).
Although the country is ‘water stressed’, effective government interventions through successful
implementation of policies have helped in keeping the target of providing universal access to87

improved water to its population on track. Although indicators related to energy was absent in
MDGs, India has performed better in providing access to electricity at the state level. India’s rolein enhancing access of rural and urban households to a minimum level of electricity for lighting
and their access to safer and more sustainable cooking and heating fuels and stoves are thefirst challenges India needs to overcome to achieve goal 7 of the 2030 Agenda. In order toenhance energy provisions for the growing population, India has started increasing its
renewable energy generation capacity. India’s renewable energy installed capacity has grownfrom 3.9 GW in 2003-14 to about 50 GW in 2016 (Ministry of New and Renewable Energy,2017). Similarly, wind energy accounts for 28.70 GW or 57.4 percent of the installed capacity
followed by Solar power 9.01 GW, small hydro power 4.33 GW and biomass power 7.85 GW.
CEA also states that India’s total potential for power generation from renewable energy
resources is estimated at 1198856 MW and Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Andhra
Pradesh has the highest potential to utilize their renewable energy generation capacity. India’s
awareness towards inclusion of renewable energy to achieve sustainable energy development
is remarkable through the introduction of the National Solar Missions in 2011 by the Ministry of
New and Renewable Energy (Kumar et. al, 2011) and further incorporation of Solar City mission
in 2015 also hints at its strive to achieve goal 7 successively by 2030.
India’s access to basic sanitation services is very poor. The Total Sanitation Campaign
in 1999 was the first fruitful initiative by the Government to improve rural sanitation conditions inIndia, which was followed by the Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan in 2012. The rural households withaccess to toilet facilities have increased by 8.8 percent from 2001 to 2011 (Census of India,
2011) while that of urban areas have increased by 7.7 percent. Rural development programmes
need more attention because 69.3 percent of rural households have no access to toilet facilities,
which is four times the number of urban households lacking the same (Census of India, 2011).
The number of people opting for open defecation was around 600 million by the end of eleventh
five year term (Planning Commission, 2013). Currently, Swachh Bharat Abhiyan was introduced
in 2014 to achieve target 2 of goal 6 of 2030 Agenda in the rural areas of India. The
responsibility of upgrading urban sanitation condition falls under the purview of the Ministry of
Urban Development under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM).
The mission aims to increase cleanliness levels in the rural areas through Solid and Liquid
Waste Management activities and promote Open Defecation Free, clean and sanitised Gram
Panchayats (National Sample Survey Office, 2016). India’s preparation towards clean, hygienic
and universal access to improved sanitation has been initiated and will help in reaching the
global goals target by 2030.
India faces serious challenges on the food security issues of the nation. The contributionof the agriculture sector in the nation’s GDP is only 14 percent and during the last two decades,
the growth rate of crop production and yield has declined. The global price of food exploded in2007 and cast a significant impact on the food production and control on the export of foodgrains in India (Timmer, 2010). India has not only been severely affected by the decline in
agricultural production to feeds its population but also India’s attempt to decrease the rate ofmalnutrition among children, adults, especially women is far behind from achievement. The
percentage of underweight children below the three years of age have decreased marginally,
only by 2.3 percent from 1998-99 to 2005-06 (Boopathy et al., 2014). The proportion of theundernourished population is not on track and there is a need for universal access to safe,
nutritious and sufficient food for all available all year round to population of different groups by
2030. To address the problem of India’s food security, Government is providing the food grains
at cheaper prices through Public Distribution System. To reduce corruption in food distribution
governance, digitalization of ration cards have been made mandatory to avail benefits from theGovernment. In 2001, the National Programme of Mid-Day Meal in Schools was initiated by theGovernment not only to increase the enrolment rates of children in schools but also to improve88

the nutrition levels among school children (Chutani, 2012). India’s struggle to improve healthindicators during the era of MDGs was extraordinary but the nation’s struggle to achieve theoptimum global value of reducing the maternal mortality ratio to 70 per 100,000 live births is yet
to be achieved. The low number of maternal mortality ratio reflects lesser inequities in access tohealth services. Maternal mortality ratios are high in regions with poor health care facilities andare less likely to be attended by skilled personnel (Ronsmans, Graham, & group, 2006).
Figure 02: Dendogram Showing the Hierarchical Arrangement of the Three Groups of Indicators
according to their Level of Achievement from Best to Worst at A Sub-National Level

Source: Author’s calculation

The neoliberal economic policies of India have led to the remarkable economic growth ofthe country since 1991 (Ahluwalia, 2002; Kapila, 2010) but the labour productivity seems to bepoor and stagnant for India. Often progress in labour productivity does not guarantee decent
work for all, but improvements in working conditions and growth in employment opportunities
are accompanied by high levels of labour productivity. India has numerous urban and rural
schemes to facilitate employment opportunities for the working population. To encourage theoverall economic growth of the nation, India should consider poverty alleviation programmes
and vocational training of unskilled labourers who are involved in primary economic sectors(Loayza & Raddatz, 2010). Another important aspect of improving quality of life includes
freedom from violence. Intentional homicide in India is mainly a function of gender based crimeand caste based communal conflicts and the incidents are greater in districts with lower sex
ratios; but with the passage of time there has been a significant decline in the total number ofhomicides from 2000 to 2010 and simultaneously use of guns for killing has also decreased(Marwah, 2014). Climate change, environmental conservation, and rejuvenation are an integral
part of the 2030 agenda. Despite facing key challenges of rapid urbanization andindustrialization, India in the last few decades has implemented policies to control pollution andmaintain ecological balance. Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change has
introduced the National Afforestation Programme in 2016 to promote afforestation, tree
plantation and eco-restoration of degraded forests. Simultaneously centrally sponsoredschemes of National River Conservation Plan and National Plan for Conservation of Aquatic
Ecosystems in 2015 for the conservation of rivers, lakes and wetlands in the country has also
been introduced by the Ministry. If India can successfully implement the schemes to conserve
its natural resources, then achieving goal 15 will be easier by 2030.

89

Conclusion
In this study, the present status of India’s primary SDGs is analyzed with the help of acomposite index. A cluster analysis was performed to examine the region-specific and issuespecific problems of sustainable development in India. The study highlights that India has toovercome numerous hurdles to achieve the universal targets of sustainable development by
2030. At the sub-national level, 14 out of 29 states have performed well in the PSDG index,
while the other states need to focus on developing the quality of life of their people and provide
infrastructure services and utilities to both their rural and urban population. The PSDG Index
throws light upon the basic goals of sustainability that a country needs to achieve by 2030 andassessing its progress prior to 2015 recognizes the direction in which government interventions
and policies are most required. The study adds support to the existing literature on issuespecific problems affecting India at a sub-national level. India needs to protect and restore
terrestrial and inland freshwater ecosystems, especially forests, mountains, wetlands and dry
lands. The rate of employment growth about economic growth has suffered stagnation at
various time periods from 2000 to 2015 (Papola, 2013), and therefore a positive shift in this
sector is required to help India achieve inclusive and productive economic growth in the coming
years. Financial incentives related to water, sanitation and improvements in health sector havealready been initiated by the Government through Jal Jeevan Mission, Swachh Bharat Mission
and Jan Arogya Yojana. With the help of National Skill Development Agency, employment
focusing on infrastructure projects and skill development projects will be implemented. Thus,
India may seem distant in achieving sustainable development by 2030, but effective policy
implementation, capacity building and financial assistance (Bhamra, Shankar, & Niazi, 2015)
will help India fulfil these ambitious SDGs by 2030.
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