TS best performer

Hyderabad: Telangana continues its spree in clinching top ranks in various sectors in the country. The state has been ranked first in 'Performer States' category and second in the overall 'India Innovation Index-2021', according to Niti Aayog Chairman Suman Bery on Thursday.

In the 'Performer States' category, Telangana has got the first rank with 15.24 points followed by Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

In the 'Innovation Index' category, among the 17 major states, Karnataka scored 18.01 and emerged as the top performer, followed by Telangana (17.66) and Haryana (16.35). Chhattisgarh has scored the least with 10.97 points. Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Bihar have been ranked at the bottom of the index among major states.

In the 'Enablers and Business' category, Telangana has shown the best performance of 4th rank. Telangana also secured the third rank among the highest scoring states in 'Knowledge Output'.

Being one of the top IT destinations, and being known for housing big MNCs and start-ups, Telangana performed well across indicators. Report says that for example, the percentage of schools with ICT (Information and Communication Technology) labs doubled from about 17% to about 35%. In terms of higher education, the number of enrolments (per lakh population) increased from about 9.7 to about 15.7.

This was complemented with the number of private R&D units (per lakh population), increasing from about 0.3 to about 1.4 depicting the state's potential to create knowledge workers.

"Consequently, the state performed well in knowledge output pillars, including patents, trademarks and industrial design, which witnessed an increase in the units filed, compared to the last year, apart from increasing its start-ups from about 4,900 to about 9,000," the index report explained.

According to an official statement, "The third edition strengthens the scope of innovation analysis in the country by drawing on the framework of the Global Innovation Index (GII)." The new framework presented a more nuanced and comprehensive outlook for measuring innovation performance in India, with the introduction of 66 unique indicators, as compared to the 36 indicators used in the previous edition (India Innovation Index 2020), it added.