Uttar Pradesh has once again estimated at the bottom of 19 large states on the fourth NITI Aayog health index for 2019-20, released on Monday, while Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana are the top three.
Kerala has emerged the best in overall health performance for four times in a row. Bihar and Madhya Pradesh were the second- and third-worst performers in the health index respectively.
To generate ranks and ensure comparability among entities, the states in the index have been classified into three categories – larger states, smaller states, and Union Territories.
While all the states and UTs except West Bengal participated, Ladakh was not incorporated due to the non-availability of data.
The rankings belongs to the period just before the Covid-19 pandemic struck the country. Even though figuring at a lowest position in overall performance, Uttar Pradesh is the best state in terms of incremental performance between 2018-19 and 2019-20.
After the NITI Aayog report was released, Samajwadi Party President Akhilesh Yadav criticised the Yogi Adityanath government in the poll-bound state, saying it is the “real report” of the BJP (Bhartiya Janata Party) government.
The index is a weighted combination, including 24 indicators, which cover important aspects of health performance, largely in three sectors: Health outcomes; governance and information; and key inputs and processes.
NITI Aayog report said, “The Health Index Round for 2019-20 does not capture the impact of Covid-19 on health outcomes or any of the other indicators as the Index Performance relates to Base Year (2018-19) and Reference Year (2019-20), largely the pre-Covid-19 period.”
According to the report, though Kerala and Tamil Nadu ranked the top two, they were 12th and eighth, respectively in terms incremental improvement.
Meanwhile, Telangana has performed well, securing third place both in terms of overall performance and incremental performance.
Among the smaller states category, Mizoram has emerged the best performer in overall and incremental performance.
In terms of overall performance, the Union Territories, Delhi and Jammu and Kashmir ranked among the bottom, but have emerged as leading performers in incremental performance.
While the gap in overall performance between the best- and the worst-performing larger states and UTs decreased in the current round of the index, it increased for the smaller states.
After releasing the report on health index, NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Rajiv Kumar said: “States are beginning to take cognizance of indices such as the State Health Index and use them in their policymaking and resource allocation.”
He added that this report is an example of both competitive and cooperative federalism.
