OdishaPlus Bureau
The NITI Aayog with its knowledge partner Institute for Competitiveness has recently released the India Innovation Index (III) 2019. While Karnataka is the most innovative state in India, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Telangana, Haryana, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Gujarat, and Andhra Pradesh are the remaining top ten major states respectively.
Interestingly, the top ten major states are majorly concentrated in southern and western India. Sikkim and Delhi take the top spots among the northeastern states and city-states/small states.
The Innovation Index is calculated as the average of the scores of its two dimensions – Enablers and Performance. The Enablers are the factors that emphasize on innovative capacities. The factors are grouped in five pillars: Human Capital, Investment, Knowledge Workers, Business Environment, and Safety and Legal Environment. The Performance dimension captures benefits that a nation derives from the inputs, divided into two pillars such as ‘Knowledge Output and Knowledge Diffusion.’
Since the study was done on the basis of extensive research and analysis – which looked at holistically at the innovation landscape of the whole country – the findings must be eye-opening for the states. The index unequivocally shows that the innovation ecosystem of the country is strong in the south and western parts of India. The eastern states are the usual laggards.
That said, Odisha has secured a 12th position in the India Innovation Index. It could score only 1.6 in the Investment pillar because it failed to attract investments for innovation. In the sub-pillars of ‘Investment’ pillar, the state has scored a mere 0.32 in FDI inflow and ‘zero’ score in venture capital deals.
All this prove to be a big dampener for Odisha’s rank. What is worrying is the state still figures in the low-income club along with states like Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Tripura and UP. More worrying is the fact that Chhattisgarh is a notch higher than Odisha and comes in the high income and upper-middle-income blocs.
Odisha’s low-income status has thwarted its struggle to park itself in the top-10 high table. Remaining in the low-income club means that the state doesn’t have the fiscal capacity to spend more on innovation. So also the case of Venture capital funds. The silver lining is that in the index, Odisha is an ‘over performer’ for its higher expenditure on Science, Technology and Environment. Similarly, Odisha has scored a high of 93.86 in Ease of Doing Business implementation. Also, the poor scoring rate in the number of online transactions and internet subscribers in the State have pulled down it in the rank scoring.
Clearly, it is the low-income factor that played spoilsport in Odisha’s Innovation Index. The State has suffered in a big way as far as industrial designs, grassroots innovations, start-ups density, filing of trademark applications and patent scores are concerned. Besides, we have fared poorly in manufacturing of high and medium high-tech products and ICT goods exports.
In view of the stumpy scores, the government should now ponder over and take remedial measures. Surely, the much-touted ‘Make in Odisha’ (MiO) program needs a strategic shift in approach. It hasn’t yielded the desired result.