Measuring the Distance to 2030 SDG Targets in India and South Asia Imperatives

Abstract

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted at the 70th UN Summit in September 2015 is a plan of action for people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnerships. The 17 Goals and associated 169 targets which are at the core of the Agenda, called Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) seek to eliminate poverty and hunger include access to food security, nutrition, health care, well-being, safe drinking water and hygiene, water for agriculture, reliable and sustainable energy and bringing all around prosperity while giving due consideration to environment and climate change. Government of India is fully committed to implement the SDG agenda in association with all the stakeholders and work towards its achievement. It has initiated a number of flagship programmes like National Nutrition Mission, National Health Protection Scheme, Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (Save the daughter educate the daughter), Prime Minister Jan Dhan Yojana (the largest financial inclusion programme in the world) and Aspirational Districts Programme and many more. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is a plan of action for people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnerships. The social dimension of SDGs alongwith energy has immense bearing on the economic and environmental dimensions of SDGs. For a developing country like India within the social dimension agriculture, food security, nutrition, health, well-being, sanitation and water-for both drinking and agriculture, shape education and poverty status of the society. Therefore, SDGs 2, 3, 6 and 7 have been selected for this Paper, though all SDGs continue to be of high priority of the Government of India. Notably, India’s efforts in implementing identified targets under these SDGs have been encouraging and the slew of initiatives on these taken by India are good practices worth sharing with not only South Asian and ASEAN countries but with all developing countries and LDCs. However, there are wide sub-national spatial variations among the distances to be covered at the specific Goal level. The present study covers analysis, remaining distance to be travelled and development cooperation indicating that out of the four identified Goals for the study, the achievement is not very far in respect of three Goals namely, SDG 3, 6, and 7. A substantial effort is required for achieving the objectives of SDG 2 particularly for addressing the implementation of challenges of SDG Target 2.2 on reducing malnutrition and Target 2.3 on enhancing agriculture and farmers’ income. The study also brings out that the development cooperation from India to neighbouring countries have increased significantly during 2015–2019 with prime focus on renewable energy, health, rural development, education, drinking water, agriculture and community development which are important sectors of SDGs. Major share of India’s development assistance goes in bridging the gap in clean and renewable energy and building infrastructure for better and sustainable growth. Further, timely action by the Government of India to fight with the crisis created by COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in minimizing loss of human life and thus mortality rate has fallen below 1.55%. Unlocking process of the economy in a phased manner has now brought trend towards normalcy of the domestic economic activity. The Government of India also extended humanitarian assistance to neighbouring countries to counter the risk created by the pandemic.