NITI Aayog releases ranking of Aspirational Districts: Tamil Nadu's Virudhnagar most improved

Virudhunagar (Tamil Nadu), Naupada (Odisha), Siddharthnagar (Uttar Pradesh), Aurangabad (Bihar) and Koraput (Odisha) have been termed as the most improved districts as per the Second Delta ranking for Aspirational Districts announced by the NITI Aayog on Thursday.

The Second Delta ranking for Aspirational Districts measures the incremental progress made by them between June 1 and October 31 across six developmental areas of health and nutrition, education, agriculture, water resources, financial inclusion, skill development, and basic infrastructure. The surveys were carried out in all Aspirational Districts during the month of June covering more than 1,00,000 households.

According to the rankings Nagaland's Kiphire, Giridih, Chatra and Pakur (all Jharkhand) and Hailakandi district in Assam were the poor performers and had made slow progress in the six developmental areas.

The districts which have shown great initiative and have displayed a qualitative jump in their scores between June and October 2018, were dubbed as 'Fast Movers' by the NITI Aayog. These districts include Kupwara of Jammu and Kashmir, Ranchi of Jharkhand, Siddharthnagar of Uttar Pradesh, Jamui of Bihar and Fatehpur of Uttar Pradesh.

Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog said: "We have constantly endeavoured to ensure transparent, real-time measurement of qualitative development in Aspirational Districts through the use of third-party validated data. This will strengthen the spirit of competitive and cooperative federalism on the foundations of evidence-based policy making."

The Delta Ranking of the Aspirational Districts combines the innovative use of data science with pragmatic administration, keeping the district at the locus of inclusive development. This positioning is expected to aid the District Magistrates/Collectors to focus more on these sectors and improve their ranking in future, the NITI Aayog said in a statement.

Transformation of Aspirational Districts programme was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in January. The programme aims to quickly and effectively transform some of the most underdeveloped districts of the country.

The broad contours of the programme are Convergence (of Central and State Schemes), Collaboration (of Central, State level 'Prabhari' Officers and District Collectors), and Competition among districts driven by a Mass Movement or a Jan Andolan. The program will focus on the strength of each district, identify low-hanging fruits for immediate improvement, measure progress, and rank districts.

After several rounds of consultations with various stakeholders, 49 key performance indicators have been chosen to measure progress of the districts. The districts are prodded and encouraged to first catch-up with the best district within their state, and subsequently aspire to become one of the best in the country, by competing with, and learning from others in the spirit of competitive and cooperative federalism.

In the overall ranking, the most improved districts are as follows:

The Second Delta ranking also details the following districts as least improved over the period of June - October 2018:

The districts which have shown great initiative and displayed a qualitative jump in their scores between June and October 2018, have been dubbed as 'Fast Movers'

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