Union territories top India's Social Progress Index 2022 list but Jharkhand and Bihar have a long way to go

The researchers used 89 indicators to assess the progress of each state. These indicators were included under categories - Nutrition and Basic Medical Care, Access to Basic Knowledge, Personal Rights Water and Sanitation, Access to Information & Communication, Personal Freedom & Choice, Shelter, Health & Wellness, Access to advanced Education, Personal Safety, and Environmental Quality.

The states and union territories (UTs) have been categorised into six tiers. Here's what the six tiers mean and which states fall under those tiers:

These states and UTs performed "remarkably well" across components like Water and Sanitation, Shelter, Personal Safety, Personal Freedom, and Choice, consequently scoring well across the dimension of Basic Human Needs.

"The states can work on strengthening the dimension of the Foundations of Wellbeing.

Out of these nine states, Chandigarh scored the highest for Shelter, while Goa emerged to be a front-runner in terms of Water and Sanitation.

These states and UTs attained high scores across indicators like Personal Safety, Water and Sanitation, Personal Rights, Personal Freedom and Choice, and Inclusiveness.

These states performed well across dimensions of Basic Human Needs and Opportunity, with the highest score for components like Personal Freedom

and Choice, Water and Sanitation, and Inclusiveness, the report said.

These states/UTs performed "relatively well" in terms of Personal Freedom and Choice and Water and Sanitation. However, they didn't achieve high levels of social progress in terms of Nutrition and Basic Medical Care, Access to Information and Communication, and Access to Advanced Education.

These states scored the lowest across the dimension of Basic Human Needs and fared relatively better across components of Personal Rights and Personal Freedom and Choice has been observed. "The states can advance their social progress by working across components like Access to Information and Communication, Nutrition and Basic Medical Care, and Access to Advanced Education," the report said.

These states scored relatively high in terms of Health and Wellness, Personal Freedom and Choice, Inclusiveness, and Personal Rights. But, they still must "strengthen components of social progress like Nutrition and Basic Medical Care, Access to Information and Communication, and Access to Advanced Education to achieve high social progress."

> Aizawl (Mizoram) attained the highest SPI score of 72.90 in the country, with five more districts of Mizoram belonging to this tier, namely Lungei (69.80), Champhai (67.93), Serchhip (67.77), Saiha (65.79) and Mamit (64.84).

> Over 69 percent of Uttarakhand’s districts witnessed Very High Social Progress, whereas 30 percent of Arunachal Pradesh’s districts fall into this category.

> Nagpur is the only district in Maharashtra that has achieved Very High Social Progress