How the states were ranked
The India Today State of the States (SOS) 2019 study was conducted by Marketing and Development Research Associates (MDRA), a Delhi-based premier research agency. The robust methodology is designed to rank the states on the basis of most relevant and exhaustive data, covering aspects crucial to foster inter-state competition and uphold the true spirit of India’s federal structure.
The states were ranked under two broad groups
Best-performing states
Indicates latest performance of the state specific to the category
Based on most recent data across multiple parameters
Most-improved states
Indicates improvement of the state in the past five years
Based on positive changes (outcome-based) in the past five years
The states were also divided into two broad groups based on geographical area and population—states with an area of over 35,000 sq. km and population of over 5 million were clubbed as the big states. Deliberations revealed that bigger states have their own advantages and disadvantages vis-à-vis the smaller states. So it was decided to have separate comparisons of the big and small states. Jammu & Kashmir was not considered due to the change in its status during the period of study.
Twelve categories were identified for comparing the performance of the states. In each category, several attributes, on which the states needed to be competitive, were fixed. Based on inputs from experts—academia, policymakers and policy influencers, such as representatives from the NITI Aayog, think-tanks, policy research organisations, sociologists and economists—105 attributes were finalised for evaluating the best-performing states and 80 attributes for the most-improved states. The relative weights of the parameters and attributes were finalised in consultation with the experts, india today editors and MDRA team.
To ensure fair comparisons, it was ensured that no state gets unfair advantage because of its size, population or any such aspect. Hence it was necessary to normalise the data based on population or geographical size, as the case required. Based on the weights determined for each attribute, sectoral rankings were arrived at. Parameter-level weights were used to arrive at overall best-performing and most-improved states.
A large MDRA team, led by Abhishek Agrawal (executive director), Abnish Jha (project director), Rajan Chauhan (senior research executive) and Manveer Singh (executive-EDP) and assisted by statisticians and econometricians, worked on this voluminous project from June to October 2019.