Niti Ayog Vice Chairperson tells UN that India will achieve SDG goals before 2030

While speaking at the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) General Debate on Tuesday, Suman K Bery, Vice Chairperson, NITI Aayog said that India has been an important contributor to progress across the SDGs.

Bery said that India is on track to achieve its SDG Goal 1.2 of reducing the percentage of people living in poverty by half much ahead of the 2030 deadline.

“As around 135 million Indians escaped multidimensional poverty in the five years between 2015-16 and 2019-21, made possible through the integration of social safety nets, infrastructure development and multiple financial inclusion programs and more recently, India’s SDG index, which the NITI Aayog puts together shows for 2023-24, continued progress at the national level and not only in the richer states.”

He said that India’s success is attributed to several national safety net programs.

“India has been an important contributor to progress across these SDGs and it has succeeded through successful delivery of physical and digital infrastructure at scale, targeted national safety net programs with digital delivery to minimize fraud, improved women’s agency, attention to program delivery in the least developed administrative jurisdictions, and strengthened local and national response to natural and manmade disasters,” Bery said.

He said that the review of SDGs- Poverty, Hunger, Protect the Planet, Peace and Justice and Partnerships for the goals become especially relevant given the setbacks witnessed in some of these goals.

“Through its efforts, all of this has been achieved in a participative democratic framework with orderly transfers of power at the level of India’s states and the centre following national elections, a new lower house of parliament, our Lok Sabha, has just been constituted for a five-year term based on the multidimensional poverty index.”

Bery said that over 500 million Indians benefit from cashless health insurance.

“Cashless insurance which was an important source of indigenous and out-of-pocket health expenditure, has decreased from 63% in 2014% to 39% in 2024.”

He said that India guaranteed free food supplies to over 800 million citizens during the pandemic and in the years that have followed, making it the largest food security program in the world.

On climate action, India has invested heavily in renewable energy and decarbonization of the economy, despite India having amongst the lowest per capita emissions, he said.

Bery said that for SDG 17- partnerships for the cause- the most critical SDG, India emphasized partnerships during its G20 Presidency to achieve the goals.

“India has emphasized strengthening partnerships to facilitate access to adequate financing, technology and capacity building for the global south. Under India’s G20 Presidency last year, the G20 Action Plan for accelerating the SDGs was adopted, thus launching an important partnership to elevate development outcomes.”