Implementation of sustainable development goals: Assam leading the way

Bishaldeep Kakati

(deep.kakati99@gmail.com)

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development which set forth 17 SDGs and 169 targets was adopted by 193-member States at the UN General Assembly Summit in September 2015, which eventually came into effect on 1st January 2016. The principle behind this agenda was ‘Leave No One Behind’ meaning development should be from all the dimensions, ensuring participation of all the people and also their development, more specially the most vulnerable and marginalized sections.

Conspicuously, India is tackling many pivotal issues including climatic changes, increasing inequities and concerning human development indices. As such, the 2015 UN Sustainable Development Agenda framework provided the prospect of integrating and renewing activities and efforts to achieve national and global aspirations. However, this entire concept of achieving the target has always been subject to proper and accountable national policy making, planning and budgeting. And one of the key aspects to achieve the desired goals is to formulate a SDG-linked outcome budget to link the expenditure with the specific targets.

In fact, Assam was the first Indian State to adopt SDGs in 2016 and its budget also focused on achieving the SDG outcomes as envisioned in Assam Agenda 2030. A chronological analysis of the events reveals that the Government was very determined to actually adopt and implement the SDGs. From December 2015 to February 2016 the Assam Government took a number of steps from issuing orders notifying the formal adoption of the SDGs, to establishment of a think tank for planning and plotting, to holding talks on budgetary reforms. Furthermore, in 2018-19, Assam introduced the system of OBS alongside the annual state budget. OBS basically is a budgetary mechanism that highlights specific output or outcome by linking expenditure to specific targets and OBS of Assam has over the years improved significantly in terms of quality and number of departments reporting under it.

In July 2017, when the newly formed government in Assam adopted the “Assam 2030: Our Dream Our Commitment”, the government right from the adoption of the agenda, focused on implementing certain key measures to make the agenda a reality. It focused on implementing the SDGs as one combined unit by removing duplications and using an IT-based platform to monitor the implementation of the SDGs in a synergistic manner. Further it also focused on using technology and recent innovations to realize the proper implementation of SDGs. The government also realized the fact that mobilization and utilization of resources is a key factor that can help in achieving the desired result relating to implementing the Sustainable Development Goals as such the government formulated a ‘7 for 17’ method, which means seven types of resources for 17 goals, and the resources include land, human resource, capital, biological resources, IT resources and institutional resources. In fact, the government also envisioned that each government department will participate actively in understanding the available resources and finding new ones, improve efficiency and adopt the value for money concept, thereby redesigning the budget as well as mobilizing the resources from communities and the government as a whole in the appropriate manner. This process of realizing and implementing the Sustainable Development Goals laid the foundation for the state towards achieving the desired results.

The government also established two new centres in Assam Administrative Staff College namely, the Centre for SDGs and the Centre for Innovation and Future Studies alongside setting up eight interdepartmental groups to prepare the strategies to achieve the SDGs. For instance the centre for SDGs included sub-groups such as group working for poverty, hunger and rural development, group working for health, clean water and sanitation, group working for education, group working on gender and inequality, group working on sustainable cities and urban communities, group working on environment and climate change and group working on good governance institution and means of implementation. Therefore, these strategies and approaches undertaken by the government actually paved the path for making Assam Agenda 2030 a reality.

As part of the SDG action plan, a number of schemes have also been planned for the capital city of Assam i.e. Guwahati by the Guwahati Development Department. These include Guwahati Water Supply Project, Smart City, Conversion of Old Jail Land to International Standard Botanical Garden, Ropeway and Multi Level Car Parking at certain places of the city. One of the major issues that the residents of Guwahati face is the predicament of Flash Floods or urban floods and the government under the SDG Action plan has also planned to mitigate it. Proposals like development of Silsako Beel, raising of the existing guard wall along both the sides of Bharalu river, construction of guard wall on the eastern boundary of Kasturba Gandhi Ashram, construction of sump wells at Anil Nagar and Lachit Nagar and others have already been taken up by the government to reduce the plight of urban floods. Although a few of these plans have already been executed, a few still remain, but one cannot deny the fact that the SDGs action plan for Guwahati looks bright if implemented in the proper way. In the similar way, the government in the longer run should keep coming up with more such SDG based action plans for the overall development of the state and its people.

Conspicuously, The NITI Aayog releases reports on the states and the union territories’ progress and decline in terms of implementation of the SDGs. Similarly on 12th July 2024, it released SDG India Index for 2023-24. In the report it stated that the overall SDG score for the country is 71 for 2023-24, which showed significant improvement as compared to 66 in 2020-21 and 57 in 2018, which portrayed a healthy scenario for the nation of India. However, NITI Aayog categories the performance of states and union territories in terms of implementation of the SDGs in four groups viz. Aspirant (having a score between 0-49), Performer having a score of (50-64), Front Runner (having a score of 65-99) and Achiever (having a score of 100). But the highlight of the report was that the 3 states of Northeast namely Manipur, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh made its entry in the front runner category with scores of 72, 65 and 65 respectively. Moreover, the report also highlighted the fact that Assam was amongst the fastest moving states between 2018 and 2023-24 in terms of implementation of the SDGs. In fact, the state of Assam has more reasons to be proud of for the fact that in the report of 2020-21, the state was in the category of ‘Performer’ with a score of 57 and it’s ranking was 26 when compared to the other states but in the report of 2023-24, its rank too improved to 23. Therefore, the results are a testament to the various steps that the Government has taken to achieve the goals. However, the state also needs to put a proper eye to achieve and improve its performance in achieving certain Sustainable Development Goals like zero hunger, quality education, gender equality, industry innovation and infrastructure as the report of 2023-24 puts the state in the category of ‘Aspirant’ in respect of these goals, so that it can be an example for all in terms of implementation of the SDGs.