The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), otherwise known as the Global Goals, are a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity.

These 17 Goals build on the successes of the Millennium Development Goals, while including new areas such as climate change, economic inequality, innovation, sustainable consumption, peace and justice, among other priorities. The goals are interconnected – often the key to success on one will involve tackling issues more commonly associated with another.

The SDGs work in the spirit of partnership and pragmatism to make the right choices now to improve life, in a sustainable way, for future generations. They provide clear guidelines and targets for all countries to adopt in accordance with their own priorities and the environmental challenges of the world at large. The SDGs are an inclusive agenda. They tackle the root causes of poverty and unite us together to make a positive change for both people and planet.

Progress: 

• Poverty has fallen across all economic, social and religious groups nationally;
• Sustainable growth (8.3% from 2004 to 2012) generating more employment for the poor;
• High level of social spending by the Government.

Challenges: 

• The poverty headcount ratio remains at 21% with nearly 80% living in rural areas

SDG Priorities: 

• Eradicating poverty and promoting prosperity; 
• Generating employment by developing agricultural infrastructure, productive assets and entrepreneurship based on livelihood opportunities;
• Strengthening social safety nets, ensuring access to basic services and housing.

Progress: 

• Significant decline in malnutrition and hunger among children less under 5 (from 48% to 38.4%) between 2005 and 2016;
• Decline in the proportion of underweight children from 42.5% to 35.7% between 2005 and 2016;
• Growth in sustainable and climate-adaptive agriculture.

Challenges: 

• High absolute levels of stunted and underweight population (3 in 10 stunted children in the world are Indian);
• 50% of women between 15 and 49 are anaemic.

SDG Priorities: 

• Addressing the effectiveness of food security programs;
• Implementing climate change adaptation strategies for sustaining agricultural productivity;
• Increasing the farmers’ income though agricultural land reform;
• Increasing the agricultural productivity and farmers’ income by securing access to land and resources, such as knowledge and financial services.

Progress: 

• Decline in the Infant mortality rate from 57% to 41% between 2005-and 2016;
• Significant decrease in mortality rate for children under 5 years old from 74% to 50% between 2005-2016;
• Significant improvement in vaccination coverage for children;
• Significant reduction in HIV/AIDS prevalence among adults (from 0.45% in 2002 to 0.27% in 2011);
• Improvement in maternal mortality rate from 437 per 100,000 live births in 1990 to 167 in 2009.

Challenges:

• High occurrence of Tuberculosis (TB) disease among population with 220,000 deaths annually;
• 621,138 people die of air pollution-related diseases every year.

SDG Priorities: 

• Focusing on providing basic medical services to the poor and vulnerable;
• Improving the access to sexual and reproductive health-care services;
• Addressing communicable diseases by expanding the coverage of vaccine.

Progress: 

• Significant progress in ensuring universal primary education, with improvement in the enrollment and completion rate of girls in primary/elementary schools;
• Improvement in youth literacy rate:  94% for males and 92% for females.

Challenges:

• Low literacy literate rate in rural areas (58% on average);
• Remaining gender disparities in accessing all levels of education;
• 77.3% of women are not enrolled in higher education.   

SDG Priorities: 

• Focusing on girls’ basic education;
• Improving curriculum for students for better learning outcomes.

Progress: 

• Significant improvement in the primary education enrollment among girls;
• Improvement in women’s literacy rate from 55.1% to 68.4% between 2005-2016;
• Improved access to financial services from 17.1% in 2005 to 53% in 2016 among women.

Challenges: 

• Insufficient female representation in Parliament (12% vs. the target of 50%); 
• High number of sexual violence cases in public spaces (92% of women had experienced some form during their lifetime);
• 15% lower literacy rate among women as compared to men.

SDG Priorities: 

• Promoting modern reproductive health practices and family planning approaches;
• Promoting girls’ education and ensuring their protection from all forms of violence;
• Increasing female access to decent and equitable employment.

Progress: 

• Overall improved access to water from 68% in 1992 to 90.6% in 2012.

Challenges:

• 59% of rural households and 6% of urban households still do not have access to improved sanitation facilities;
• Almost 600 million people practice open defecation.

SDG Priorities:

• Ensuring universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all;
• Improving access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene with a special focus on the needs of women and girls.

Progress: 

• A compound annual growth rate of 7% in the total installed capacity for electricity generation in 2013-14;
• Share of renewable grid capacity increased over 6 times from 2002-2015.

Challenges: 

• Around 237 million people (20%) do not have access to electricity;
• India is projected to be a significant contributor to the rise in global energy demand, around one-quarter of the total.

SDG Priorities:

• Addressing the rural electrification;
• Strengthening renewable energy distribution;
• Increasing the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix.

Progress: 

• Sustainable growth (8.3% from 2004 to 2012) generating more employment for the poor;
• Average GDP growth of 7.2% in the last 3 years.

Challenges:

• Low higher education enrollment rates (23%) among young population;
• More than 10 million children are employed in some form of labor.

SDG Priorities:

• Promoting inclusive economic growth;
• Creating 280 million jobs by 2050; 
• Generating employment by developing agricultural infrastructure, productive assets and entrepreneurship based on livelihood opportunities.

Progress: 

• Rapid expansion of all forms of transportation – roads, railways, civil aviation and waterways – (8,231 km of national highways have been constructed during 2016-17);
• Several initiatives for overcoming the digital divide and leveraging ICT (Aadhaar, DBT, and decision support mechanisms based on Geographic Information Systems);
• Expansion of internet penetration - there are currently 432 million internet users in India;
• Several flagship interventions by the Government focused on innovation and sustainable industrial and economic development (‘Make India’, ‘Start-Up India’, etc);
• More than 150,000 villages in 176 districts in 17 states have been reached through consultations aimed at improving disaster risk management skills and operationalizing community-based disaster management skills. 

Challenges:

• Forthcoming

SDG Priorities:

• Building resilient infrastructure and ensuring access to electricity for all citizens; 
• Developing 37 national waterways over the next 3 years;
• Investing in manufacturing capacities and infrastructure development;
• Overcoming the digital divide and leveraging ICT.

Progress:

• Slight improvement in income inequality: Gini coefficient for India fell from 36.8% in 2010 to 33.6% in 2015;
• Perceived reduction in inequality due to overall literacy increase by 8.15% in the last decade.

Challenges:

• Around 86% of rural population and 82% of urban population do not receive any health expenditure support;
• 283 million people remain illiterate;
• Low literacy literate rate in rural areas (58% on average);
• Remaining gender disparities in accessing all levels of education;
• 77.3% of women are not enrolled in higher education;
• 22% of the population is below the poverty line (one in every five).

SDG Priorities:

• Empowering and promoting the social, economic and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or another status;
• Ensuring equal employment opportunities and reducing income inequalities;  
• Eliminating discriminatory laws, policies and practices.

Progress: 

• Several projects aimed to improve urban special planning launched (‘Smart Cities Mission’, ‘J. Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission’, ‘Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation’, etc); 
• 193,000 villages and 531 cities have been successful in ending the practice of open defecation. 

Challenges:

• Large population and vast geographical expanse;
• 17% of the urban population lives in slums;
• 621,138 people die of air pollution-related diseases every year;
• 315 million people expected to live in cities by 2040.

SDG Priorities:

• Achieving housing for all by 2022;
• Completing a total length of 8,000 km of pavements and cycle tracks in 106 cities;
• Facilitating the adoption of disaster and climate change risk reduction measures in 10 cities and 25 multi-hazard prone districts.

Progress:

• Forthcoming

Challenges: 

• Food production in India is vulnerable to climate change as approximately 55% of croplands are rain-fed;
• 275 million of the rural population depend on forests for a part of their subsistence and livelihood.

SDG Priorities: 

• Forthcoming

Progress: 

• Formally ratified the historic Paris Agreement on 2016;
• The emissions intensity of India's GDP reduced by 12% between 2005 and 2010;
• Share of renewable grid capacity increased over 6 times from 2002-2015.

Challenges:

• Number of registered private road vehicles grew at compound annual growth rate of 10.3%;
• 4th largest greenhouse gas emitter, responsible for 6.9% of global emissions.

SDG Priorities:

• Reducing CO2 emissions.

Progress:

• National Plan for the Conservation of Aquatic Eco-Systems adopted;
• Integrated National Fisheries Action Plan formulated in 2016;
• An online mechanism for predicting the movement of oil spills (launched in 2015.

Challenges:

• 15%-16% of coast experiences high erosion;
• Sea level rises by 1.33 mm/year on coasts;
• More than 14.5 million people depend of fisheries for their livelihood (highest population of fishing communities globally).

SDG Priorities:

• Preventing and significantly reducing marine pollution of all kinds;
• Sustainably managing and protecting marine and coastal ecosystems to avoid significant adverse impacts;
• Minimizing and addressing the impacts of ocean acidification;
• Effectively regulating harvesting and ending over-fishing, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and destructive fishing practices and implementing science-based plans.

Progress:

• Increase of forest cover by 3.65% during 1995-2015;
• Signatory to the Aichi targets on the Convention on Biological Diversity and implementation of Nagoya Protocol.

Challenges: 

• 1,401 flora and fauna species threatened;
• 25% of land is affected by desertification;
• 275 million people depend on agriculture.

SDG Priorities:

• Implementing National Afforestation Programme and a national programme on the Integrated Development of Wildlife Habitats;
• Conservation of two important mammals - a tiger and an elephant.

Progress:

• 200,000 refugees get asylum and direct assistance in India;
• The Government has comprehensively restructured the framework of the expenditure budget.

Challenges:

• Over 300,000 crimes against women reported every year;
• 38,50,000 cases pending in high courts;
• 5,466 cases of human trafficking reported in 2014.

SDG Priorities:

• Supporting the Department of Justice to ensure access to justice for the people by reducing pendency of cases in courts;
• Improving legal aid through Legal Services Authorities;
• Strengthening capacities for paralegals, law students and other intermediaries working in the justice sector by raising the awareness of laws and entitlements among the marginalized groups;
• Strengthening  justice through government initiatives such as Pragati Platform, a public grievance redressal system, and the Development of Infrastructure Facilities for the Judiciary.

Progress:

• India is making all necessary efforts to raise its own revenue resources. (e.g.: India has provided platforms like the India-Africa Forum Summit and BRICS Summit for facilitating meaningful dialogue among nations. Moreover, India place its VNR on record);
• Proactive policy reforms have boosted the FDI flows during the last 3 fiscal years to USD 156 billion including a record-breaking USD 56 billion in the latest fiscal year.

Challenges:

• Low Internet penetration rate (26 %);
• Subjective assessments of the Indian policy and regulatory environment by global financial institutions and rating agencies raise the costs of private financial flows to India by posting a highly “regulatory risk premium”.

SDG Priorities:

• Finalizing the indicators that will enable monitoring of the progress made on the SDGs.