Maha tops fin, social charts: Study

Pune: Maharashtra ranked first among 17 major states, followed by Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, across seven categories in a report released by credit rating agency CareEdge on Wednesday. Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Bihar ranked the lowest on a composite basis, revealed the report.
Maharashtra scored well in the rankings on social factors, such as income equality, poverty alleviation and infant mortality, as well as financial inclusion among citizens and government fiscal prudence, said Rajani Sinha, CareEdge’s chief economist.
Among the 17 major states in the report, Uttar Pradesh ranked first on governance, largely due to its service-delivery and ease-of-doing-business initiatives. Odisha ranked first in the fiscal category.
Gujarat was the leading state in terms of economic performance among the major states. The economic performance parameters took into account factors such as GSDP, foreign direct investment (FDI) and share of industry and services in the state’s gross value added. Maharashtra finished third in the category, after Karnataka.
Three southern states — Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka — led the way in terms of environmental performance, which includes factors such as air quality, potable water supply, forest cover and renewable energy.
Goa led overall among the 11 small states surveyed in the report. It scored highly in multiple parameters, such as fiscal prudence, financial inclusion and social factors.
A key nationwide lacuna was, however, identified in the infra category that took into account power availability, roads, railways and airport density, social infrastructure such as publicly funded schools and hospitals, as well as irrigated agricultural areas. Maharashtra, despite leading the country overall, was ninth in the country, according to CareEdge, behind West Bengal. Punjab led the category, largely due to its power availability and density of railways and irrigation.