Progress Tracking of Health-Related SDGs: Challenges and Opportunities for India

Given its size and the low baseline, India has a crucial role in global progress and achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly in health. As a result, there is a great need for effective monitoring of the country’s progress toward health-related SGDs, through timely and disaggregated data, which would allow for systematic assessment and course correction. This paper aims to classify the health and nutrition-related indicators from the existing health and healthcare surveys that India relies on for tracking progress and recommends that two of the largest household surveys be streamlined to strengthen the National Indicator Framework (NIF) for goal tracking purposes. The paper also reviews the draft NIF and proposes certain revisions from a data perspective in a revised draft framework for the government’s consideration. Finally, it highlights various gaps and constraints in data availability, and develops specific recommendations to achieve a data sphere consistent with the envisaged NIF.