17 Sustainable Development Goals, whose concern?

As many as seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with their 169 targets which shape the world’s most ambitious global agenda were adopted by the country in the year 2015. There are a concomitant of a total turnaround of the levels of progress of the citizens, not only pertaining to one sphere but all spheres. It, therefore, is a natural corollary that State Governments should be eager in implementing them and try to achieve assigned goals and various targets, not just as routine but as priorities.
Astonishingly, achieving these goals have been no concern of the State Government when reports are pouring in about other States vying with one another in toiling enthusiastically over it rather evolving their own strategies suiting their conditions and situations. Since poverty and collateral issues are plaguing our system and remain a constant challenge for our economic and planning experts , these goals are primarily aimed at fighting poverty in all its forms. Hunger is still stirring at our faces and only a few years back , our Government realised after decades of achieving independence, that there should be right to food and freedom from hunger, not to speak of fighting malnutrition. Good and diseases free health, eradication of illiteracy, gender equality, clean energy , decent work etc are otherwise only decorative pages of political parties’ manifestoes so much so that clean potable water still remains a dream for a large section of our population and if these goals are identified and action plans chalked by the NITI Ayog, it is astonishing as to why any State Government like Jammu and Kashmir should feel casual and atypical about it.
To lend concrete credibility to the “goals”, NITI Ayog is holding national and regional consultations on the SDGs in order to ensure that States enthusiastically work on them and devise their own respective action plans depending upon the chronological order of their priorities and the focus on them. How much aberrant and uncanny it looks that Jammu and Kashmir has not started paying the required attention in this regard which can well be gauged from the fate of the State Level Committee for achievement of SDGs . This critical Committee was constituted several months back comprising 23 bureaucrats including Chief Secretary and almost all the Administrative Secretaries with the aim to finalize the action plan including mapping of departments and schemes for each Sustainable Development Goal targets , facilitate approval of targets and indicators with timelines.
The aim to form “vision Document 2030” for the State and hold periodic review of progress and suggest necessary corrective measures and host of other activities are yet to get actually started in the State. What to speak of that, the Committee has not met even once till date . You shall have to believe that most of the members on the Committee have “not heard” about any meeting having taking place so far, what to speak of sustainable development goals and achieving targets in time bound manner.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here