Indicators to integrity: Reimagining TN’s sustainable growth vision

Tamil Nadu State Planning Commission's vision document outlines an ambitious roadmap across all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). But the real question is not whether the State can meet those targets; it is whether it can redefine what those targets truly mean

Assume that sustainability wasn’t just about how quickly we construct or how much we measure, but about how impartially we include and how wisely we sustain.

Currently, Tamil Nadu is at a rare juncture to turn its numerical success into a human-centred model for the Global South. On June 9, 2025, the Tamil Nadu State Planning Commission released its vision document for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Ambitious and methodical, the report showcases Tamil Nadu’s policy legacy of inclusive welfare and highlights the state’s aspiration to become a national exemplar. But the real question is not whether the state can meet targets; it is whether it can redefine what those targets truly mean.

Tamil Nadu’s robust performance on SDGs, particularly on gender equity, school enrolment, maternal health and economic growth, comes from decades of social investment in programs like Pudhumai Penn, Illam Thedi Kalvi, Makkalai Thedi Maruthuvam, Naan Mudhalvan, etc. and aligns closely with SDGs 3, 4, 5, and 8. But, as the report itself acknowledges, inequalities persist below the surface. Districts like Perambalur, Ariyalur, and The Nilgiris lag behind Coimbatore or Chennai on several dimensions of healthcare, education access and employment. Further facts like lack

of functional schools or health centres for the tribal communities in Kalrayan Hills, informal workers remaining disconnected from safety nets in Madurai’s urban fringes or the decline of women’s labour force participation despite educational gains suggests that development is a function of power, who gets to decide, access and benefit.

The data systems supporting SDG tracking are robust, but figures often mask exclusion. But why are dropout rates higher among Dalit girls despite the universalisation of enrolment? Why is all improved sanitation not translating to usage by transgender people? Tamil Nadu must move beyond performance to purpose and therefore integrate qualitative, community-generated indicators into its evaluation ecosystem.

The report correctly emphasises localisation and therefore, decentralisation of intent must become the decentralisation of capacity. Ironically, local bodies, which should be the beating heart of local SDG action, remain underfunded and structurally marginal. A recent state audit (2023) observes that less than one-fifth of urban local bodies had trained staff for SDG integration. Community institutions are consulted late, if at all and top-down decision-making continues.

To realise its localisation goal, radical empowerment of local bodies is a dire need by mandating block-level SDG planning, allocating untied funds based on vulnerability indices and enabling participatory governance platforms. Why should a town panchayat just implement welfare schemes? Rather, it should be able to prioritise SDG targets that matter most to its context and be allowed to say no to projects that displace commons, pollute aquifers or deepen inequity.

Aiming to double its GDP by 2030, scaling infrastructure across logistics, energy and industrial corridors is an economically ambitious vision, but this pathway often creates unintended trade-offs. Expanding highways, ports, and energy parks risks encroaching on wetlands, displacing fishing villages, and disturbing agrarian landscapes. While speaking on renewable energy and climate resilience, it does not fully grapple with the ecological contradictions embedded in its growth model. Tamil Nadu can adopt an integrated just transition framework and ensure that the move towards green energy and industrial expansion does not come at the expense of the most vulnerable by institutionalising social impact audits and ecosystem service valuations as standard filters for project approvals.

Treating data as destiny is perhaps the most overlooked challenge in its SDG vision. Figures are vital, but they are not neutral. Without unpacking process inequalities, the heavy dependence on outcome indicators only leads to what one might call ‘governance without empathy’. To be a global model, the state must go beyond dashboards and control rooms. Instead, investment in deliberative processes like ward sabhas, citizen juries, and social audits is needed to hear the voices of those who live with the outcomes of development. For example, the voices of the Adivasi women displaced by roads, transgender persons in hostile urban spaces, Dalit students dropping out of elite universities and informal workers pressed by formalisation drives do not slow down development, they are the ‘ethical compass’.

To bridge the gap between intent and impact, Tamil Nadu should adopt three key strategies. First, it must empower Local Institutions and make SDG planning and budgeting mandatory at the panchayat and ward level, backed by training, data tools, and fiscal incentives. Let participation be designed, not presumed. Second, internalise ecological limits by ensuring that all infrastructure must pass through robust environmental, social, and climate resilience assessments. Ecological restorations must be a budgeted function in district planning. Third, redesign data and monitoring by co-producing indicators with community organisations.

Ethnographic tools should be used to capture lived realities and build accountability into citizen-led demands and not merely into state-led targets.

Tamil Nadu has a rare opportunity, not just to meet the global goals ahead of schedule, but to lead a deeper, southern conversation about what sustainable development means. Should success be measured in numbers alone, or in the everyday dignity that those numbers are meant to represent? Can progress be meaningful if it is not also just? Can we truly speak of inclusion without letting the most marginalised define what development should look like?

In the end, Tamil Nadu must decide: does it want to be the fastest in reaching the SDG finish line, or the first to reshape the race itself?

Thakur is Professor and Dean at Vinayaka Mission’s School of Economics and Public Policy, Chennai