Household Resilience: The Missing Link in India's Sustainable Goals?

India has been struggling to make progress on the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) since 2020. The impact of not achieving these goals can be quite severe, so it's important to figure out what steps can be taken to speed up India's progress. One potential solution could be increasing the adaptive capacity of households. This is the ability of households to adjust to changes and cope with stresses. However, there isn't much research on how this adaptive capacity is linked to achieving the SDGs. A recent study looked into this by analyzing household data using advanced statistical methods. They measured household adaptive capacity using a locally relevant composite index. The study found that higher adaptive capacity might be connected to better local achievement of 10 targets across 7 different SDGs (1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 12, and 16). Interestingly, caste identity also played a significant role in many of the models, suggesting that caste dynamics are important in achieving these goals. This study is significant because India ranks quite low, at 109 out of 167 countries, in achieving the SDGs. Progress in most of these goals is still a concern. Additionally, the SDGs don't directly address caste-based discrimination, which this study highlights as a potential barrier.