NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said India’s eastern states have done remarkably well on ease of doing business index, but he stressed that they need to repeat their progress on the human development index as well. He, however, said several Indian states remain backward on human development indicators (HDI) “because of legacy issues”.“The government’s Aspirational Districts Programme (ADP) aims to correct this by focusing on education, health and nutrition on a real-time basis. We are capturing incremental progress of 115 districts on 49 indicators,” Kant said in a statement.His remarks came a day after he said the states in India’s southern and western region were growing rapidly, but those like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh were keeping the country backward. He said while “we have improved on ease of doing business, we have remained backward on human development index. We are still 131 out of 188 countries in HDI.”He said: “The focus of the ADP programme is to improve India’s rank in the Human Development Index, raising the living standards of citizens and ensuring inclusive growth for all. The programme is being implemented in the spirit of cooperative federalism in full partnership with states.“These states have achieved impressive economic growth in recent years. This must be accompanied by all-round development as envisaged in the Aspirational Districts programme,” he said.