India Today Group Editorial Director Raj Chengappa today kicked off the State of States: Karnataka in Bengaluru in the presence of  RV Deshpande, Karnataka's Minister of Large and Medium Industries, KG George, Minister of Bengaluru Planning and Development, Mohandas Pai, Chairman Manipal Global Education and many other distinguished dignitaries.

Talking about the State of States: Karnataka, Chengappa said," The State of the State (SOTS) today has become the touchstone for competition among districts within each state.  The India Today State of the State (SOTS) report on Karnataka is a pioneering study since it has analysed all the 30 districts for the first time for around 10 categories of development for the last decade."

The crucial categories are education, health, Infrastructure, agriculture, industry, services, water and sanitation, law and order, prosperity, overall. The winners are 20 districts in each of the 10 categories, 10 best level of development, 10 best improved in the last 10 years. Recognised that the districts are drivers of change - not Delhi or even the state capitals.

The SOTS is not a survey ie study of people's perceptions, which can predict wrongly. It is a serious study of actual  objective data from official sources like Census, NSS, National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), etc combined with ground reports from the districts. The India Today research team and the reportorial team got together with well known data agency Nielsen to produce a serious, in-depth study of the state analyzing district level data.