The United Nations’s Human Development Report 2011 — Sustainability and Equity: A Better Future for All — has come down sharply on the widening income gap between rich and poor with huge amounts of wealth presently concentrated in the hands of the rich.
It cited the examples of China, India and South Africa as examples of this trend with, 41 per cent of China’s total income in 2008 concentrated amongst a “top quintile of income earners.”
India’s overall ranking in the Human Development Index(HDI) is a low 134 among 167 countries. The HDI assesses long term progress in health, education and income indicators and India is even trailing war-torn Iraq.
The report has introduced a Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) for 109 countries highlighting the entire issue of environmental deprivation amongst the poor with India having the ignominy of having the largest number of MPI in the world. The report states that more than half of India’s population of 612 million fall in this category. The report warns that sharp income growth has seen a parallel deterioration in key environmental indicators including carbon dioxide emissions, soil and water quality and forest cover.
The environmental fall out can be gauged from the fact that global temperatures now average 0.75 ºC higher than at the beginning of the 20th century while global carbon dioxide emissions have increased 248 per cent. Drivers of this increase are population growth, rising consumption levels and carbon-intensive production.
As the world community prepares for the landmark UN conference on sustainable development next year, the report warns that disadvantaged people are carry the double burden of deprivation since they are vulnerable to the wider affects of environmental degradation and also to immediate environment threats posed by indoor air pollution, dirty water and bad sanitation.
It also highlights that environmental deterioration is taking place even while the poor are working hard to narrow the health and education gap between the rich and poor.
The report has also updated the Gender Inequality Index (GII) for 145 countries which highlights how reproductive health constraints continue to contribute to gender inequality. India does not fare well in the GII in comparison to neighbouring countries including Thailand and Sri Lanka where reproductive healthcare and contraceptives are readily available helping to reduce fertility rates. Even in Bangladesh, fertility rates have plunged from 6.6 births per woman in 1975 to 2.4 in 2009. Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh are ranked 97,145 and 146 respectively

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Currency tax invokes interest
age correspondent
New Delhi, Nov. 2

The recent financial crisis has revived interest in the levying of a currency transaction tax (CTT) that will help pay for major climate change mitigation and adaptation measures across the globe.
The 2011 Human Development Report argues that today’s foreign exchange settlement infrastructure is more organised, centralised and standardised. Implementing a CTT has becomes much more feasible now. The CTT could yield additional annual revenues of around $40 billion and could thereby serve to finance several climate change initiatives.
Several G-20 nations have already implemented a financial transaction tax and the IMF has confirmed the administrative feasibility of such a tax.
Monetising part of the IMF’s surplus special drawing rights could raise up to $75 billion at little or no budgetary cost.