Poor social infrastructure, in areas of education and health, has ensured that India secures a low 119th rank in the United Nation’s Human Development Index.
India’s position is below China (89th spot) and Sri Lanka (91) in the “Human Development Report 2010” by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) that covered 169 countries and territories. India’s position in the index has improved by one position on the basis of a five-year comparison since 2005.
The report points out that eight Indian states have more poverty stricken people at 421 million, than 26 poorest African countries combined who have 410 million poverty affected people.
Though India has secured the 10th position as far as improvement in the income index was concerned, it lagged behind neighbouring countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan in education and health sector. Norway has topped the HDI, with a score of 0.938, in a scale of zero to one. A score of one indicates a perfect level in the index. Norway is followed by Australia at the second place (0.937) and New Zealand with a score of 0.907 ranked third. The US is fourth with a score of 0.902.
UNDP resident representative in India Patrice Coeur-Bizot stated that even though India has made steady progress in the human development index over the past 20 years, the country continues to see rising inequality.
“There has been steady progress on HDI over the past 20 years and India’s HDI is above the average for countries in South Asia. Economic growth has been impressive but inequality is on the rise,” he said.
Factors that determined the HDI ranking include empowerment, inequality, education, health, demographic trends, civic and community well being. The UNDP has also taken three new indices, inequality adjustment HDI, gender inequality index and multi-dimensional poverty index, in 2010 report.
Speaking at the occasion, chief economic advisor ministry of finance Kaushik Basu stated that the country’s goal was to improve overall human development and not merely ensure economic growth. “However, economic growth and rise in income levels were necessary for carrying out human development initiatives like providing access to education and health, gender equality, poverty eradication and so on,” he added.
The report starkly points out that when inequality is factored in, India’s HDI value would see a 30 per cent loss. In the gender inequality index, India is at the poor 122nd position, among 138 countries. Bangladesh and Pakistan are ranked at 116th and 112nd positions, respectively, indicating that these nations are better in gender equality than India.
The report points out that though life expectancy at birth in India has improved by 16 years over the last four decades, Bangladesh has shown greater improvement by showing an increasing of 23 years. Average life expectancy at birth in India is currently 64 years, as against 67 years in Pakistan and Bangladesh. The average time a kid spends in school in India is 4.4 years, much less than neighbouring Pakistan where the average is 4.9 years.
In the South Asian region, Nepal has come out as one of the best performers in the human development index. “More than four of every five children on school age in Nepal now attend primary school, compared to just one in five 40 years ago,” the report stated.