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Events & Issues
New Delhi, 4 August 2014
Human Development
Index
INDIA’S DISMAL PERFORMANCE
By Dr S Saraswathi
(Former Director,
ICSSR, New Delhi)
The Human Development Report 2014 issued by the UNDP (United
Nations Development Programme) makes a shocking revelation that India continues
to remain in 135th position among 187 countries in the Human
Development Index (HDI). It means that our country has not made any improvement
on its record of the previous year and places us in
the medium human development category along with some of the Asian and African
countries.
HDI was introduced by the Human Development Report (HDR)
published by the UNDP since 1990. It grouped countries in three grades of
development—those showing HDI of less than and equal to 0.500 as low, those
showing HDI of more than 0.500 and less than and equal to 0.800 as medium, and
those showing HDI greater than 0.800 as high in human development.
The index ranks countries by the level of development based
on the factor of “human well-being”. This factor is considered to be much wider
and more realistic than the “wealth” factor that it replaced.
HDI shows progress of a country on three dimensions – long
and healthy life, access to knowledge, and decent standard of living. It is a
composite statistics of life expectancy, education, and income indices used to
rank countries in four tiers of human development.
In the 1990s, a matrix of 128 countries was prepared on HDI
and income classification in three categories. India then fell in the “low”
category among the lowest 35% of the 128 countries. In 1996, it was placed in
135th position among 178 countries – behind many Asian countries.
By the year 2000, it advanced to 128th rank, but
still stayed behind Sri Lanka
and Maldives.
Surely, the country presented a contrasting picture of some globally acclaimed technological
progress including nuclear tests side by side with staggering size of
illiterate population, high rate of child and maternal mortality, poor
healthcare facilities, and large population below poverty line that were indicators
of low human development. Since then, India seems to be losing its rank
further. Ridiculous, indeed, to swallow this along with the fact that the
country has many achievements.
HDI, as originally conceived, indicated only the average
well-being of the people of a country. It didn’t indicate disparities within or
the range separating the highest and the lowest on human development among a
country’s population.
The level of human development even in the most affluent
countries is not equal among all citizens. Various kinds of inequalities cause different levels of
development necessitating grading by regions, States, districts, and by sex,
and so on of the population in a country.
Taking account of this factor, what is known as Inequality-Adjusted
Human Development Index (IHDI) was devised in 2010 and has been used in the
last four years. It takes into account not only the average achievements of a
country on the three dimensions of development covered in the exercise, but
also how the achievements are distributed within the country.
It is done by discounting the average value on each
dimension according to the level of inequality. The index shows the actual
level of human development (accounting for inequalities) and can be viewed as
the “potential’ human development in the absence of inequalities.
In 2010, a Multi-dimensional Poverty Index was also
introduced. Under this, various forms of deprivations affecting education,
health, and living standards within a household were measured. Gender
inequality is deemed very important and determined in three areas –
reproductive health, empowerment, and economic activity.
Two other substantive changes were made in 2010 to make the
index reflect the reality better. Gross enrolment and adult literacy as
indicators for education were replaced by expected years of schooling and mean
years of schooling. For measuring income, Gross Domestic Product was replaced
by Gross National Income per capita.
In 2010, India
moved to the 119th position from the 128th position held
in 2009 and was recognized as a medium human development country. It was also
one of the “top 10 movers’ by its GDP growth and its HDI was above average for
South Asian nations.
But, the image was tarnished by the growth of
inequalities. The index of 2010 showed
the country’s HDI value had lost about 30% under inequality-adjustment. This
put India
in a bad light in comparison with other middle human development countries.
It is certainly no consolation to learn that the IHDI of
even many advanced developed countries shows a substantial fall when compared
to their HDI. In ranking under IHDI, the US dropped by nine places from its
HDI rank because of prevailing inequalities in 2013. Many Latin American countries
also lost their rank while some countries from the Soviet block like Ukraine, Uzbekistan gained.
However, inequality in health, education, and income, which
are the dimensions of inequality measured since 2010, is less in countries with
“very high development”.
The report of 2010 pointed to failures on the social sector
in India.
It shed light on apparently inconsistent factors like rising literacy along
with short period of schooling, and increasing income without better education
and healthcare. Human development is not confined to economic betterment, but
should encompass all aspects of life.
India’s Gender Development Index (GDI) released
in 2014 is based on sex disaggregated HDI. It shows the ratio of female HDI to
male HDI as 0.828. Female HDI (0.519) is much below that of male HDI (0.627),
which indicates prevalence of sex-based inequalities assessed on the three
basic dimensions of human development. The country has earned the distinction of
recording the lowest female HDI in the region. On gender inequality index, India ranks 127
out of 152 countries.
The HDI of 2014 is significant as the time prescribed for
reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), 2015 is drawing closer. The
goals aim at all-round human development. India is not in a position to touch
the goals.
Nevertheless, India has produced the highest
number of Human Development Reports in the world. A total of 21 States have
produced State HDRs and about 80 districts are also preparing district level
reports. All these are expected to help improve our performance by corrective
methods and better implementation of policies and programmes.
A serious but remediable flaw in the index is the use of
some outdated data for want of recent data. National surveys suffer from some
serious problems in filling up schedules and bringing out reports on time. As
these survey reports provide the data for development index, we have to give
more importance to national surveys.
Some may also point out that the measurement is made on
chosen factors considered as index of “human development” in a material
world. It doesn’t fully reflect
comparative development of various countries which are immeasurable. No HDI can
measure intellectual, moral, and ethical progress of countries on a comparable
scale. Courage, wisdom, devotion, compassion, skill, for instance, cannot be
measured by any index.
HDI also does not take into account negative factors like
crime, alcoholism and drug addiction, violence, etc, which may upset the
current ranking drastically. In any case, such shortcomings cannot be an excuse
for India’s
dismal performance on globally accepted concept and criteria of human
development.
Human development indicators like the HDI only reflect our situation
in the world of reality. Our task does not and should not end with attempts to
improve our points and our rank. ---INFA
(Copyright,
India News and Feature Alliance)
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