India's Under Performance on Human Development Index
--> Posted on 2009-11-07 19:12:25 By Diksha AggarwalThe UNDP’s Human Development Report, puts India far down on the list – at 134 out of a survey of 182 countries.
The Human Development Index (HDI) is an index used to rank countries by level of "human development", which usually also implies whether a country is developed, developing, or underdeveloped. Though the report is used as a measure to development, it is actually not a comprehensive measure of human development – it doesn’t include indicators like gender or income inequality or less tangible concepts like human rights and political freedom — Normally published annually since 1990, the index goes beyond a nation’s GDP to measure the general well-being of people under a host of three parameters of development: living a long and healthy life (measured by life expectancy), being educated (measured by adult literacy and gross enrolment in education) and having a decent standard of living (measured by purchasing power parity, income).
The Human Development Report 2009 (HDR), makes a surprising assertion – “being able to decide where to live is a key element of human freedom”. But from many years migration of people across borders and inside countries has been seen as a negative thing, caused by underdevelopment and violence and as a source of trouble, poverty and joblessness. Almost all countries opposes entry of immigrants, whether domestic or foreign, particularly when the migrants are poor, refugees or from a different ethnic/ religious background. In India we witness this most clearly in the treatment and representation of internal Bihari migrants or international “Bangladeshi aliens”. Most governments view migration as an unwelcome event both for the migrant as well as for the communities involved.
The influential body like the United Nations has endorsed a report which foregrounds migrant rights by not only demonstrating the net advantage of migration to both the migrants as well as host communities, but also at a level of human right. Migration benefits in terms of better incomes and social benefits like health and education for the migrants. Host communities generally benefit from the infusion of new workers and skills while the immigrants’ home communities too often gain from the repatriation of money and ideas.
The HDR observes, “While the international community boasts an established institutional architecture for governing trade and financial relations among countries, the governance of mobility has been well characterised as a nonregime”, and adds that “...better progress might be made if the WTO [World Trade Organisation] took a more inclusive and people-centred approach” towards the movement of people. Given this larger global context, the HDR’s insistence on a positive correlation between migration and development is surely a big step in the right direction.
According to press reports, the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia said that India would allow unhindered movement of migrants, including unskilled workers, if the developed world takes the first step. Similarly, on the matter of internal migration, whether it is in providing basic services to the poor migrants or protecting them from chauvinist violence, the state’s record has been rather poor for example in our own “Incredible Nation”, The financial capital of India, “Mumbai” (sorry, not Bombay) is a glaring example of the “Sons of the soil”. The emigrants from the States of UttarPradesh, Bihar, Orissa always live in perpetual fear of the “policy holders”, the “Marathi mannoos”. About a year ago, the North Indian inhabitants were brutally attacked, robbed of their belongings, their properties destroyed and forced them to flee to their States.
The ranking clearly shows India has slipped in comparative terms in ensuring a better quality of life for its citizens as in the previous index, published for 2007 and 2008 together, it ranked 128, while the position the year before was 126. India’s score has been pulled down by its slower progress in education and health reforms compared with most nations. The nation’s government expenditure on health as a percentage is only 3.4% in 2006 compared with 8.3% in Sri Lanka and 6.8% in Vietnam. Similarly, the public expenditure on education as percentage of total government expenses is 10.7% over the years 2000 to 2007. Therefore, according to the report, life expectancy at birth, at 63.4 years, in India is worse than Egypt, Lebanon or Albania.
“Overall, however, India has made steady progress on the Human Development Index (HDI). Its value has gone up from 0.556 in 2000 to 0.612 in 2007,” said Patrice Coeur-Bizot, the resident representative of UNDP in India.
Among the countries in the neighbourhood, China, Sri Lanka and Bhutan rank higher than India at 92, 102 and 132, respectively, while Pakistan at 141, Nepal at 144 and Bangladesh at 146 rank lower.
Norway continues to top the chart, while Australia, Iceland, Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, France, Switzerland and Japan make up the top 10. The US is ranked 13, while Britain and Germany are further down at 21 and 22. It is interesting that Australia (which has dominated the Indian news lately because of racist attacks against Indians in the country) ranks second on the HDI, right after Norway.
Given India’s chronic inability to provide even the most basic services and rights to a majority of its citizens even six decades after independence. As the Human Development Index (HDI) shows, India’s unchanged position at 134 in a list of 182 countries is a scandal for a nation which has superpower pretentions. Even though its actual HDI score has improved, its constant relative ranking indicates that it may be doing worse than other countries in addressing poverty and deprivation.
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