The Hindu Business Line : HDR: Managing cultural diversity for stability

THE brainchild of two Asian economists of importance — Amartya Sen and Mahbub ul Haque — the latest UN Human Development Report (HDR) incorporates information on development indicators such as GDP, longevity, literacy, health status and equality, and has a distinct claim to uniqueness. It devotes an entire volume to the question of cultural liberty in today's diverse world and notes that managing cultural diversity is one of the central challenges of our time.

The HDR 2004 notes that cultural liberty is a vital part of human development "because being able to choose one's identity without losing the respect of others or being excluded from other choices is important in leading a full life.

People want the freedom to practise their religion openly, to speak their language, to celebrate their ethnic or religious heritage without fear of ridicule or punishment or diminished opportunity. These struggles over cultural identity, if left unmanaged or managed poorly, can quickly become one of the greatest sources of instability within states or between them and, in so doing, trigger conflicts that take development backward".

The report rightly refers, for example, to the ethnic violence that destroyed hundreds of homes and mosques in Kosovo and Serbia, and the bombings in Spain. In a special pointed reference, it mentions the violence that killed thousands of Muslims in Gujarat and elsewhere in India, a champion of cultural accommodation.

The volume on cultural diversity offers an important contribution to the debate on human development. A seminal discussion authored by Amartya Sen dwells on the different dimensions of cultural diversity. While this discussion is important, it does not add much to the usefulness of the UNHDR's comparative analysis of human development in different countries.

The authors of the report have rightly resisted the temptation to quantify and include cultural liberty in the various indicators of human development. For one thing, it would be difficult to get a quantitative measure of the extent of cultural freedom in different countries. For another, it would be difficult to give a corresponding weight to such measure — if it exists — to be incorporated into the HDR indicators of a composite index. A discussion of the UNHDR's treatment of this issue will be attempted in a subsequent article. The latest UN report on human development proceeds on the basis that while national income is important as an indicator of development, it is not sufficient.

While national income is a good indicator of human wellbeing, human outcomes do not depend on economic growth and levels of national income alone. They also depend on how these resources are used, whether for developing weapons or for producing food, building palaces or providing clean water.

Outcomes, such as democratic participation in decision-making do not depend on incomes alone. The HDR 2004, like its predecessors, presents an extensive set of indicators, such as life expectancy at birth, infant mortality rates, literacy rates, access to clean water and gender-related gaps in schooling or political participation.

The human development index focusses on three dimensions of human development — living a long and healthy life, being educated and having a decent standard of living. It combines measures of life expectancy, school enrolment, literacy and income to allow a broader view of a country's development than does income alone. While there are theoretical arguments in favour of the UNHDR's method of combining these various measures, there are also valid arguments that such an aggregation of totally different measures does not make logical sense. For the present, the jury is still out. We accept UNHDR's methodology as the new conventional wisdom.

The HDR 2004 notes that there was a dramatic and unprecedented human development between 1960 and 2000. Life expectancy in developing countries increased from 46 to 63 years. Mortality rates for children under five were more than halved.

Between 1975, when one out of every two adults could not read, and 2000, the share of illiterate people almost halved. Real per capita income (in purchasing power parity terms) more than doubled from $2,000 to $4,200. But, despite this impressive progress, human deprivation remains.

More than 800 million people suffer from malnourishment. Some 100 million children, who should be in schools are not, 60 millions of them are girls. More than a billion people live on less than $1 a day. Some 1.8 billion people live in countries that do not fully allow for political, religious or cultural freedom. All this is a strong argument in favour of pressing forward with the Millennium Goals of Development.

Public interest in the UNHDR has usually been centred round the ranking of particular countries in the world's sweepstakes on development. In India, naturally particular interest centres on the country's rank in the league table. India ranks 127th in the list in the Report for 2004. Comparable ranks for other countries are:

China 94

Sri Lanka 96

Thailand 76

Brazil 72

Malaysia 59

The public sensibility in India has been hurt more by the fact that India ranks below even countries like Cuba, Libya, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Bosnia. Some of these countries have higher ranks, mainly because of their natural resource endowment, which contributes to higher GDP per capita. What should hurt our sense of national pride, however, is that Brazil, China and Sri Lank rank higher.

What is more interesting than the relative rank of India is the trend of change in HDR ranks over the years. The Table indicates the changes in Human Development Index for certain comparable countries. The growth of human development indicator of China and Vietnam are quite impressive, compared to that of India.

It is of interest to note that the UN attempt to compile human development indicators among countries has inspired a race to the top — countries are competing with each other to do better in respect of not only GDP but of other indicators such as literacy, health and access to safe water.

The HDR 2004 definitely has a role in triggering the race for development. So, too, the exercise within countries to prepare HDRs for different sub-regions has also had a good effect instilling a stimulus for competition in development.

The HDR 2004 continues the practice of incorporating, which it calls the "human poverty indicator" (HPI), which depicts the extent of deprivation compared to a decent standard of living. (This is distinct from the human development indicator) The HPI is calculated by assigning suitable weights to measures of probability of surviving to age 40, adult literacy rate, weighted average of population without sustainable access to improved water sources and children underweight for age.

The HPI indices have been given for various countries in the detailed tables in the HDR. In terms of HPI, India ranks 48 with a value of 31 per cent. China has a human poverty rank of 24 with an index value of 24 per cent. Brazil ranks 18, with an index of 11.8 per cent. We have, indeed, a long way to go. Compare Cuba, with a HPI of 5 per cent with a rank of 5, and Mexico, with a HPI of 9.1 per cent and a rank of 12.

The ingredients of human development comprise the usual mix of GDP enhancement, an attack on illiteracy, malnutrition, infant mortality etc. — all the millennium goals. The Government of any poor country is interested in attaining a high human development indicator.

The latest Budget can be looked at as an effort in that direction. But it is a fact that the Centre allocates funds and administers only part of them. The bulk of development funds has to be spent at the grassroots level. Rightly, the emphasis on human development has to be on the development of tools of better governance — an aspect the latest HDR 2004 is silent on.

On the efficacy of governance at the grassroots rests the achievement of our goals of human development, however grandiose the provisions made in the Budget and the declaration of NCMP.

Not for nothing has the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, focussed his attention and that of State Chief Ministers on the importance of governance.

It is earnestly hoped that he succeeds in his mission of translating his goals for better governance into a reality — a truly gigantic task that faces a country of contradictions, such as ours.

He has to do this while at the same time ensuring the maintenance of a fracturing democracy and observing all the goals of cultural, linguistic and religious freedom which secularism as our goal demands and the UNHDR 2004 commends strongly.