India is shining in one respect and if the current economic growth is sustained, it is expected to become the world's third largest country by 2030. But, for real development of the country, the human side of development in terms of reducing inequality, improving health and education and enlarging and empowering women participation are equally important.

The United Nations Study

The United Nations-Development Programme (UNDP) study on human development index (HDI) was released on November 2, 2011. The HDI is a measure for assessing long-term progress in three basic dimensions of human development, such as a long and healthy life, access to knowledge and a decent standard of living. The HDI measures the average achievements in a country in three basic dimensions of human development. First, a long and healthy life, as measured by life expectancy at birth. Second, knowledge, as measured by the adult literacy rate. Third, a decent standard of living, as measured by Gross National Income per capita based on purchasing power parity in terms of the US dollar.

Despite some controversies surrounding these calculations, HDI is considered by many to be an excellent tool for measuring development, since both economic and social indicators are covered.

How India fares

India ranked 134 out of 187 countries in terms of Human Development Index in 2011. While ranking of any particular country is not comparable over years because of changes in methodology and the number of countries covered, between 1980 and 2011, India's HDI value increased from 0.344 to 0.547 for 2011. This is no mean achievement. An index below 0.5 is treated as low human development, and above 0.8 as high human development and, in between, as medium human development. India has moved from a low level to medium level of human development.

The 2011 report pointed that the country's HDI of 0.547 was, however, below the average of 0.630 for countries in the medium human development group and below the average of 0.548 for countries in South Asia.

An attempt is made here to see how India fares in terms of certain key parameters, constituting HDI, among select countries, in particular its neighbours such as China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal.

The HDI of India is much lower than that of China and Sri Lanka, but only a shade better than those of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. If we take out the income element, that is the economic element and consider only the social element in terms of ‘non-income HDI', India's position improved from 0.547 to 0.568, but similar index for other countries improved much more significantly. That would mean, in terms of social dimensions, India relatively lagged behind these countries. This is evident from studying some individual components of certain social indicators (Table).

The life expectancy at birth at 65.4 years in India is comparable to Pakistan, but turned out to be lower than those of Bangladesh (68.9 years), Nepal ( 68.8 years), Sri Lanka (74.9 years) and China (73.5 years).

The mean years of schooling at 4.4 years was lower than even those of Pakistan and Bangladesh, but much worse compared with Sri Lanka (8.2 years) and China (7.5 years).

It must, however, be added that in terms of expected years of schooling, which measures the number of years of schooling that a child of school entrance age can expect to receive if prevailing patterns of age-specific enrolment rates persist throughout the child's life, India stands out much better compared with Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, and also does not compare that unfavourably with other countries.

This shows that education facilities that are made available and expected to be made available in India would better take care of the growing young population in the country and make them skilled enough to reap the demographic dividend in the coming years.

What is most surprising is that as regards the gender inequality index — which is a composite measure reflecting inequality in achievements between men and women in three dimensions, namely reproductive health, empowerment and labour markets — India turns out to be the worst with an index of 0.617 (higher the ratio, higher is the inequality). This compares unfavourably with Pakistan (0.573), Bangladesh (0.550), Nepal (0.558) Sri Lanka (0.419) and China (0.209).

In terms of female labour force participation at 32.8 per cent, India fared better than Pakistan (21.7 per cent), but not so with other countries: China (64.7 per cent), Sri Lanka (34.2 per cent), Bangladesh (58.7 per cent) and Nepal (63.3 per cent).

The maternal mortality rate at 230 per lakh of live births in India is worse and equally so in other compared countries with the exception of China and Sri Lanka.

Policy Implication

In terms of improving education and health, while India has not fared very poorly compared with some of its neighbours, policy makers must pay serious attention to enlarging the role and participation of women, besides empowering them and addressing concerns such as maternal mortality.

(The author is Director, EPW Research Foundation. The views are personal.)

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