| Published on 08-12-2007 In National |
| Viewed 1815 times | Written by Nilotpal Basu |
| Warning: A social explosion on Cards in India |
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For a country aspiring to be and prone to jingoistic titillations of a `superpower' status, the Human Development Report published by the UNDP should come as an eye opener. This, not only for the fact, that India's position has slipped from 126 to a slightly more unenviable 128, but more on account of revelations that blow to smithereens the high-decibel claim that we are on course for a more humane and `inclusive growth'. That is the highlight of the Eleventh Plan which is going to be adopted by the National Development Council within this month.
The results of this year's report should not have been so surprising for any discerning observer of our development paradigm. That growth alone cannot ensure well being of a people is a fact which is now founded on solid empirical data. The HDR confirms this. It has pointed out that notwithstanding the loud claims of the global reformers, 80 per cent of the global population has in comparison with the past been exposed to a greater degree of income inequality. In India, despite the breakneck speed of the growth process, one of the official bodies – the National Commission on Unorganised Sector Employees had interpreted NSS data to establish that 78 per cent of our people earn less than Rs. 20 a day. This data was only a confirmation of what we had apprehended in the wake of the severe agrarian crisis which is gripping our countryside.
The Human Development Index as designed by the UNDP is an extremely interesting and, of course, very rational method of comparing and monitoring the well-being of the people. Thankfully, this approach contrasts the objectives of human societies from a market-driven outlook to a people's welfare centric paradigm.
The Human Development Index is a compact of benchmarkable parameters on three counts. These include a long and healthy life, access to education and knowledge and, of course, quality of life which is indexed to standard of living. The composite HDI is then calculated on a scale of 1 to 0.
It will be quite revealing to take stock of the Indian performance in these areas. India's HDI value has been put at 0.619. The life expectancy at birth at 63.7 years and the adult literacy rate at 61 per cent for those aged 15 years and above. The combined gross enrolment ratio for primary, secondary and tertiary education is 63.8 per cent. The per capita GDP is calculated as $ 3452 using the purchasing power parity method. According to the methodology used by the authors of the HDR, the life expectancy index works out to be 0.625 while that for education index and GDP index are 0.620 and 0.591 respectively. There is no point in further embarrassing ourselves with shocking comparisons that can be drawn with countries having otherwise more appalling conditions of human survival, but fairly much ahead of us in the HDI rankings.
But why is it so? It seems that we are continuing to get our policies wrong. For example, a little scrutiny of the report reveals that the health parameters has an irrefutable linkage with the ability of a nation to ensure public expenditure on health as opposed to private expenditure.
For, most countries which lead the human development rankings are those with a far greater proportion of public expenditure to the total on this account. Here, India's health expenditure when dissected shows the public expenditure is only 0.9 to that of private at 4.1, both expressed in terms of percentage of GDP.
Apart from this, the internal inequalities also reveal a deep divide in India. For India, births attended by skilled health personnel in percentage terms is 16 for the poorest 20 per cent while 84 for the richest 20 per cent. Similarly, for one-year old children who are fully immunised the corresponding data is 21 for the poorest 20 per cent and 64 for the richest 20 per cent. Infant mortality rate that is per thousand life births is 97 for the poorest 20 per cent while only 38 for the richest 20 per cent.
A similar picture is available for education. In fact, public expenditure on education as percentage of GDP is all standstill. In 1991, it was 3.7 per cent of the GDP while that in the period 2002-05, is 3.8 per cent. As percentage of total government expenditure as compared to 12.2 per cent in 1991, it has actually come down to 10.7 per cent during 2002-05.
And, finally, the income inequality. The share of income or expenditure of the poorest 20 per cent in India is put at 8.1 per cent to the 45.3 per cent of the richest 20 per cent and the inequality measures are a staggering 8.6 per cent when compared between the richest 10 per cent to the poorest 10 per cent and 5.64 richest 20 per cent to poorest 20 per cent.
To sum this up, given the huge population in India, the issue of human development which essentially constitutes the major aspect of our people's well-being cannot be dealt with by ensuring economic growth alone. To add to the worries of a bleak situation in human resources development, the theme of the HDR for this year has focussed on the impending disaster in the form of climate change. The report has rightly pointed out the disproportionate burden of the climate change which will affect the poor and the vulnerable and will undoubtedly further adversely affect the human development strivings of these sections.
It is for this that the report has correctly observed: "While India is a high growth economy, the benefits have been unequally shared and there is a large human development backlog. Around 28 per cent of the population, some 320 million people live below the poverty line and three quarters of the poor are in rural areas."
The point now is how to change this situation. It is clear that the provision of the National Common Minimum Programme dealing with health and education sector will have to be implemented with a sense of urgency. The annual financial allocations that has marked the earlier budgets of the UPA government will have to be radically rectified. Otherwise, we are heading towards a social explosion. Additionally, India will find itself inadequately prepared to face the catastrophe of the climate change which this planet has been forced to bear by the developed world. |
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