What you did in I-T, do in health, education

SONU JAIN : "In the last decade, the number of Indians living in poverty has gone down from 35% to 26%. But the fact that there has been little forward movement on key development indicators has ensured that India is stuck, for the second year in a row, at its ranking of 127 (out of 177 countries) on the Human Development Index (HDI).

The one message for policymakers from the UN Human Development Report 2005, released here today, couldn’t be clearer: India needs to display the level of dynamism and innovation in basic health and education as it has displayed in global technology markets.

The HDI combines measures of life expectancy, school enrolment, literacy, gender equity, income, sanitation and hygiene levels, to allow a broad view of a country’s development. Despite the rank remaining static, India’s HDI value itself has moved up marginally from 0.595 to 0.602 over the last one year.

What’s worrying experts is that Improvements in child and infant mortality are slowing and India is now off-track for these MDG (Millennium Development Goal) targets, said Maxine Olson, UNDP president representative and UN resident coordinator.

A point echoed by Planning Commission member Abhijeet Sen who disagreed with the Government’s optimism. ‘‘Though the Indian government maintains that they are on track on the MDGs, I will go on record to say that India is not.’’

These goals for 2015 were agreed upon in 2000 include halving poverty levels and universalising primary education.

The report has however, praised neighbouring Bangladesh for the rapid human development it has achieved, especially on child mortality despite its moderate growth.

Had India matched Bangladesh’s rate of reduction in child mortality over the past decade, 7,32,000 fewer children would die this year.

Bangladesh has risen 14 places in the HDI although just 10 places in the global wealth ranking since 1990. Child and infant mortality rates have fallen at more than 5% a year, malnutrition among mothers has fallen from 52% in 1996 to 42% in 2002 and primary school enrollment is more than 90%.

Its gains are even more than China’s which is headed like India—poverty has been reduced but other targets are way off. In India, the annual rate of decline in child mortality fell from 2.9% in the 80s to 2.3% since 1990.

The report argues that extreme inequalities, existing both between and within countries, is a brake on progress towards MDGs and wider human development goals.

If India closed the gender gap in mortality between girls and boys ages 1-5, that would save an estimated 130,000 lives. Reducing gender inequality would have a catalytic effect on reducing the primary education gap between girls and boys.

There is inequality within states in India too: Girls born in Kerala are five times more likely to reach their fifth birthday, are twice as likely to become literate and are likely to live 20 years longer than girls born in Uttar Pradesh.

While pointing out that India’s growth story has a huge unfinished agenda, the report has singled out three pilot projects in Maharashtra for special mention. Covering 39 villages to provide basic antenatal care, the projects ensured that infant mortality rate fell from 75 deaths per 1,000 births in the same baseline period to 39, three years later. The Maharashtra Employment Guarantee scheme has also found a favourable mention."