India: Trends of HDI

According to Human Development Report 2005, India’s rank was 127 out of 177 countries of the world. All the 177 countries are grouped under three categories. These are high, medium and low.

The countries which had value between 0.800 and above are termed as high. The countries which had value between 0.500 to 0.799 were ranked under medium categories and countries which had value less than 0.500 were ranked as low human development countries.

India was placed almost at the bottom of the table in the medium level category. Our neighbouring countries like China (85), Sri Lanka (93), Maldives (96) remained well above the India’s position. Other neighbouring countries like Myanamar (129), Bhutan (134), Pakistan (135) and Nepal (136) were placed just below India. The countries which lied below India were mostly from Africa and rest few countries were from Asia.

Over the time, that it has improved a lot over the last thirty years. This improvement is not sufficient enough. There are many small countries of Asia and Africa like Fiji, Mongolia, Tunisia, etc. are well above India. India has to work very hard to be placed among the top countries in the medium human development category (0.501 - 0.800). If the present trend continues it needs minimum 30 years to enter the high human development category. And for this, a rigorous effort particularly in the social sector like education, health and economic sector particularly reduction of poverty are required.

The following are the reasons to keep India at the bottom of human development:

  1. rapid increase in population
  2. large number of adult illiterates and low gross enrolment ratio
  3. high dropout rates
  4. inadequate government expenditure on education and health
  5. large proportion of under weight children as well as under nourished people
  6. very poor sanitation facilities and low access to essential life saving medicines

Apart from HDI, the performance of India is also not very encouraging as far as Gender Development Index (GDI) and Human Poverty Index (HDI) are concerned. According to Human Development Report, 2005, India’s position in GDI was 98 out of 140 countries and in HPI-1 was 58 out of 103 countries.