Human development report

• UN Development Programme (UNDP)’s has released Human Development report, 2016.

Highlights of the report:

• India has been ranked 131st among 188 countries.
• It is third among South Asian countries (behind Sri Lanka and Maldives) and comes under the medium human development category.
• India’s Human Development Index (HDI) — based on life expectancy, access to knowledge and standard of living — value has increased by 46 per cent (from 0.428 to 0.624) between 1990 and 2015. Its gross national income per capita increased by about 223.4 per cent during the same time.
• The improvement in India’s HDI value is second among BRICS countries with China recording the highest improvement of 48 per cent.
• India’s annual average HDI growth (1990-2015) is higher than that of other countries in its category.
• The success of national development programmes like Skill India, Digital India, Make in India and Beti Bachao Beti Padhao aimed at bridging gaps in human development will be crucial in ensuring the success of Agenda 2030
• These programmes and the long-running affirmative action measures, illustrate the government’s commitment to identifying and mapping human development deficits, as well as taking action to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals
• The report noted that untargeted subsidies take away a lot of government resources that could otherwise have been spent on people, who need them the most.
• This index is topped by Norway.

What is human development?

• In 1990 the first Human Development Report introduced a new approach for advancing human wellbeing. Human development – or the human development approach - is about expanding the richness of human life, rather than simply the richness of the economy in which human beings live. It is an approach that is focused on people and their opportunities and choices.
• People: human development focuses on improving the lives people lead rather than assuming that economic growth will lead, automatically, to greater wellbeing for all. Income growth is seen as a means to development, rather than an end in itself.
• Opportunities: human development is about giving people more freedom to live lives they value. In effect this means developing people’s abilities and giving them a chance to use them. For example, educating a girl would build her skills, but it is of little use if she is denied access to jobs, or does not have the right skills for the local labour market. Three foundations for human development are to live a long, healthy and creative life, to be knowledgeable, and to have access to resources needed for a decent standard of living. Many other things are important too, especially in helping to create the right conditions for human development, and some of these are in the table below. Once the basics of human development are achieved, they open up opportunities for progress in other aspects of life.
• Choice: human development is, fundamentally, about more choice. It is about providing people with opportunities, not insisting that they make use of them. No one can guarantee human happiness, and the choices people make are their own concern. The process of development – human development - should at least create an environment for people, individually and collectively, to develop to their full potential and to have a reasonable chance of leading productive and creative lives that they value.
• As the international community moves toward implementing and monitoring the 2030 agenda, the human development approach remains useful to articulating the objectives of development and improving people’s well-being by ensuring an equitable, sustainable and stable planet.

By: Vishal