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Botswana, even Palestinian
territories do better than India
WSN Network
India may have
claimed that it bucked the recession, it may have emerged as an IT
super power but when it comes to human development,
New Delhi
should be looking for a good place to hide. The new Human
Development Report 2009 released by the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) on Monday showed India remained shockingly at the
same position that it occupied last year, 134, out of 182
countries.
Countries like
Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Botswana and even the Palestinian Territories
offer a better quality of life. China ranks 92nd on the list while
Pakistan is at number 141. The positions of the top five countries
in the list — Norway, Australia, Iceland, Canada and Ireland —
remain unchanged from last year.
This despite
India's claims of investment in development schemes like the
National Rural Health Mission, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and National
Rural Employment Guarantee Act.
“Overall, India
has made steady progress on the Human Development Index (HDI). Its
HDI value has gone up from 0.556 in 2000 to 0.612 in 2007,” said
Patrice Coeur-Bizot, resident representative, UNDP.
But a change in
methodology and the relative improvement of other countries has
meant that India’s rank remains unchanged from two years ago.
The HDI is a
measure of development that moves beyond gross domestic product per
capita and takes into account life expectancy and literacy too.
India is now
looking for explanations by saying health and education take longer
to improve. Even if that is true, clearly
India
neglected education and health for half a century, and as everyone
without a degree ion economics understands, the poor, the
marginalised and the minorities are the worst losers in such a
scenario.
The report also
focussed on migration.
India
alone has over 42 million internal migrants, people who have moved
from one part of the country to another, living in a state other
than that of their origin. That makes it 4 per cent of the
population. The size of international migration is much smaller. The
number of foreigners living in India is only about 59 lakh, or
approximately 0.5 per cent of population, down from about 94 lakh in
1960. The number of Indians living abroad is about 90 lakh.
The latest UNDP
report focuses on migration and says of the nearly one billion of
the world’s 6.7 billion people — or one in every seven person — is a
migrant. Of these, an overwhelming number, about 740 million, are
internal migrants and only 214 million are those who have changed
their country of residence.
The report busts
a number of myths. Like the fact, that only a small proportion —
fewer than 70 million of the 214 million international migrants —
move from a developing country to a developed one. Most of the
international migrants move from one developing country to another
or between developed countries.
In the case of
India, 72 per cent of people leaving the country move to some other
country within Asia. About 15 per cent migrate to North America,
close to ten per cent to Europe and only 1.7 per cent to Africa.
The report
reveals that regardless of where the people move, a majority of
migrants, including ones who move within the country, end up making
large gains in incomes.
7
October 2009
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