The modest progress made by India in Human Development Index 2019 viz a viz 2018 still ranks it at number 129 out of 189 countries. According to the report’s Human Development Index (HDI), no other region has experienced such rapid human development progress. South Asia was the fastest growing region (46 percent growth over the period 1990-2018), followed by East Asia and the Pacific at 43 percent.
India’s HDI value has increased by 50 percent (from 0.431 to 0.647), which places it above the average for countries in the medium human development group (0.634) and above the average for other South Asian countries (0.642). South Asia also saw the greatest leap in life expectancy and years of schooling.
For India, between 1990 and 2018, life expectancy at birth increased by 11.6 years, mean years of schooling increased by 3.5 years and expected years of schooling increased by 4.7 years. Per capita incomes rose by over 250 percent. Beyond these gains in basic standards and capabilities, however, the picture becomes more complex.
“For countries like India, which have shown great success in reducing absolute poverty, we hope that the 2019 Human Development Report sheds light on inequalities and deprivations that go beyond income. How we tackle old and new inequalities, ranging from access to basic services such as housing to things like access to quality university education, will be critical to whether we achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. India’s development initiatives like the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (for financial inclusion) and Ayushman Bharat (for universal health care) are crucial in ensuring that we meet our promise to leave no one behind and fulfil the Prime Minister’s vision of development for all,” said Shoko Noda, UNDP India Resident Representative.
The Asia-Pacific region, which has witnessed the steepest rise globally in human development, leads the world in access to broadband internet but continues to grapple with widespread multidimensional poverty, especially in India and the rest of South Asia, and may be vulnerable to a new set of inequalities emerging around higher education and climate resilience.
The Human Development Report (HDR), which pioneers a more rounded way to measure countries’ progress beyond just economic growth, says that as the gap in basic standards is narrowing, with an unprecedented number of people escaping poverty, hunger and disease, the necessities to thrive have evolved. The next generation of inequalities is opening up, particularly around technology, education, and the climate crisis.
The report analyzes inequality in three steps: beyond income, beyond averages, and beyond today, proposing a battery of policy options to tackle it. “This is the new face of inequality,” says UNDP Administrator, Achim Steiner. “And as this Human Development Report sets out, inequality is not beyond solutions. Inequality is about the unequal distribution of wealth and power: the entrenched social and political norms that are bringing people onto the streets today, and the triggers that will do so in the future unless something changes. Recognizing the real face of inequality is a first step; what happens next is a choice that each leader must make,” he said.
South Asia also saw the greatest leap in life expectancy and years of schooling. For India, between 1990 and 2018, life expectancy at birth increased by 11.6 years, mean years of schooling increased by 3.5 years and expected years of schooling increased by 4.7 years. Per capita incomes rose by over 250 percent. Beyond these gains in basic standards and capabilities, however, the picture becomes more complex.
Describing the ‘next generation’ of inequalities likely to drive achievement further along the development spectrum, the report notes for example that in countries with very high human
development, subscriptions to fixed broadband are growing 15 times faster and the proportion of adults with tertiary education is growing more than six times faster than in countries with low human development.
The region is in the vanguard of technological transformation. From 1987 to 2007 little changed in the global ranking of installed bandwidth potential, but at the turn of the millennium things started to change, with the expansion of bandwidth in East and North Asia. The report states that China leads the world in installed bandwidth, and India’s share in the world’s installed bandwidth potential equals that of Germany, Brazil and France. But tertiary education rates lag significantly behind wealthier countries, with only 24.5 percent of the tertiary school-aged population in India and 44 percent in East Asia and the Pacific enrolled in higher education.
And although millions throughout the region have escaped multidimensional poverty — none more so than in India, where 271 million were lifted out of poverty from 2005/6 to 2015/16 — the incidence of multidimensional poverty varies enormously across countries and is till high. Out of the 1.3 billion multidimensional poor, 661 million are in Asia and the Pacific, which shares almost half of the multidimensional poor living in 101 countries of the world. South Asia alone shares more than 41 per cent of the total number of multi-dimensional poor.
Despite India’s significant progress, it accounts for 28 per cent of the 1.3 billion multidimensional poor. Four in ten people in South Asia still lack access to sanitation facilities. And the report warns that the poorest communities remain vulnerable to climate change. Poor people are expected to be more exposed to droughts for warming scenarios above the 1.5°C rise in temperature in several countries in Asia. The rural poor in poor countries are at risk of a double shock: a negative impact on livelihoods and spikes in food prices resulting from drops in global yields.
The report finds that despite progress, group-based inequalities persist on the Indian subcontinent, especially affecting women and girls. The HDI reveals marked contrasts between South Asia and the wider region. Worldwide among regions, South Asia has the widest gender gap on the HDI. While Singapore has the region’s lowest incidence of intimate partner violence against women, the report states that a staggering 31 percent of women in South Asia have experienced intimate partner violence. India is only marginally better than the South Asian average on the Gender Development Index (0.829 vs 0.828), and ranks at a low 122 (of 162) countries on the 2018 Gender Inequality Index.
The report also notes that more Indian men and women were showing biases in gender social norms, indicating a backlash to women’s empowerment. The report recommends policies that look at but also go beyond income, anchored in lifespan interventions starting even before birth, including through pre-labour market investments in young children’s learning, health and nutrition. Such investments must continue through a person’s life, when they are in the labour market and after.
The report also argues that taxation cannot be looked at on its own, but must be part of a system of policies, including policies for public spending on health, education, and alternatives to a carbon-intensive lifestyle. The report asks how inequality may change in future, particularly through the lens of climate change and technological transformation — two forces that seem set to shape human development outcomes into the next century.
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