Dr. Devendra Kothari
Population and Development Analyst
Forum for Population Action
On
factors holding India back, my biggest disappointment is the low level of human
development.
—Bill Gates
Co-Chair, Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation
Times of India, November, 2017
An unknown commentator,
who commented on my last post- Empowering India through HDPlus strategy (https://kotharionindia.blogspot.com/2018/10/managing-poverty-and-hdplus-strategy.html)
-, asked me the question: “What is the one thing you want to change in India and why?” And this post aims to answer this question. There
is plenty of stuff to be changed in making India as a developed country, but we
cannot focus on everything in one go. To
start with, one has to put all its energies around few selected things and
among these unlocking the human potential is vital.
Now
question arises: why human development? Let’s consider some facts.
The
event, "Human Capital Summit 2018: A Global Call to Action" during
the World Bank-IMF Annual Meetings held in Indonesia this April, the World Bank President
Jim Yong Kim announced the ranking of the countries on human capital index (HCI). India ranked 115th
out of 157 countries.
HCI seeks to measure the amount of human capital
that a child born today can expect to attain by the age of 18. According to its
parameters a child born in India today will only be 44 per cent as productive
as she/he could have been if she enjoyed quality education and full health as
well as quality of living environment including water and sanitation. In
other words, there are grave deficiencies in human development efforts and that
are preventing our children from reaching their full potential. Further, the World
Bank findings point out that India’s score is “lower than the average for its
region and income group.”
Singapore topped
the HCI list after it was highly rated for its universal primary healthcare
system, primary education exams results and life expectancy figures. It is
followed by South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong and Finland.
The
Government of India, however, rejected the World Bank results. In a
statement, the Indian finance ministry said the HCI has “major
methodological weaknesses, besides substantial data gaps” and declared it would
“ignore” the ranking. But experts
called on the government to acknowledge its failures and take steps to improve
health and education outcomes. India’s performance in the UNDP’s
Human Development Index, another measure of human capital, also hasn’t improved
much over the years, experts said. This year, India ranked 130 out of 189
countries. Whether India is going to reject this finding too?
There are many national and international reports which
indicate that situation is fast deteriorating. For example, the Annual Status
of Education Report (ASER) 2017 survey titled “Beyond Basics” reveals that nearly one-fourth of India’s youngsters aged 14-18 cannot
read their own language fluently. The report, an initiative by an Indian NGO
Pratham, also reveals that 57 per cent of the children assessed struggled to
solve a simple sum of division - exposing chinks in the quality of education
imparted in the country. Further, 47 per cent of all 14 year-olds in the sample
could not read English sentences. For 18-year-old youth, this figure is closer
to 40. Also, the report revealed that only 28 per cent had used the internet—26
per cent had used computers in last one week. 64 per cent had never used the
internet.
As far as wellbeing
of children are concerned, India is
among the countries accounting for the highest burden of stunted, wasted, and
overweight children, as per the latest Global Nutrition Report 2018 reflecting
the growing concern around child nutrition in the country. With 46.6 million stunted children, India accounted for
nearly one-third of the world’s 150.8 million children who are stunted; the
report shows warning against a major malnutrition crisis. India is followed by
Nigeria (13.9 million) and Pakistan (10.7 million). [1] The three countries together are home to
almost half of all stunted children in the world. This is despite the
improvement made by India in reducing
stunting since 2005-06. This is one of major impediments in empowering human resources.
stunting since 2005-06. This is one of major impediments in empowering human resources.
India’s demographics are
mind-boggling. During
the next one and half decades there
will be a massive increase in the population in the working ages because one
million or so young people will
join the labour force every month and many of them will not have the ability to
earn living wages because of their poor human development. Many vested interests
would like to perpetuate the current low-level equilibrium of human development.
So what
sort of change we need? No doubt, India has to empower its people. For this
author has suggested a way out, as noted in my previous post: Empowering India through HDPlus (HD
stands for Human Development) strategy. [2]
At the centre of the HDPlus
strategy is the concept of capabilities. Basic capabilities valued by virtually
everyone include: good health, access to knowledge, and a decent standard of
material living. However, around 50 per cent of population (approx. 700 million people or 135
million families) in India still has inadequate access to basic goods such as
quality education, health or sanitation. Much more, therefore, can be done in
terms of investments for the bottom income groups. This will substantially increase income growth rates at the bottom, and
the growth rates of the economy as a whole. What is required is single-minded focus on growth, based on human
development, which increases the jobs pie.[3]
70 years after independence, India I
know is losing its way. Only human
development can save us. It appears that our policy makers
are convinced that rapid economic growth is the most (or only) effective tool
to dent into inequality and poverty, through “increased opportunities” for the
needy sections. Twenty-seven years ago, India embarked on the journey of
economic liberalization, opening up to globalization and market forces. We and
the rest of the world have watched that the investment and trade regime
introduced in 1991 raised economic growth, increased consumer choices, and
reduced poverty to some extent. The trickle-down effect of economic
liberalization, however, could not lift millions of Indians and the level of
inequality increased. It is because our policy
makers in last seventy years did not seem to endorse the concept of "Small is Beautiful" in
unlocking human potential. [4]
Recently, I was interviewed
by the Citylive dialogues to understand what happened in the last seventy years.
You may like to watch it at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
[1] For details , see at:
[2]
For details , refer
at: https://kotharionindia.blogspot.com/2018/10/managing-poverty-and-hdplus-strategy.html
[3]
Kothari,
Devendra. 2019. Nurturing
Human Development: A Strategy for New India, New Delhi: Paragoan International
Publishers
[4] The book, Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered is a collection
of essays by German born British economist E.F.
Schumacher, first published by Blond
& Briggs in 1973.
