What is the one issue which needs urgent attention in India and why?

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.

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?v=Kr4QKlmIwg8 

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[1]  For details , see at:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/66873472.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

[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.