Managing the Infant Mortality in India

Dr. Devendra Kothari

Population and Development Analyst

Forum for Population Action

Higher incomes often translate into improvements on many counts. In IMR, however, there’s no evidence of a tight link between the two. For instance, Nepal with just over half of India’s per capita GDP, has a lower IMR. Sri Lanka’s IMR is close to that of EU at a fraction of the per capita income. If it’s not income, neither is state capacity a watertight indicator. Iraq, Syria and Libya, three countries where state capacity has been undermined by civil war, do better than India. The answer may lie in the starkly uneven performances of India’s states.