In the two decades since the early 1990s when India liberalised its economy, countries like Nepal and Bangladesh have improved their human development indicators at a faster clip than India.
Though India ranks marginally higher than many of its South Asian neighbours in the 2014 UNDP Human Development Report released on Thursday, the country has fallen behind most of its immediate neighbours on key health and quality of life indicators, an analysis of health indices from nearly two decades of HDI numbers reveal.
Regional recordFor example, in 1995, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Pakistan were languishing far behind India in infant mortality. However, by 2010, all of them except Pakistan had caught up and surpassed India’s figure of 48 deaths per 1,000 live births.
Every other country in the region (except Pakistan) also spends a higher proportion of its national income on public health care. After Bangladesh surpassed India on a range of health indicators in 2003, India’s public expenditure on health actually fell. The UPA-I government kept health allocation at or less than one per cent of the GDP for the next five years.
In the meantime, private expenditure on healthcare shot up. A 2011 analysis by the medical journal The Lancet found that out of pocket expenditure on health in India is close to 78 per cent — in stark contrast with the Maldives (14%), Bhutan (29), and Sri Lanka (53%).
Among the seven SAARC nations (data for Afghanistan is unavailable), an average Indian is least likely to be vaccinated as a child, most likely to suffer from malnutrition (nearly half of those under 5), and has the lowest life expectancy.
Gender inequalitySomewhat unsurprisingly, India also has the worst gender inequality in the region (sharing the 127th place with Pakistan). The gulf between workforce participation of men and women is one of the widest in India among the seven countries.
What the human development reports show in essence is India’s failure to properly utilise the wealth created by its expanding economy, which doubled twice in the last two decades.
This is reflected in the supplementary surveys carried in the 2014 report, which indicates that among SAARC nations Indians are least satisfied with the standard of living (only 47% are satisfied).
However, their trust in the national government is quite healthy (with 54% answering yes).
