There is now no doubt that the last 10 years were a time of extraordinary human development in India. When the World Bank decided to raise its global poverty line from $1.25 a day (in Purchasing Power Parity, or PPP, terms) to $1.90 in October and update the data for countries, it showed among other things that India had witnessed the fastest-ever decrease in the percentage of its population below the poverty line between 2009 and 2011. The United Nations Development Programme’s >Human Development Report released this week re-establishes this point. India’s Gross National Income more than doubled over the last 15 years, from $2,522 (PPP) to $5,497 between 2000 and 2014, putting it into middle income status. This economic growth translated into better human development outcomes as well; India’s Human Development Index value went from 0.462 to 0.609 between 2000 and 2014, a far higher increase than in the previous 15-year period. This was driven by improved economic growth and increase in life expectancy as a result of improved health care, and less so from improvements in educational outcomes, which have been harder to achieve, especially for women. Similarly striking is the story that emerges from India Health Report: Nutrition 2015 released by the Public Health Foundation of India last week. Child undernutrition, which had been declining slowly when data were last available in 2006, has begun to fall at historically high rates; between 2006 and 2014, stunting rates for children under five declined from 48 per cent to 39 per cent, translating into 14 million fewer stunted children, and declines in wasting translated into seven million fewer wasted children. These are extraordinary achievements.
Of course, India must not rest on these laurels. The UNDP report also showed that when inequality is factored in, India loses nearly 30 per cent of its HDI values, meaning that outcomes vary substantially by class, caste and gender. If India’s women were their own country, they would be 30 ranks lower on the HDI than the country as a whole is now, with far worse educational outcomes dragging them down. Indian women are at a particular disadvantage in the workforce; the high proportion (up to 39 per cent of GDP by one estimate) of unpaid care work that falls on women alone pushes them out of the workforce, resulting in one of the world’s lowest female labour force participation rates. The 2015 HDR, which is based on the theme of work, highlights just how vulnerable and ill-prepared for the future the majority of the Indian workforce is, and without a social protection blanket. The PHFI report also shows that India’s national successes mask massive inter-State variability; moreover, gender inequalities are possibly having an impact on children’s nutritional outcomes. Coming at a time when there is a fear of social sector budget cuts, these reports show that India must build on its human development successes with better redistributive justice.
