INDIA 2008
High Growth, low development
• In the Index of the UN Development Program (UNDP) India was ranked 128 of 177 nation rated. This index “looks beyond GDP (A region's gross domestic product, or GDP, is one of the ways of measuring the size of its economy) to a broader definition of well-being.”
• Let us look at where we stand in the rankings of the index. El Salvador, which saw a bloody civil war for over a decade from the 1980s, ranks 25 places ahead of us at 103. Bolivia, often called South America's poorest nation, is 11 steps above us at 117. Guatemala, nearly half of whose citizens are poor indigenous people, saw the longest civil war in Central America. One that lasted close to four decades and which saw 200,000 people killed or disappear. That too, in a nation of just 12 million. Guatemala ranks 10 places above us at 118. In Africa, Botswana - ranked below us in the 2006 HDI at 131 - climbed four places above us at 124 this time. It replaced fellow African nation Gabon which quit that slot to move upwards to 119 this year. (Gee, their updated data arrived on time. Must be using a different courier service.) The Occupied Palestinian Territories, with all their woes, slipped six places to 106. Still well ahead of India. In Asia, countries like Vietnam - victim of the bloodiest conflict since World War II - rose further in the charts, to rank 105 this year. Sri Lanka, of course, is way ahead of us at 99. So are nations like Kazakhstan and Mongolia. They too have risen in the ranks. The former from 79 to 73 and the latter from 116 to 114.
• Note that some of these nations rank up to 30 slots above us. Not one of them has had our nine per cent growth. Few of them have been touted an emerging economic superpower. Nor even as a software superpower. Not even as a blossoming nuclear power. Together, they probably do not have as many billionaires as India does. In short, even nations much poorer than us in Asia, Africa and Latin America have done a lot better than we have.
• India rose in the dollar billionaire rankings, though. From rank 8 in 2006 to number 4 in the Forbes list this year, but we slipped from 126 to 128 in human development. In the billionaire stakes, we are ahead of most of the planet and might even close in on two of the three nations ahead of us (Germany and Russia). It will, of course, be some time before we erase the national humiliation of lagging behind the top dog in that race, the United States. (Which, by the way, dropped from 8 to 12 in the HDI rankings this year.)
• Cuba has zero standing in the roll call of billionaires. In terms of per capita income, it ranks low in the world. But when it comes to human development, it ranks 51 - that is, 77 places ahead of us. It figures in the HDI's 'High Human Development' group. This is a nation which has faced a huge economic blockade since its birth. U.S. sanctions ensure that almost everything is costlier in Cuba than in many other nations. In per capita terms, it spends four per cent of what the U.S. does on health but achieves better outcomes on most of the vital parameters of that sector. Despite its many disadvantages, it achieves a better HDI rank than Mexico, Russia or China. (All of which have gained more billionaires in recent times.)
• But there is hope. Our top 10 billionaires are doing fine. "Their collective wealth has soared 27 per cent since July" The Times of India told us on its front page on October 8, 2007! The headline said they'd got "richer by $65.3 billion" in just three months since July. That is, by more than Rs.119 crore an hour. Or not far from Rs.2 crore every minute. Of the 10, the TOI tells us, Mukesh Ambani alone "increased his wealth by roughly Rs.40 lakh every single minute." (one crore is about $ 250’000/-; one lakh is about $ 2'500/-)
• Most of our billionaires seem to be from Mumbai, the capital of Maharashtra, perhaps our richest State on many counts. One that has seen close to 32,000 farmers commit suicide since 1995. Also a State where rural poverty has gone up even in official reckoning.
• Meanwhile, the UNHDR records that almost a third of India's children, or 30 per cent, are below average weight at birth. In Sierra Leone, ranked at 177, rock bottom of the Human Development Index, it is 23 per cent. In Guinea Bissau and Burkina Faso, ranked 175 and 176, children with low birth weight account for 22 and 19 per cent. Even in Ethiopia, ranked 169, the figure is 15 per cent. So we're down there with the bottom five on that count.
• Amongst children under the age of five, 47 per cent in India are underweight. In Ethiopia, that is 38 per cent. And in Sierra Leone, 27 per cent. We are home to the largest number of malnourished children in the world. When it comes to child nutrition and literacy, we jostle for space with the nations ranked lowest in HDI in the planet. And mostly we even beat them.
P Sainath
26 Dec 2007
Courtesy: The Hindu
P. Sainath is the 2007 winner of the Ramon Magsaysay award for Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communication Arts. He is one of the two recipients of the A.H. Boerma Award, 2001, granted for his contributions in changing the nature of the development debate on food, hunger and rural development in the Indian media.
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