India stuck at 127th position in HDI

Country

HDI Rank

Norway

1

Sweden

2

Germany

19

Russian Federation

57

Brazil

72

China

94

India

127

Pakistan

142

Niger

176

Sierra Leone

177

 India has improved on the poverty front and has moved up five notches to 48 this year in a list of 95 developing countries. The human poverty index focuses on the proportion of people below a threshold level in basic dimensions like life expectancy, access to education and standard of living.  On the gender development index, India ranks 103 among 144 countries, which is the same as in 2001. The index is adjusted to account for the inequalities between men and women.  According to the report, the per capita expenditure on health in India is $80 compared to $ 224 in China in 2001. The report also shows that the public expenditure in pre-primary and primary education has been nearly stagnant during 1990-2001. There has, however, been considerable increase in both secondary and tertiary education.  In the area of technology diffusion and creation, while India has 40 telephone mainlines per 1,000 people, China has 167. The report says that the number of researchers in India per million is 157, while China has 584.  On the structure of trade, the report shows that import of goods and services constituted 16 per cent of the GDP, while exports were 15 per cent of the GDP in 2002. The corresponding figures for China were 26 per cent and 27 per cent, respectively.  The report indicates that the trends in the progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) show that in East Asia and the Pacific, the number of people living on less than $ 1 a day reduced by half in the 1990s.  The report says that