Half empty, half full

The UNDP's Human Development Report (HDR) has several development and deprivation indicators, but attention usually focuses on the human development index (HDI), based on per capita income (PPP GDP), education (literacy rate, gross enrolment ratio) and health (life expectancy).

Attention also focuses on HDI ranks and India's is 127th out of 177 countries ranked, not an exalted position. The Indian HDI value is 0.602, which brackets India in the medium human development category (HDI values of more than 0.500), a category India has been in since around 1990.

Countries in the low human development category are essentially from sub-Saharan Africa, and not just India, but all of South Asia has moved to the medium category.

The HDR highlights Bangladesh's remarkable improvement and China's (China has an HDI value of 0.755). If some present trends are extrapolated, India should move to the high human development category around 2030 and there is no reason why this transition shouldn't be faster.

The Indian improvement since 1990 has primarily been driven by increases in per capita GDP and, to a lesser extent, improvements in education. There is a data and time-lag issue here. HDR 2005 mostly has data till 2003 and the adult literacy rate (for ages 15 and above) is shown as 61 per cent.

However, the youth literacy rate (15-24) is 76.4 per cent, the point being that some recent improvements in education indicators are not yet factored in. This is equally true of the gross enrolment ratio, reported as 60 per cent.

Not only have gross enrolment ratios improved dramatically in recent years, there is some non-transparency in the UN system about how gross enrolment ratios for tertiary schools are worked out.

However, there is the obvious point that in a large and heterogeneous country, national HDRs or state-level HDRs offer greater insight.

The time lag issue is equally pertinent for variables not used in computing the HDI, such as percentage of population below $1 a day (reported as 34.7 per cent) or below the national poverty line (reported as 28.6 per cent).

This is not to suggest complacency, but to drive home the point that what primarily pull India down are the health indicators, where improvements have not been commensurate with income poverty or education.

This becomes dramatic when contrasted with the Bangladesh experience. The Indian infant mortality rate (IMR) was 127 in 1970, with 145 for Bangladesh. In 2003, the Indian IMR is 63, while Bangladesh has 46. Under-five and maternal mortality rates reveal the same picture.

Indeed, with the exception of health and some aspects of gender disparity, India is on track towards attaining the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

However, what should be done to improve health outcomes? The UNDP will point to public health expenditure, which is 1.3 per cent of GDP, the same figure as in 1990, and contrast this with public education expenditure, which is 4.1 per cent of GDP, compared to 3.7 per cent in 1990 and increasing public expenditure on these is also a National Common Minimum Programme commitment, with a promise of 6 per cent for education and 2-3 per cent for health. (Incidentally, defence expenditure has dropped from 2.7 per cent of GDP to 2.1 per cent now.)

But it is doubtful if improvements in India's education outcomes since 1991 can be ascribed to increased public expenditure alone and this is important because most health improvements are linked to preventive (drinking water, sanitation, sewage treatment) rather than curative measures. The Indian policy implications from HDR data thus remain debatable.