India to make further progress on UN's development goals: Govt

India has made progress on different indicators like health and nutrition under the UN's Millennium Development Goals and is expected to improve further upon them, Parliament was informed today.
"There has been progress in all the indicators and further progress is expected to be made in the remaining period up to 2015," Planning Minister Rao Inderjit Singh said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha today.
As far as India is concerned, 8 MDGs with 12 targets are relevant which are sought to be achieved during the period 1990 to 2015, the minister said.
MDGs are international development goals that UN member states and numerous international organisations, including India, have agreed to achieve by the year 2015.

These include eradicating extreme poverty and hunger; achieving universal primary education; promoting gender equality; reducing the child mortality rate and ensuring environmental sustainability.
The minister's reply revealed that India has achieved the MDG target regarding poverty eradication. India had to halve the proportion of people whose income is less than one dollar a day between 1990 to 2015.

In 1990, India has 47.8 per cent such poor people and thus the proportion of this population is to be reduced to 23.9 per cent. However, India's poverty ratio was 21.92 per cent for 2011-12.
Similarly, India has to half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger by 2015 to 26 per cent. However, the latest figure for 2004-05 reveal that the percentage of such population was 40 per cent.

In the education sector, India had to improve the net enrolment ratio in primary schools to 100 per cent by 2015. The country achieved 99.89 per cent enrolment in primary education in 2011-12.
The proportion of pupils starting grade 1 who reach grade 5 was 86.05 per cent in 2011-12 against the target of 100 per cent. The literacy rate in India was 61 per cent in 1990. It went up to 86 per cent in 2017-08.
The ratio of girls to boys in primary education was 0.73 in 1990 which went up to 1.01 in 2011-12. Similarly the ratio of literate women to men (15-25 years) was 0.67 in 1990, which was 0.88 in 2007-08. MDGs target for both ratios is 1.

The mortality ratio among children under the five-year age was 126 per 1,000 live births in 1990 which was brought down to 52 in 2012. The MDGs target is 42 for that.
The infant mortality ratio was 80 per 1,000 live births in 1990 which was brought down to 42 in 2012 against the MDGs target of 27.
The proportion of one year old children immunised against measles was 42.2 per cent in 1990 which was improved to 74.1 per cent against targeted 100 per cent coverage.
Similarly, the maternal mortality ration per 1,00,000 live births was 437 in 1990 which was brought down to 178 by 2011-12 against targeted 109 by 2015.