India may miss crucial targets for development

Despite its success on the economic front, India was likely to miss meeting its millennium development goals (MDGs), said the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Report.

The eight MDGs include targets for poverty reduction, healthcare access, drinking water, education and control of HIV and malaria. They were adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2000.

India had reduced income poverty from about 36 per cent in the early 1990s to between 25-30 per cent now. But overall evidence suggested that the increase in growth had not translated into a commensurate decline in poverty, said the report.

Northern states lagged behind the rest of the country because extreme poverty was concentrated in their rural areas while income growth had been dynamic in urban areas in the services sector.

It pointed out that the growth had been virtually "jobless". "Every 1 per cent of national income growth generated three times as many jobs in the 1980s and 1990s," it said.

The more serious problem, however, was of human development. There was pervasive gender inequality, rural poverty and inequalities between states which were intensified by inadequate public health provision.

Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh accounted for more than half of child deaths in the country. These states also had the deepest gender inequality.

"Improvement in infant mortality rate has slowed down. India is now off-track for these MDG targets. Some of India's southern cities may be in the midst of a technology boom, but one in every 11 Indian children die in the first five years of life for lack of low technology and low-cost interventions. Malnutrition, which has barely improved over the past decade, affects half of the country's children. About one in four girls and more than 1 in 10 boys do not attend primary school," it added.

Translating economic success into human development advances would require public policies that helped to distribute the benefits from growth, global integration, and increased public investment, in rural areas and services, it said.

Political leadership would also have to ensure an improvement in governance and address the causes of gender inequality.

The government would have to focus on effective delivery so that its financial commitment to the rural sector could translate into desired outcome, the report said.

Report card
Incidence of poverty has been reduced from 36% in the early 1990s to 25-30% presently

Northern states lagged behind because of the extreme conditions of poverty prevalent in rural areas

Every 1% of national income growth generated three times as many jobs in the 1980s as in the 1990s

Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh accounted for more than half of child deaths in the country.

One in every 11 Indian children die in the first five years of life