Pak better than India on poverty

India has been ranked lower than its neighbour Pakistan in the United Nation’s multi-dimensional poverty index (MDI) and gender equality index even though it has been able to maintain its 134 rank in overall Human Development Index (HDI). Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Nov 2, 2011, 23:39:08 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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India has been ranked lower than its neighbour Pakistan in the United Nation’s multi-dimensional poverty index (MDI) and gender equality index even though it has been able to maintain its 134 rank in overall Human Development Index (HDI).

The MDI evaluates deprivations in education, health and standard of living and the households with score of more than one-third of the weighted indicators are listed as multi-dimensionally poor.

The UN Development Programme’s HDI report says that 53.7% of Indians suffer from multi-dimensional poverty as compared to 49.4 % in Pakistan and 57.8% in Bangladesh.

Even in absolute poverty terms, measured for those earning less than $1.25 a day, Pakistan fares better than India. Around 41.6% of Indians in 2005 were earning less than $1.25 a day as compared to 22.6% Pakistanis.

When it comes to gender equality, India has been ranked lower than most of its neighbouring countries including Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. It is primarily on account of India’s adolescent fertility rate, lesser number of women in Parliament and poor participation of women in workforce.

Releasing the report --- Sustainability and Equity : Better Future for All --- Rural Development minister Jairam Ramesh said that not just inequality between nations but also inequalities within nations was very important.

He highlighted the finding of recent India Human Development Report, which said that Gujarat despite high economic growth had large deprived population of backwards and Kerala with low economic growth had lesser inequality.

“Economic development does not guarantee human development. A more disturbing fact is that actually economic development may lead to retrogation of social indices," he said.

India has been placed at ‘medium’ level of human development with ranking of 134 out of 187 countries on HDI even though its neighbours like Pakistan and Bangladesh have been ranked in 'low' category with positions of 145 and 146, respectively.

In the last report, India had been ranked at 119 out of 169 countries. But the new report for 2011 says it would be misleading to compare values and rankings with those of previously published reports, because the underlying data and methods have changed, as well as the number of countries included in the Human Development Index.

The report also showcases India’s human development with life expectancy increasing from 55.3 years in 1980 to 65.6 in 2011 and expected years of schooling increasing from 6.5 years to 10.3 years. India’s gross national income has also increased from $896 to $3,468 during the same period.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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