E-Paper
Is ranking of countries by UN justfied?
Minister Saif-ud-din Soz disagrees present system of ranking the countries by various UN bodies, reports Anil Anand.
Is the present system of ranking the countries by various UN bodies, on the basis of Human Development Indicators, just and objective? If Water Resources Minister Saif-ud-din Soz is to be believed, the existing system of bunching the entire comity of nations together was unjustified given the varied ground realities.
Soz stirred a controversy when he sought to debate this subject after unveiling the UNDP’s Human Development Report-2006 in the national capital on Thursday. India placed 126th out of 177 countries in the report’s Human Development Index 2004, provided the spark.
Expressing disagreement with the existing grading system, he turned to the UNDP officials and asked whether it was justified to compare Norway or Sweden with India and China for this purpose.
India is a developing country of one billion people with its own set of achievements and problems. How could the conditions here be compared to say the Scandinavian or the Third World nations, he asked.
Fearing that his remarks might snowball into a controversy, Soz clarified that his intention was to trigger a debate so that this fallacy could be removed. Asked what other parameters would he suggest for the ranking purposes, he said creating different categories could be a possible solution. However, Soz hastened to add that he was not suggesting any alternative at this juncture as he intended to discuss the matter with various UN officials.
On its part, the UNDP report has clarified that the index was not a comprehensive picture of human development as it excluded important indicators such as inequality factor.
In other areas of Human Development Index, India ranks 121 (life expectancy at birth), 107(adult literacy rate age 15 and above) and 127 (combined primary, secondary and tertiary gross enrolment ration).
In the Human Poverty index for developing countries, India ranks 55th among 102 developing countries. This index focuses on the proportion of people below a threshold level having access to education, and a decent standard of living.
