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The good and the bad in India's development

There is good news and bad news for India in the Human Development Index (HDI) report that was released on September 14 by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
First, the good news. The life expectancy of the average Indian has gone up from 57.9 years in 1990, to 68.8 years in 2017. Which means an average Indian lives 11 years more now than he or she did almost three decades ago. That's quite an achievement, since life expectancy is actually synonymous with health and well-being. In other words, Indians are able to get better medical and hospital facilities than they did earlier, hence can overcome illness and disease more easily. Advances in the kinds of medicines and surgeries available in hospitals are also responsible for better healthcare. But to put this in better perspective, Bangladesh - a country widely considered to be less developed than India - has a higher life expectancy than India's, at 72.8 years. Its health parameters have clearly improved more than India's in recent years.
The other bit of good news for India relates to years of schooling for children. In India, a girl now spends 12.9 years in school, while in Bangladesh she spends 11.7 years, and in Pakistan just 7.8 years. Surprisingly, in both India and Bangladesh, girls spend more years in school than boys do, whereas in Pakistan it is just the other way round, with boys spending 9.3 years in school, 1.5 years more than girls. Which is probably why gender inequality is greater in Pakistan than it is in India or Bangladesh. That is a statistic that the new Pakistan Prime Minister, Imran Khan, should ponder over. Setting up a state-of-the-art cancer hospital is not good enough.
Girls' education and overall healthcare is directly linked to population growth. The more educated women are and the better the health facilities that are made available to the general public, the smaller the families tend to be. That is why Pakistan's population is increasing at an unsustainable rate, while India's and Bangladesh's is at least starting to come under some control. However, there is one finding in the UNDP report relating to gender inequality that left me, at least, bewildered. This is the percentage of women holding seats in Parliament. In India, the percentage is just 11.6 per cent, while in Pakistan it is 20 per cent and in Bangladesh 20.3 per cent. How come? I really do not know.
 But the best news for India is the phenomenal rise in its per capita income. From $1,733 in 1990, it soared to $6,353 last year - an increase of 267 per cent. Evidently, Indians are now much better of than they were 30 years ago. What's more, millions of Indians have been lifted out of grinding poverty. A corollary to this is the burgeoning Indian middle class, now some 300 million strong. That is why foreign companies are looking at India with such great interest, as consumers and buyers of their products.
So much for the good news. Now for the bad news. Though, as mentioned earlier, India's per capita income has shot up, the new wealth has been distributed very unevenly. And the sad result is glaring inequality, that stares you in the face. A recent book, The Billionaire Raj, by British journalist James Crabtree, has a striking cover that tells its own story of India. A gleaming, brightly-lit opulent skyscraper rises cheek-by-jowl right next to an ugly, dark and festering slum. It is a sickening sight that you commonly see all over the main Indian cities. The gap between the rich and the poor has widened considerably in recent years, creating tensions, unrest and often violence.
The other bad news is the low participation of Indian women in the work force, only 27.2 per cent, whereas the global percentage is 49 per cent. The main reason for this is that just 39 per cent of adult Indian women reach a secondary level of education, compared to 64 per cent of adult men. That is why the UNDP report, which takes income and gender inequality into account when evaluating the Human Development Index (HDI) has given India such a poor rating. In fact, according to the UN, India's HDI has risen only one spot, and is a low 130 out of 189 countries.
Interestingly, Norway, which has a population of just five million, is ranked the highest in the HDI index, implying that its people are the healthiest, best educated and egalitarian in the world, while Niger is at the bottom of the list. The greatest increase in HDI rank over the last five years is by Ireland, which not so long ago was among the poorest countries in Europe, followed by Turkey. The worst decline is the countries where civil war and conflicts have been raging, namely Syria, Libya and Yemen.
So, what conclusions can one draw from the UNDP report? Education, healthcare, per capita income, gender equality, as well as social and economic equality, are the main keys to people's happiness and well-being. I don't think anybody can argue with that, unless they have better parameters for happiness.
Rahul Singh is a former Editor of Khaleej Times