Human Development
What is human development ?
" Human development is a processing of enlarging the range of people choices, increasing their opportunities for education , health care , income and empowerment and covering the full ranges of human choices from a sound physical environment to economics , social and political freedom ."
- The publication of the first Human Development Programmer (UNDP) in 1990 .
- (UNDP) report does not only define human development , make amendments and change its indicators but also ranks all the countries of the world based on the calculated scores .
- According to the Human Development Report 1993 , "Progressive democratisation and increasing empowerment of people are seen as the minimum conditions for human development".
Human Development in India
- India with a population of over 1.20 billions is ranked 134 among 172 countries of the world in terms of the Human Development Index (HDI) .
- The composite HDI value of 0.547 India finds herself grouped with countries showing medium human development (UNDP2011).
- Using the indicators selected by the UNDP, the planing commission of India also prepared the Human Development Report for India .
- It used states and the Union Territories as the units of analysis .
- This report also discussed other indicators like economic attainment , social empowerment , social distributive justice , accessibility , hygiene and various welfare measures undertaken by the state .
Indicators of Economic Attainments
- Rich resource base and access to these resources by all , Particularly the poor , down trodden and the marginalized is the key to productivity , well - being and human development .
- Gross National Product (GNP) and its per capita availability are taken as measures to assess the resource base / endowment of any country.
- There are a few development states like Maharashtra , Punjab , Haryana ,Gujarat and Delhi that have per capita income more than Rs. 4000 per year and there are a large number of poorer states like Uttar Pradesh , Bihar , Odisha , Madhya Pradesh , Assam , Jammu and Kashmir , etc .
- The dis aggregated data of poverty for the states show that there are states like Odisha and Bihar which have recorded more than 40 per cent for their Population living below the poverty line .
- The states of Madhya pradesh , Sikkim , Assam , Tripura , Arunachal Pradesh , Meghalaya , Nagaland have more than 30 % of their population below poverty line .
- Poverty is a state of deprivation .
Indicators of a Healthy Life
- Life free from illness ad ailment and living a reasonably long life span are indicative of a healthy life .
- India has done reasonably well in some of the health indicators like decline in death rate from 25.1 per thousands in 1951 to 8.1 per thousand in 1999 and infant mortality from 148 per thousand to 70 during the same period .
- India has recorded declining female sex ratio .
- The findings of 2001 Census of India are very disturbing particularly in case of child sex ratio between 0-6 age groups .
- The other significant features of the report are , with the exception of Kerala , the child sex ration has declined in all the states and it is the most alarming in the developed state of Harayana and Punjab where it is below 800 female children per thousand male children .
Indicators of social empowerment
- "Development is freedom ". freedom from hunger , poverty , servitude , bondage , ignorance , illiteracy and other forms of domination is the key to human development .
- Literacy is the beginning of access to such a world of knowledge and freedom .
Human Development Index in India
- In the backdrop of the above - mentioned important indicators the Planning Commission calculated the human development index by taking states and union territories as the unit of analysis .
- India has been placed among the countries showing medium human human development .
- There are several socio - political , economic and historical reasons for such a state of affairs .
- Kerala is able to record the highest value in the HDI largely due to its impressive performance in achieving near hundred per cent literacy .
- In Pradesh , Odisha , Assam and Uttar Pradesh have very low literacy.
- Economically development states like Maharastra , Tamil Nadu and Punjab and Haryana have higher value of HDI as compared to states like Chhatisgarh , Bihar , Madhya Pradesh , etc.
- Regional distortions and social disparities which development during the colonial period continue to play an important role in the Indian economy, polity and society .
- The government of India has made concerted efforts to institutionalise the balanced development with its main focus on social distributive justice through planned development .
Population , Environment and Development
- Development in general and human development in particular is a complex concept used in social sciences.
- It complex because for ages it was thought that development is a substantive concept and once it is achieved it will address all the socio- cultural and environmental ills of the society .
- The report recognized greater constructive role of 'Civil ' societies in bringing about peace and human development .
- The civil society should work for building up opinion for reduction in the military expenditure , de-mobilisation of armed forces , transition from defence to production of basic goods and services and particularly disarmament and reduction in the nuclear warheads by the developed countries
- At the order Neo- Malthusians , environmentalists and radical ecologists .
- Development has only contributed in increasing the multiple uses of the limited resources of the world while there has been enormous increase in the demand for these resources .
- Indian culture and civilization have been very sensitive to the issues of population , resource and development for a long time .