Human Development and Global Indices

The ideas:

• Mahbub ul Haq (Pakistani economist) created the concept as a measure, with the Human Development Index and the first Human Development Report of UNDP in 1990. Amartya Sen worked with him on its basis.
• The four pillars: equity, sustainability, productivity and empowerment.
• The four approaches (NCERT Class 12): income (income is what matters), welfare (people as beneficiaries of state spending), basic needs (first proposed by the ILO: six needs, health, education, food, water supply, sanitation and housing) and capability (Amartya Sen: building human capabilities).
• Gross National Happiness: Bhutan is the only country that officially measures its progress by it, an idea of its fourth king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, in the 1970s.

How it is built:

• Long and healthy life: life expectancy at birth.
• Knowledge: mean years of schooling (adults 25 and over) and expected years of schooling (children entering school).
• Decent standard of living: gross national income per head (PPP dollars, taken in logs).
• Each dimension index = (actual − minimum) ÷ (maximum − minimum). For life expectancy the goalposts are 20 and 85 years.
• Since 2010 the HDI is the geometric mean of the three indices.
• Not in the HDI: mortality rate as such, literacy rate (dropped in 2010), access to banking.

The measures:

• Gender Inequality Index (GII, UNDP, 2010): three dimensions, reproductive health (maternal mortality ratio, adolescent birth rate), empowerment (women's seats in parliament, secondary education) and the labour market (participation rate). It runs from 0 (women and men fare equally) to 1.
• Infant mortality rate: deaths under one year per 1,000 live births. India's is about 28 (Sample Registration System, 2020), far above China, the USA and Sri Lanka, which are all in single digits.
• Life expectancy in India: women live longer than men, and urban people longer than rural people.
• Education spending by the Centre and the States together stayed at about 3 per cent of GDP in 2014 to 2019, with little change.

The indices:

• Global Competitiveness Index (World Economic Forum): in 2016-17 built from three sub-indices, basic requirements, efficiency enhancers and innovation and sophistication factors. Health is a pillar inside basic requirements, not a sub-index.
• Ease of Doing Business (World Bank): India rose from 142 (2014) to 63 (2019), but its rank on registering property fell (about 121 to 154). The World Bank stopped the report in 2021.
• Global Innovation Index (WIPO): India rose from 81 (2015) to 40 (2023) and 39 (2024). Most of India's research money comes from the government, not private firms.
• SDG India Index (NITI Aayog, from 2018): scores States on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. In 2020-21 the lowest were Bihar, Jharkhand and Assam; Kerala was top.
• The 17 SDGs include zero hunger (2), reduced inequalities (10), responsible consumption and production (12) and life below water (14). There is no goal called 'reduced unemployment'.