Millennium Development Goal (MDG)-Why can’t we exceed?
Posted : September 22, 2005 at 10:24 pm [IST]
UN sponsored MDG wishes to achieve the reduction by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day.
The incidence of poverty in India as per the Human Development Report 2005 has fallen from 36% in 1990 to between 25% and 30%. But in number it can be 260 to 300 million people. How can a country with this huge a number of people earning less than a dollar stand among the group of developed countries? Chinese have reduced it to single digit, and working hard to bring it down to insignificant level. Some data from the report about India are revealing:
Child Mortality
1. One of every 11 children dies in the first five years of life.
2. India alone accounts for 2.5 million child deaths annually- one-fifth of the world total.
Honduras and Vietnam with lower per capita incomes than India have far lower level of neo-natal mortality.
Bangladesh with a lower level of income and with far lower growth has an infant mortality rate (IMR) of 46 per 1,000 live births compared to 63 for India.
Had India matched Bangladesh ’s rate of reduction in child mortality over the past decade, 7.32 lakh fewer children would die this year.
Gender Disparity
1. The under-five mortality rate is 50% higher for girls in India than for boys. Thus some 130,000 lives are lost prematurely each year because they are girls.
2. India has missed the MDG to eliminate gender disparity in primary school enrollment by 2005. And had it been met, there would be 6 million more girls in primary schools.
Regional Disparity
1. Girls born in Kerala are five times likely to reach their fifth birthday, twice as likely to become literate and likely to live 20 years longer than girls born in UP.
2. Schemes like the National Rural Health Mission are steps in the right direction. A 3-year pilot project covering 39 villages in Maharashtra extended pre-birth care programmes costing $5 per person. The IMR fell from 75 in 1993-95 to 39 three years later, when the IMR in the adjacent district declined only from 77 to 75 over the same period. Does it not mean that we know the way out but we are not ready to go for removing the drawbacks and work hard to get rid of this inhumane situation?
India’s human development index (HDI) rank for 2003 has remained at 127 out of 177 countries with an HDI value of .602. HDI comprises of three indices: life expectancy, education, and per capita GDP. China ranked well above India, at 85 with an FDI value of 0.755 (from 0.525 in 1975). And even Sri Lanka is way ahead at rank 93 with an HDI value of 0.751. What’s worse, even the average for all South Asian countries, at 0.628, is slightly higher than India’s HDI value.
However, there is one solace. India has improved its HDI value from 0.412 in 1975 to 0.602 in 2003.
TN Ninan in his weekly column in ‘Business Standard’ has put it very nicely.
“Like Sania Mirza, India has the potential to achieve greatness. And just as Mirza has to work hard at improving her serve and her mobility on court, and reducing the errors in her ground-strokes India has many things to do before it can hope to be among the front-ranking economic powers.”
We celebrate our great achievements in some sectors such as IT, pharma, or auto components. Perhaps all these celebrations are coming a little and show a religion of premature triumphalism. We ignore to get the kill and reach at the top from where no one can dislodge us. We get satisfied a little too early, perhaps because of our age-old belief in ‘the greatness in a contented life’. We are not ready for the hard work that has to be done today, and the tough decisions that have to be taken.
NREGS (National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme) is planned to cut down the present level of poverty by 50%. Will it be possible? There are loud negative opinions among the experts. But every sane countryman will like it to succeed. Why can’t all the critics as well as the other stakeholders put together the synergy to make it succeed 150% or 200% and get rid of the poverty from the country once forever? And many including me believe it is possible.
- Indra
Category: Government Policy/Administration |
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