Essay on Human Development
The issue relating to human development have come to the fore in the last few decades because of the fact that the benefits of economic growth do not necessarily accrue to all sections of the community automatically. The ultimate objective of social and economic changes is human development which has been defined as a process of enlarging human capabilities and choices. Apart from the basic necessities such as food, clothing and shelter, other human choices include long life, good health, adequate education and participative decision-making. This, human development is multidimensional involving political, social and economic elements. It is not, therefore, surprising that countries do not rank identically on the income scale and human development scale.
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India has done well on many dimensions of human development over the past four decades. Life expectancy was just 32 years in 1951 and in 1991 it increased to 59.4 years. Infant mortality rate which stood at 146 per thousand in 1951 came down to 80 in 1991. The literacy rate has gone up from 16.7 percent in 1951 to 52.2 percent in 1991. Not withstanding the above achievements, India is still in the category of low human development as per the reports of UNDP. Further, the human development in the country is not uniformly spread and there is widespread inter-state variation in it.
The study intends to measure inter-state variation in human development by constructing human development indices for major states of India. The year of study is 1991 as the reliable data pertaining to various aspects of human development are not available for later years. The methodology used in the study is similar to that of UNDP. UNDP has designed the methodology for constructing human development index with the objective of inter-country comparision. We have modified this methodology, while retaining its basic structure, so as to make it suitable for inter-state comparision in India. Further, unlike UNDP, we have included urbanization also in the HDI. Thus, the HDI in our study is based on four elements viz. life expectancy, educational attainments, real per capita SDP and urbanization.
Our study shows that though, India is in the category of `low human development’ as per the human development reports of UNDP, there are three states in India viz. Kerala, Maharashtra and Punjab who are in the category of medium human development. Kerala’s achievements are exceptional in the sense that the level of human development has been achieved despite low per capita domestic products. However, the credit for this achievement goes more to non-governmental organizations rather than government. However, there are many states in India whose HDI is less than 0.30, which means very low level of human development.
The variation among the states in terms of life expectancy and literacy rate is quite alarming. The gap between the two states, Kerala and Bihar, in terms of life expectancy is of 13.5 years and that in terms of literacy rate is of 31.3 percentage points.
We can conclude by saying that the level of human development is quite low in many states of India and there is widespread inter-state variation in it. However, we can not wait for substantial increase in income to improve the human development. An all out effort has to be made to improve it.
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