India ranks slips down in Human Development Index 2021

India (ranked 132) has registered decline in its score over two consecutive years in Human Development Index 2021-22.

What is Human Development Index?

• The HDI is a summary measure of human development.
• It measures average achievement of a country in three basic dimensions of human development i.e.:
  • Long and healthy life (measured by life expectancy at birth)
  • Education (measured by mean years of schooling and expected years of schooling)
  • A decent standard of living (measured by GNI per capita in PPP terms in US$)
• The Index is part of the Human Development Report 2021-2022 released by the United Nations Development Programme.
  
  
  

India’s stand in the Index

• India’s HDI score of 0.633 places it in the medium human development category, lower than its value of 645 in 2018.
• Life expectancy at birth has dropped from— 7 years to 67.2 years.
• India’s expected years of schooling stand at 11.9 years, and the mean years of schooling are at 6.7 years.
• The GNI per capita level is $6,590.

Positive developments

• However, the country has shown improvements in several fields:
  • Over the last decade, India has lifted a staggering 271 million out of multidimensional poverty.
  • boosted access to social protection for vulnerable sections of society
  • shown a slight improvement in its Gender Inequality Index value in the latest report as compared to the 2020 index (0.490 to 0.493)

Recommendation

Implementing policies that focus on 3 Is –

• investment: from renewable energy to preparedness for pandemics
• insurance: including social protection, to prepare societies for the ups and downs of an uncertain world
• innovation: in its many forms — technological, economic, cultural — can also build capacities to respond to whatever challenges come next