Going by economic measures, India is a globalization success story. Average incomes, rising at 3 percent to 4 percent a year, have doubled since the mid-1980s. Dynamic new industries have emerged, most visibly in the high-technology hubs of Bangalore and Hyderabad.
Foreign investment, while still dwarfed by flows to China, has grown from 1 billion US dollar (6,2 milliarder DKR) a year in the mid-1990s to 5 billion dollar (31 milliarder DKR) this year, writes UNDPs Human Development Report Office Director Kevin Watkins, in a commentary published in The International Herald Tribune Monday.
When we try to measure whether peoples lives have improved, however, the figures tell a different story, Watkins writes.
Poverty has fallen far more slowly than one would expect, given India’s economic success. One in three Indians live on less than one dollar (6,20 DKR) a day and India is still home to the worlds largest conglomeration of malnourished people. Almost half of the country’ children are underweight for their age – which helps to explain the two million child deaths each year.
The latest UN Human Development Report draws attention to the worrying gap that is emerging between economic growth and social progress. What is going wrong?
Part of the problem is that economic growth has been built on a narrow base. The more profound challenge is to tackle head-on the deep-rooted inequalities that are holding back social progress, especially the deep inequalities in opportunity that divide women and men.
These inequalities start at birth, with fatal consequences. Girls aged from 1 to 5 face a 50 percent higher risk of childhood mortality than their brothers, reflecting disadvantages in access to nutrition and health provision. That statistic translates into 130.000 “missing” girl children – deaths that would be averted each year if death rates for girls were the same as those for boys.
Overlapping with these gender-based differences are wider inequalities. Child mortality rates among the poorest 20 percent are more than three times higher than among the richest.
And there are glaring gaps between the northern “poverty belt” states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and more successful states such as Tamil Nadu and Kerala. With a population larger than Nigeria, Uttar Pradesh immunizes only one in five children against the major childhood diseases.
Across rural India, the public health system, starved of resources, has become a byword for clinics that lack drugs and trained staff. If current budget plans are implemented, health spending will rise from less than one percent of national income to three percent.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
