Namra.
“In a democracy, the well-being, individuality, and happiness of every citizen are important for the overall prosperity, peace and happiness of the nation”, said Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, the former President of India.
The above mentioned quote needs to be understood by the present political leaders of our country, if at all they wish to accelerate the development process.
Despite the constant glorification and
exaggeration of its policies, the present government of India has not been able to improve the country’s position in the Human Development Report. And it comes as no surprise to us when considering the unclear priorities of the government.
In accordance with the Human Development Report 2020, India ranks 131 out of 189 countries in the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI). HDI is used to measure the overall development of a country on the basis of indicators like life expectancy, mean year of schooling, expected year of schooling and gross national income per capita. India’s HDI value for the year 2019 is 0.645 and therefore it stands in the list of nations with medium human development category. Even Bhutan has moved ahead of India, and is now at 129th spot.
Another shocking revelation made by the report is regarding the availability of beds in the hospitals. It exposes the condition of the health infrastructure in our country. The report on bed availability places India at 155th spot out of 167 countries. India has mere 5 beds for 10000 Indians. This data clearly shows that our country struggled to increase the number of beds in hospitals during the Coronavirus pandemic. Even Bangladesh is ahead of us in terms of bed availability, with 8 beds per 10000 population. Bangladeshis also have a better life expectancy (72.6 years) compared to Indians (69. 7 years).
Our country’s Gross National Income (GNI) per capita on the basis of purchasing power parity has also gone down in 2019 and it stands at $ 6681 according to the report. However it seems that the above stated facts are rarely brought to the attention of the common people of our country. Tall claims of making India a $ 5 Trillion economy and construction of 100 smart cities are some of the highly decorated government plans that the masses get to hear about and now these plans appear far from becoming a reality. It must be noted that the economy of our country had started declining even before the outbreak of Covid-19. After the spread of Coronavirus the economy suffered a major setback and it might take some time to recover.
The facts and figures mentioned in the Human Development Report 2020 cannot be denied by anyone and it very clearly portrays the utter failure of the developmental schemes and plans in India. The government of our country also needs to invest some time and think about its decisions that led to the disappointing performance of our country in the 2020 report.
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