National Human Development Report: 2001 - Indira Gandhi Institute ...

4OVERVIEWNATIONAL HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2001Significant overallimprovement in humandevelopment in last twodecades; wide disparitiesacross States.eighties the index has improved by nearly 26 per cent and by another 24 percent during the nineties. There has been an improvement both in rural, aswell as in urban areas. Though the rural-urban gap in the level of humandevelopment continues to be significant, it has declined during the period.Inequalities across States on the HDI are less than the income inequality asreflected in the per capita State Domestic Product.At the State level, there are wide disparities in the level of humandevelopment. In the early eighties, States like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, MadhyaPradesh, Rajasthan and Orissa had HDI close to just half that of Kerala’s. Thesituation has improved since then. Besides Kerala, among the major States,Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Haryana have done well on the HDI.In general, HDI is better in smaller States and Union Territories. In terms ofthe pace of development, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, WestBengal and Bihar improved their HDI significantly in the eighties. However,in the nineties the momentum was maintained, from among these States, onlyin case of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.It turns out that the economically less developed States are also theStates with low HDI. Similarly, the economically better off States are alsothe ones with relatively better performance on HDI. However, the relationbetween the HDI and the level of development does not show anycorrespondence among the middle-income States in the country. In thiscategory of States, some States like Kerala have high attainments on HDI, atthe same time; there are States like Andhra Pradesh or even West Bengalwhere HDI values are not as high. Allocation of adequate public resourcesfor furthering human development alone is not enough. It is equallyimportant to use them efficiently and effectively. Human attainments appearto be better and more sustained in those parts of the country where there issocial mobilisation for human development, and where female literacy andempowerment encourages women to have a say in the decision makingprocess at the household level.Slow improvementin gender equalityin the eighties.Status in Gender EqualityThe index of gender equality measuring the attainments in humandevelopment indicators for females as a proportion of that of males hasimproved, but only marginally, during the eighties. At the national level,GEI increased from 62 per cent in the early eighties to 67.6 per cent in theearly nineties. This implies that on an average the attainments of women onhuman development indicators were only two-thirds of those of men. At theState level, gender equality was the highest for Kerala followed by Manipur,Meghalaya, Himachal Pradesh and Nagaland in the eighties. Goa and theUnion Territories, except for Delhi, had gender equality higher than thenational level. In the nineties, Himachal Pradesh had the highest equality,whereas Bihar was at the bottom and witnessed a decline in absolute termsover the earlier period.In general, women were better off in the Southern India than in theIndo-gangetic plains comprising mainly the States of Bihar and UttarPradesh. States like Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh in the south andHaryana and Jammu & Kashmir in the north have made considerable