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

NATIONAL HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2001 OVERVIEW 5progress in improving the status of women vis-à-vis men on the humandevelopment indicators. States that have done well in improving theirfemale literacy levels are also the ones that have substantially improved theirgender equality. On the whole, gender disparities across the States havedeclined over the period.Status in Human PovertyHuman poverty on the HPI has declined considerably during theeighties. The decline was from nearly 47 per cent in the early eighties toabout 39 per cent in the early nineties. The decline has been marginally morein rural areas in comparison to urban areas, resulting in a narrowing down ofthe rural-urban gap. At the national level, the magnitude of human povertyon HPI and the Planning Commission’s head count ratio anchored in a foodadequacy norm are comparable. However, in terms of the rural and urbanincidence, as well as at State level, there are considerable variations. Therural-urban ratio for the proportion of the poor on the HPI is nearly twice ashigh as that on the head count ratio of poverty. Given the conceptualisationof HPI in terms of the broader aspects of deprivation, covering accessibilityto basic minimum services, such large differences in rural and urban areasimply that the availability of basic amenities that are virtually taken forgranted in urban areas are, in fact, quite scarce in rural areas.The inter-State differences in human poverty are quite striking. It wasin the range of 55-60 per cent in the early eighties for the worse off States,namely, Orissa, Bihar, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam and Uttar Pradesh, andbetween 32-35 per cent in the better off States like Kerala, Punjab andHimachal Pradesh. It was only in the smaller, predominantly urban areas ofDelhi and Chandigarh that had an HPI in the range of 17-20 per cent. Themagnitude of HPI in early nineties had declined in all the States. However,the relative positions of different States remained quite similar to the earlierperiod. The decline in HPI was significant in case of Himachal Pradesh,Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Jammu & Kashmir, Karnataka and Kerala. In caseof Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, the decline was only marginal.In addition to the indicators that have been identified and used inbuilding the core set of composite indices, for a country like India there arealways issues and concerns that have a direct bearing on the well-being ofpeople at local level and, therefore, need to be included in any meaningfulframework for evaluating development. The compilation of indicators inthe Report covers such aspects of social environment that influenceindividual and collective well-being. This includes indicators on the stateof the elderly, the working children, the disabled; and violence and crimeagainst women. Besides, physical environment also has a bearing on thequality of life. Accordingly, selective environment indicators have alsobeen included.The indicators on these other aspects of the social and physicalenvironment of the people have implications for the process of development,for planning and policy formulation, and for building broad based evaluativestandards for assessing the process of change. More importantly, they have adirect bearing on the issue of governance for human development and haveConsiderable decline inhuman poverty, inter-State differences,however persists.