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

90SOME OTHER ASPECTS OF WELL-BEING NATIONAL HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2001Societies, cultures and nations have often been evaluated on thebasis of how they have been treating their elderly, the children,the disabled and the deprived in course of their development. Thisis all the more relevant for developing countries that are yet tocomplete their demographic transition and where the number ofpeople in each of these population segments is likely to be quitelarge. In multi-cultural, multi-religious, linguistically and ethnicallypluralistic societies an additional consideration has been the wellbeingof the minorities and the excluded. In the humandevelopment framework, the focus, particularly on variablescapturing educational, health and demographic attainments/deprivation may, perhaps, make it unnecessary to look atdevelopment outcomes for each of these population segmentsseparately. This is because, the strategies to improve outcomes onthe educational and health dimension of human well-being are alsothe means to sustain an improvement in overall attainments ofthese population segments. However, indicators capturing absoluteor relative attainments at an individual as well as the collectivesocial level for some of these population segments may still berequired, particularly, if there are significant gaps between theattainments of these segments and the rest of the population. Suchspecific indicators may be important for evaluating the qualitativeaspect of the process of social change, more so for determining thepolicy framework and public interventionsfor hastening the process towardsattaining the socially desired ends.Besides the social context, thephysical environment also has a directbearing on the well-being of individuals.At the same time, the developmentprocess, as it unfolds, impacts thephysical environment, one way or theother, almost continuously. It is onlynatural then that appropriate environmentalindicators are also included inany assessment of human well-being andthe process of development.