“On this republic day it’s really a matter to be proud; that we
are the third largest economy in the world!”
“So?”
“Don’t you feel anything?! We are developing!”
“How?!
Does it imply so?”
“Ok, then go and see the
GDP of India, and convince yourself where we stand among other nations and don’t
you see our Chaandrayaan, MOM and upcoming neutrino observatory etc???”
“of
course! I do see all of them; we are one of the toppers in all these things…
I’m not saying we are not developing but asking does the economic growth imply
we are developing?
In
terms of GDP; we are 10th according to World Bank and IMF and we are
11th according to UN and CIA fact book studies of the year 2013.
Canada, Australia, Italy, Russia, Spain are also have similar GDP that of us.
Switzerland, Netherlands and Norway etc are behind us. Kuwait is far behind than
India.
Now
let me ask you, do you think India is the best place to live among these
mentioned countries?”
“No! Not at all…”
“Why?”
“Because India doesn't have good facilities as that of these
mentioned nations…”
“Facilities
in the sense?”
“Like, good shelters to live, availability of food, hospitals,
roads, public transport, etc…”
“All
these things are available in the cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad etc isn't it???”
“Yeah, but not everywhere in India…”
“Isn't that self-contradicting?”
“How?”
“You
were excited about our economic development…”
“Even you agreed with me ie India is developing.”
“Yes,
I do. But the scales are different. My scales do not include GDP or economic
growth…”
“Why, doesn't it play a big role?”
“It
plays a role, but I won’t say it is big!”
“Then what are your scales?”
“It
could be GDP per capita, or Human Development Index (HDI), Inequality-adjusted
HDI (IHDI) or Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) etc”
“Why are those important than what I said?”
“Because,
it includes your ‘facilities’ along
with economic development.
Let
me ask you, what is the goal of economic development?”
“Ultimately… development of citizen.”
“Yes,
then what is development? What are the measures?”
“Are you asking me now?”
“No,
I was thinking aloud. It can be graphically represented as follows…
…It’s
recurring. More the human development so does the economic development, for a
sustainable development, economy should support human development. Don’t you
think it matters?”
“Yeah, somewhat… explain
more about it.”
“Ok,
let’s talk about HDI first.”
“What’s it?”
“It
is a scale of development of a nation. A measure of life expectancy, literacy,
education, standard of living and quality of life, income indices etc. More the
HDI more developed the country is, created by Dr.Amartya Sen and a Pakistani economist Dr.Mahbub ul Huq"
“mhmm… where do we -India- stand in world? Do you have similar
schematic diagram?”
“Here
are those…the nations have color shown in the below indicator according to
their HDI
This is based on the data 2013.
“Oh!”
“Norway, Australia, Switzerland, Netherlands,
US, Germany, New Zealand, and Canada are the toppers in terms of HDI whereas
most of them are similar to us in GDP”
“What about
Indian states?”
“Based on data-2008”
“Unbelievable!... is it true?”
“Ha
ha ha…! You may convince yourself collecting data… see the below table, ”
“Kerala is always first, it had achieved 1.000 once then
decreased to 0.911 still has very high HDI. Goa is in second place.”
“Maharashtra,
Himachal Pradesh (up to 2010), Tamilnadu show a consistent development.”
“Gujarat, Jammu & Kashmir, Karnataka, West Bengal, Punjab
(decreasing trend), and Andhra Pradesh shares similar HDI’s”
“Manipur, Nagaland, Assam,
Meghalaya, and Arunachal Pradesh have a
decreasing trend”
“So on an average are you telling me that India is not
developing?”
“Never… India is developing…let’s compare
the development of nations in terms of HDI, higher the slope, higher the rate of
development.
…
Norway has the least slop in the rate, but it has achieved 0.944 from 0.793
within 25 years, which ranks around 25 in GDP.
Egypt
ranks around 40 in GDP but has similar development growth rate that of India… Where as we stand around 10 in GDP.
So, what I’m saying is that,
India is not developing as its economy develops… so it needn't be sustainable. For a sustainable development as I said before, economy should support human welfare…”
“It’s enough for today. Shall we go and have a coffee?”
"Sure..."
Reference:
