India's first Human Development Report needs to look beyond numbers at ecology-poverty linkages
THE good news: the Planning Commission has come out with its first national human development report. The bad news: like any other human development report (HDR) (there is no dearth of them now), this report too has refused to acknowledge the real meaning of development for India. Dwelling extensively on issues like health, gender equality and education, the report only hesitantly mentions ecology.
The report wonders how India still has 50 million poor even though the annual development spending is Rs 8000 per capita per annum. The answer, which should have been brought out in the HDR, is the total lack of ecological security, which alone can ensure a sustainable livelihood in India. The reason is simple: ecology affects everything in India, starting from poverty to education to gender equality.
What this missing link has also thrown up is a series of absurd results when calculating the human
development index (HDI). For instance, Jammu and Kashmir has an HDI comparable to Kerala and Orissa
has actually moved one place up in the HDI ladder. Sadly, there has been no attempt to analyse this vital data. We need more than mere figures. Surely the Planning Commission could have told us more than just
trends.
It is always good to measure the country's development but what is equally frustrating is that these measurements never result in concrete steps to eradicate the malaise. The HDR's suggestion of alternative governance makes us realise that India's policy makers are rediscovering the country. It mentions decentralisation, which is just a theoretical version of the existing Panchayati Raj. It does admit that governance is the culprit in India, which needs to be reformed. But at the same time it also eulogises the existing governance structures. The Planning Commission could have taken some clues from its approach paper to the 10th Plan: India needs a change in its weights and measures of development and poverty. The report thus missed an opportunity to draw attention to ecological poverty that is at the root of our poor development indices. While advocating more power to the people, it could have enlarged upon their ownership rights.
Unfortunately, it is the same mind-set - that of looking at indicators at a macro level as in
economic terms. At the end of it, the HDR comes out as just another report, that measures India's poverty.
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