A matrix for the nation

Bleak news is always accepted with a knowledgeable sigh. But it also turns out that 70 per cent of the villages in a sample survey in a just-completed ambitious project had a post office within a 2-km radius, and 51 per cent had a telephone. Fully 88 per cent had a primary school, though the number dwindled to 41 per cent for a middle school. But over half of all India8217;s villages still have no protected source of drinking water.

Those are among the unsurprising though comprehensive findings of the just-released India Human Development Report, produced by the National Council for Applied Economic Research NCAER.

Inspired by its entrenched internationalcounterpart, the UNDP8217;s annual Human Development Report HDR, the India HDR is a 8220;unified survey8221; aimed at developing a 8220;human development profile8221; for 16 of India8217;s major states counting the northeastern region as one.

To nobody8217;s surprise, Kerala gets top billing for human development in the country. About 90 indicators of living standards such as income and assets, employment and wages, consumption expenditure, literacy, demographic rates and health care utilisation have been compared across 16 selected states and eight selected population groups.

People in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab and Haryana are doing better in human development terms compared to Bihar, UP, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan and West Bengal.

What the India HDR does is to build a human-development profile for India modelled on the HDR but with Indian specificities woven in, and produce a reckoner that could become a handy reference for policy-makers.

The whole exercise is aimed atlinking diverse but comprehensive information to yield fresh links.

Thus, for example, literacy rates are found to rise with income, but gender disparity does not necessarily decline with such an income increase.

More food for thought: about 17 per cent of adult males and 9 per cent of females complete middle school in rural India 52 women for every 100 men. Gender disparity is highest in Rajasthan, UP and MP, but also in the lower income levels in most states.

The low-income states are UP, Bihar, MP, Orissa and Rajasthan, which account for over 50 per cent of the population. Punjab, Haryana and Kerala have relatively high income levels but high income disparities.

Even today there is a strong link between rural income levels and land ownership. Wage labourers earn 58 per cent less than salaried and professional classes, and 77 per cent less than large farmers.

About 63 per cent of rural households own land in India. Ownership is highest in Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra andlowest in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Kerala.

The average size of landholdings is highest in Punjab 7.5 acres and lowest in Kerala 0.9 acres. Land ownership is highest among Hindus 70 per cent, followed by STs 69 per cent, and lowest among SCs.

Literacy and vllage development are shown to influence household income. And income in households with both a literate male and female is shown to be 58 per cent higher than in one with no literate adult. Unstartlingly, SC-ST households are found to have a per capita income that is just 68 and 76 per cent respectively of the all-India average.

Reflecting community and regional characteristics, the report shows that the female work participation rate WPR varies from 4.6 per cent in the Northeast to 37 per cent in Andhra and Himachal. Variations across states are much wider for women than men. In terms of religion and caste, the female WPR is lowest among Muslims 10 per cent, followed by Hindus 17 per cent and higher among SCs 23 per cent,Christians 25 per cent and STs 28 per cent.

On food consumption patterns, the report says the average per capita grain consumption in India is 14 kg per month, ranging from 9 kg in Kerala to 17 kg in HP and Rajasthan.

About 31 per cent of total expenditure goes on food, but for poorer Bihar and Orissa, food accounts for as much as 43 per cent of total household spending, whereas prosperous Punjab and Haryana spend only about 16 per cent on food.

In what should be a clear message to policy makers, only 33 per cent of rural households regularly use the public distribution system. The PDS is most widely used in the four southern states and least used in UP, Bihar, Orissa and West Bengal. On health, the incidence of leprosy among STs is three times higher than the national average. Levels of child immunisation are the lowest among Muslims followed by STs.

Prevalence rates for hypertension, diabetes, heart disease and cancer increase with the development of a village, while those for TB and leprosydecrease, making the last two diseases of deprivation and the others those of lifestyle. About 60 per cent of births are conducted by untrained health personnel in rural India, especially in Bihar, Orissa and Rajasthan. Safe motherhood corresponds with literacy and economic status, as does child immunisation.

Most remarkably, perhaps, the report points out that villages connected by pucca roads with bus stops showed high literacy and enrollment rates for males and females. They also had high immunisation and low child undernutrition rates. Here is a basis for questioning traditional beliefs about female neglect: given the opportunity, attitudes can be more progressive and if proof were needed of the urgent need for infrastructure development, here it is in plenty.

The late Mahbub-ul-Haq, former Pakistani finance minister and the man behind the UNDP8217;s HDR, had famously developed the idea that human development was more than just material well-being.

It included at the very least literacy, good health andlongevity, alongside income criteria. And so any meaningful human development profile of countries had to be based on those indices.

Haq had also observed about India that two-thirds of its people were 8220;capability-poor, ie, they do not receive the minimum level of education and health care necessary for functioning human capabilities8221;. The India HDR quantifies that comprehensively, its aim not so much to present original data as to present it in associations that make links between various indices clear and suggest ways of dealing with them.