At a time when national attention has converged on the dispute over farm laws, COVID vaccine and the new Parliament building in the making, a report card that has been prepared and published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has shown that India, in terms of development of lives of its citizens has performed poorly than the previous year. The report titled ‘Human Development Report 2020: The Next Frontier Human Development and the Anthropocene’ released a couple of days back has shown that the second-most populous nation in the world has slipped two steps down to 131 out of 189 countries. It can be recalled that India’s position was 129 in the 2019 edition of the Human Development Index (HDI) and this is in sharp contrast to the performance of the so-called underdeveloped nations namely Nepal, Bangladesh and Afghanistan who have made improvements. It’s perhaps yet another corroboration, this time coming from an organisation whose credibility is beyond any doubt that real development of the common people of the country is still a far cry.

As a statistical tool used to measure a country’s overall achievement in its social and economic dimensions, the HDI measures the pressing aspects of life expectancy, education and per capita income.  The index which is prepared on the basis of data pertaining to 2019  has  found that India’s gross national income per capita had fallen to $6,681 (Rs 4.9 lakh) in 2019 from $6,829 (Rs 5.03 lakh) in 2018 vis-à-vis Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). It needs to be mentioned that the figures are for 2019 when COVID pandemic was not on the horizon and after-effects of the great economic disruption caused due to it have not been taken into account. It can be anticipated what the citizens’ income statistics will be when the 2021 report arrives sometime in the same month next year. In terms of life expectancy too, India’s performance is much lower than its neighbours. While for Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan it was 72.6, 70.8 and 71.8 years respectively, India’s has been 69.7 years. The continuing sorry state of gender inequality  has been exposed as the country has ranked 123^rd among the 189 nations and the labour force participation rate of women was only 20.5 % when it was 76.1 % for men. The much-talked-about 33% women reservation in parliament is a dream that is perhaps light years away as currently, only 13.5 % of the total seats in the Parliament are occupied by women. With a total HDI value of 0.645, India actually is placed alongside nations like Iraq, Ghana and Cambodia- a hard reality indeed.

The cream of the national press, sadly, hasn’t given due importance to the report and within weeks it will go into oblivion. But, the lament will remain- how many miles to go to achieve real development.