India Slips By One Spot On UN's Human Development Index

New Delhi: India slipped a spot from 131 to 132 in the United Nations Human Development Index 2021-22 and is now placed behind its neighbours Bangladesh which secured the 129th and Sri Lanka which secured a much higher 73rd rank on the list, according to a report by United Nations (UN).

It is also worth mentioning that even Bhutan also fared well than India and secured the 127th rank on the list, while Switzerland bettered its 3rd spot which it held for two years straight to climb up to the 1st spot in the list in 2022.

The HDI value of India – Asia's third-largest economy dropped from 0.642 in 2020 to 0.633 in 2021 which puts it in the middle of the human development category bar.

Though there are speculations of India surpassing Japan to be the second largest economy in Asia by 2030, its HDI ranking is rather dismal to prove that speculation right.

According to the report, a combination of the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and climate crises have largely impacted the human development score in 90 per cent of the countries.

This reversed the progress towards achieving the UN-mandated sustainable development goals by many miles and it would take a while for the world and the economy to heal and come back on track.

The rank indicates the state of a nation's health, education, and average income. It is measured on four parameters — life expectancy at birth, mean years of schooling, expected years of schooling, and the Gross National Income (GNI) per capita.

The UN Development Programme report also stated that "A large contributor to the Human Development Index's recent decline is a global drop in life expectancy".

In India's case, too, life expectancy dropped to 67.2 years from the earlier 69.7 years which is not a good sign for the country's health sector.

The report also listed some of the areas where India fared well than the last year and compared to 2019, the impact of inequality on human development in the country is lower and India is also bridging the human development gap between men and women a lot faster than the world.

Also Read: EDUCATION FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

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