Improving Living Standards in India: Human Development Index (HDI)

Economic growth in India has been initiated by liberalization across the country since the last phase of 20th century as per Planning Commission of India.

Human Development Index (HDI) of India has been rising consistently. This index clearly measures living conditions on the basis of consumption expenditure, education and health. UNDP, the sponsor of Human Development Index methodology since 1990, reported India's HDI to be 0.387 in 1999-2000, 0.467 in 2007-08 0.554 for 2012, an 18% increase over its 2008 HDI. United Nations declared India's HDI is 0.586 in 2014, a 5.77% increase over 2012. As for the year 2018, HDI for India stood at 0.647.

The increase in HDI indicates better living conditions by average citizens in India and consequently demand for housing and other amenities has been increasing due to increase in purchasing power of people and the per Capita Income has increased substantially.

HDI and its composite indices have been showing convergence across states. The poorer states are slowly catching up with the National Average indicating that these states are able to share the benefits projects implemented by government and private players in the development process. That is, the past decade has seen us move towards social inclusion.

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India inched up one spot to rank 129th out of 189 countries on the 2019 Human Development Index (HDI) released by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in 2019. Inequality and deprivation continue to be high in the country.

"For countries like India, which have shown great success in reducing absolute poverty, we hope that the 2019 Human Development Report sheds light on inequalities and deprivations that go beyond income. How we tackle old and new inequalities, ranging from access to basic services such as housing to things like access to quality university education, will be critical to whether we achieve the Sustainable Development Goals," said Shoko Noda, UNDP India Resident Representative in an official release.

It is however pertinent to know, what exactly Human Development Index means and indicates. It is a statistical tool used to measure a country's overall achievement in social and economic dimensions. All the parameters when combined can indicate standard of living by the statistical analysis.

In 1990, A Pakistan Economist Mahbub ul Haq had published his research paper showing the calculation of HDI which later was accepted as a standard statistical tool by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) to measure a country's development. UNDP ranks country's on the basis of HDI every year.

List of HDI as reported by UNDP in 2019 for some countries are as follows. Top 20 countries in the world: Norway (0.954), Switzerland (0.946), Ireland (0.942), Germany (0.939), Hong Kong, China SAR (0.939), Australia (0.938), Iceland (0.938), Sweden (0.937), Singapore (0.935), Netherlands (0.933), Denmark (0.930), Finland (0.925), Canada (0.922), New Zealand (0.921), United Kingdom (0.920), United States (0.920), Belgium (0.919), Liechtenstein (0.917), Japan (0.915) and Austria (0.914).

Miscellaneous rankings: United Arab Emirates rank 35 (0.866), Hungary 43 (0.845), Russian Federation 49 (0.824), Kuwait 57 (0.808), Turkey 59 (0.806), Malaysia 61 (0.804), Mauritius 66 (0.796), Sri Lanka 71 (0.780), Thailand 77 (0.765), Brazil 79 (0.761), China 85 (0.758), Maldives 104 (0.719), Philippines 106 (0.712), Indonesia 111 (0.707), India 129 (0.647), Bhutan 134 (0.617), Bangladesh 135 (0.614), Nepal 147 (0.579), Pakistan 152 (0.560) and Afghanistan 170 (0.496).

UNDP ranking was done out of 189 counties last being Niger with HDI 0.377.