The Human Development Report indicates that the growth in the terms of GDP between 1990 to 2020 has been more than 7 times, but since 1990, HDI Value in India has increased from 0.429 to 0.645 registering an increase of merely 50%.
Reasons for Consistent High Growth and low Human Development:
1. Inequality: As per Oxfam report, in the last 5 years, 1% of the wealthiest in India has increased their share in wealth by around 60%.
2. Jobless Growth: According to the Periodic Labour Force Survey, the unemployment rates in urban areas for all categories increased by almost three times between 2011-12 and 2017-18.
3. Low Learning Outcomes: According to the ASER Report, 60% of grade-5 students can’t read grade-2 text or recognise numbers beyond 99.
4. Health and Outpatient expenditure: Catastrophic healthcare related expenditure pushes families into debt, and people are meeting their healthcare expenses through some sort of borrowing.
5. Low Skill: According to HDI Report 2020, Barely one in five Indians in the labour force is ‘skilled’.
Suggestions:
● National Health Policy: The Economic Survey 2020-21 has strongly recommended an increase in public spending on healthcare services from 1 percent to 2.5 of GDP.
● Government should follow the Sharada Prasad Committee recommendations like global alignment, strengthening of regulation and Unification of Entire Vocational Educational training system.
● To improve learning outcome, Impleme5ntation of New Education Policy is needed.
Without investing in Human capital and addressing the current economic slowdown, the goal of becoming a $5 trillion economy will remain a pipe dream for India.