National Human Development Report 2001

Abstract

The National Report has broken fresh ground in quite a few areas in presenting the status of human development at State level in India. It has, for the first time, put together an extensive database for at least two and in some cases three points of time since 1980, covering nearly 70 distinct social indicators on various aspects of the quality of life and wellbeing of the people. These are in terms of gender, as well as the rural-urban dimension. In India there is a considerable difference in the level of attainments of people depending on their place of residence, whether it is in rural or urban areas, and on the sex of the person. The Report highlights this inequality by estimating the ‘Gender Gap’ and the ‘Rural-Urban Gap’ in all indicators where the data is available. The data has been presented in a unique manner, through ‘development radars’, which gives a snapshot view of the structure, the growth and the gaps vis-à-vis desired normative levels, in respect of eight different indicators covering attainments on education, health, economic well-being and access to amenities. It not only helps in simultaneously assessing attainments in different aspects of quality of life, but is equally useful in identifying the areas of gaps for facilitating an informed policy focus at the State level. The development radars overcome the criticism often directed at the use of subjective weighing techniques to combine diverse social indicators into composite indices of human development.