INDIA 67

INDIA 67

-Dr.Debesh Bhowmik

India ranks 136 in Human Development Index which is 0.554.Although India was able to increase its HDI index at the rate of 1.5% per year during 2000—2010.Her GDP in 2011 is 3976.5 US dollar at ppp with base 2005 and per capita is 3203 US dollar in which health expenditure as percent of GDP become only 1.2%,education expenditure as percent of GDP is 3.1% and military expenditure as percent of GDP is 2.7% as per 2010. India’s adult literacy rate stood at 62.8% since its primary enrolment reached at 100 and secondary enrolment is as low as 60.0 because drop out in primary schooling becomes 34.2 which is too high although mean years of schooling is 4.4 years.India’s medical access to the people is not appreciable because underweight children at age 5 is still 42.5% ,mortality rate in cholera is 6, diabetes 0.336,immunization coverage 74%, and the availability of physician per 1000 population increased to 0.6 only.Therefore, India’s life expectancy at birth reached at 65.8years.The youth unemployment of India is very high of 11.5% where employment population ration is 61.0 and male and female labour force participation rates were estimated as 80.7% and 29.0% respectively showing its  child labour rate of 12.0% in spite of abolition of child labour through legislation act. Poverty is the Indian neighbor because 32.7% people is still living below the poverty line of 1.25dollar per day per person expenditure. So the intensity of deprivation did not fall below 52.7%.Even, the gender difference is so acute that gender inequality index was calculated as 0.610 whose rank stands at 132 in the world. India’s research and development expenditure as percent of GDP is very low of 0.8% where 75% is the electrification rate,3.2% is the personal computer users,7.5% is the internet users,59% is the telephone and mobile users only. The environment scenario of India is not praise worthy. She emits 1743 megaton CO2 in which per capita emission is 1.5ton.The growth of CO2 in India during last 5 years was found as 3.8% .India lacks forest area coverage for emission control amounting to 23% only and even 10.0% population is still living under degraded land.(Source-HDR-2013)

Therefore, the above statistical evidence can proof how we are and to what extent we have been achieved and to what we have to acquire for living towards the sustainable development path