Saturday, February 18, 2012

Millennium Development Goals: India makes impressive progress in 10 out of 22 indicators

With roughly three years left for India to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the country has managed to show significant progress in 10 of the 22 indicators.

With impressive gains in improving primary education enrollment rate, promoting gender equality and increasing forest cover, the country's lackluster performance in reducing overall poverty and health indicators has dragged down the performance of the overall South Asian region.

The millennium development goals are a list of eight international development parameters that all 193 members of the United Nations have to achieve by 2015. The progress in the 8 parameters is measured by 22 socio-economic indicators.

India, compared to most nations in the Asia Pacific, has made very slow progress in eradicating poverty over the period of 10 years, according to the Asia - Pacific Regional MDG report 2011-12.

With 49.4 % people living on less than $1.25 per day in the country, the metric for poverty used by MDGs, in 1994 , the country has able to reduce it to only 41.6% in the ten years to 2005.

The rate of reduction in poverty is much lower than other south Asian countries like Bangladesh that has brought down proportion of exteremely poor people from 66.8% in 1992 to 49.6% in 2005. India's poor population is much higher than Pakistan (22.6%), Sri Lanka (7%) and Turkey (2.7%).

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The Asia- Pacific region as a whole has however already reached the MDG of halving the incidence of poverty. The proportion of people living below $1.25 per day in the region has come down from 50% in 1990 to 22% in 2009.

Out of the 22 indicators, India has achieved 7 while is on track to achieve another 3 while it is lagging behind in the rest. The South Asian region as a whole also has a similar profile though if one excludes India, the region is on track to eradicate extreme poverty by 2015.

Health indicators however continue to suffer in all sub regions in Asia - Pacific.

"We are in a race against time with just 3 years left to achieve the MDG. The good news though, is that our analysis shows many of these goals can still be reached with a re doubling of efforts, "said Noeleen Heyzer , United Nations under secretary general.

The greatest progress in the region has been in South East Asia which has already achieved 10 out of 22 assessed indicators and is on track for another 4. India has the second highest increase in primary enrollment ratio at 96.9% in 2008, up from 85% in 2000 among all countries of South West Asia.

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The country has lagged behind in bringing infant mortality and maternal mortality rates down during the 1990-2008 decade significantly; however it has made progress in bringing down tuberculosis prevalence rate and HIV prevalence rates.

Forest cover in the country has improved to 23% of land cover in 2010, up from 21.5% in 1990. Protected areas have also seen a marginal increase during the 10 year period to 4.82% in 2010, from 4.49% in 1990. This is the best performance among other nations in South Asia. Carbon dioxide emissions have, however increased in the country over the period from 1.48 tons per capita in 2008 to 0.8 tons per capita in 1990.

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