By Mohammed Kudrati
India has ranked 132 out of 191 countries on the Human Development Index [HDI] released by the United Nations Development Program on September 8.
The index measures human development on the health, education and income to arrive at an index value from zero to one. Zero is the least attainable score, with one the highest. The latest report pertains to the year 2021.
India has attained a score of 0.633 for 2021, putting it in the league of 'Medium human development'.
Switzerland, Norway and Iceland have bagged the top three places, scoring 0.962, 0.961 and 0.959 respectively.
The score India attained in 2021 was 0.009 points lower than that in 2020 (at 0.642) and two ranks lower (at 130).
The Human Development Index is based on four components. First, on life expectancy at birth, India measures 67.2 years. On the second metric - expected years of schooling, India's measure is 11.9 year, while on the third metric, which is mean years of schooling, India measures 6.7 years. On the last measure, which is one of income shows the gross national income per capita in 2017 purchasing power parity in dollars, on which India's is $6,590.
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In its category of countries with 'medium' human development, India overall ranks just below the category average of 0.636.
For reference, the world HDI is 0.732.
However, India's marginal fall ranking and index comes as the global HDI has fallen too, again insignificant, as the world's index was 0.735 in 2020. While marginal, the report also states that this is the first time there has been a drop in the HDI value for two years in a row.
Over 90% of the countries surveyed witnessed a drop in their HDI in 2020 and 2021.
The drop is driven by the COVID-19 pandemic a hit to the quality of living globally as the war in Ukraine rages on. Climate is also playing a role, the report has said.
"We are living in uncertain times. The Covid-19 pandemic, now in its third year, continues to spin off new variants. The war in Ukraine reverberates throughout the world, causing immense human suffering, including a cost-of-living crisis. Climate and ecological disasters threaten the world daily."
The report adds that, "The world is fundamentally changing. There is no going back."
Rising perception of insecurity
Language identifying trends from 14 million books across three languages (English, German and Spanish) over the past 125 years shows that insecurity is at its highest level yet - greater than the Great Depression of 1929, the Great Recession of 2008 and during both world wars.
Further, feelings of stress, sadness, anger and worry have been on the rise since the past decade and has reached a record high since such surveys started being conducted in 2006 by the Gallup Global Emotions Report.
Interestingly, while these feelings of insecurity and other negative emotions is high in middle and lower HDI countries, the largest increased in these perceived emotions come from countries with a high HDI.
A divergence also exists in how these emotions are perceived by age groups. While these recorded emotions may be high in lower to middle HDI countries, a younger crowd tends to have a brighter outlook of the future.
All groups of people have experienced a surge in these negative emotions, with women, people with lower than tertiary education and people who are underemployed or unemployed reporting higher absolute levels of change.
The report can be found here.
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