Pakistanis Ahead of Indians on Key Human Development Indices
By Riaz Haq
CA
Although Pakistan at 125 ranks 6 places below India at 119 on UNDP's 2010 human development index, Pakistanis fare much better than their Indian counterparts on several sub-indices, including life expectancy, years of schooling and gender parity.
India lags behind its neighbors, Pakistan and Bangladesh, on human development indices like life expectancy at birth and mean or average years of schooling and gender parity, a United Nations Development Program ( UNDP) report released Thursday said.
On gender parity, Pakistan ranks 112, ten places ahead of India at 122.
Titled "Real Wealth of Nations: Pathways to Human Development", the report had a global launch and was released at the UN in New York by UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon.
According to the report, life expectancy at birth in India is 64.4 years, while in Pakistan it is 67.2 years. In Bangladesh, life expectancy is 66.9 years.
Similarly, mean years of schooling in India is 4.4 years while in Pakistan and Bangladesh it is 4.9 and 4.8 years respectively.
Sri Lanka, which is ranked above India on HDI at 91, also fares better on the two indices. Its life expectancy at birth is 74.4 years and mean years of schooling is 8.2 years.
Reproductive health is the largest contributor to the inequality index. The other indicators, based on which it is calculated, include women's participation in the labor force, their level of empowerment based on educational attainment and parliamentary representation.
For maternal mortality, the figure for Pakistan is 320 deaths per 100,000 live births. In India, the corresponding figure stands at 450. The country also falters on adolescent fertility rate, another indicator of reproductive health.
According to the HDR 2010, the adolescent fertility rate in India is 68 births per 1,000 live births as compared to 45 births per 1,000 live births in Pakistan. The figures illustrate that Pakistan have fewer younger mothers.
Overall, both India and Pakistan are near the bottom of the list of medium human development countries while Bangladesh shows up among low human development nations.
This report is just another reminder that the governments and the peoples of the entire South Asian region have a lot of work to do in terms of poverty reduction and education and health improvements to catch up with the rest of the world. www.riazhaq.com
