The Hindu : National : It will take India 100 years to catch up: UNDP

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Friday, Sep 09, 2005

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It will take India 100 years to catch up: UNDP

Special Correspondent

Long way to go despite economic growth

NEW DELHI: The United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Report 2005 says "it will still take India until 2106 to catch up with high-income countries."

The report noted that even though high growth in India has been one of the most powerful forces for convergence between rich and poor countries, it might still have to wait a century to become fully developed. As for the other countries, convergence prospects were even more limited.

"Were high-income countries to stop growing today and Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa to continue on their current growth trajectories, it would take Latin America until 2177 and Africa until 2236 to catch up," the report said. Most of the developing regions were falling behind instead of catching up with rich countries.

Gap narrowing

The report, however, pointed out that with incomes growing rapidly in China and less spectacularly in India over the past two decades as compared to those in high-income countries, the average gap has been narrowing in relative terms.

"This reverses a trend towards increased global inequality that started in the 1820s and continued until 1992," the report said.

Malnutrition prevalent

The HDI report pointed out that despite the decline in "income poverty," 50 per cent of India's children are still afflicted by malnutrition and the country was way off the track from achieving its millennium development goals.

"Some of India's southern cities may be in the midst of a technology boom, but one in every 11 children dies in the first five years of life for lack of low-cost interventions," the report said.

The incidence of income poverty has declined from about 36 per cent in the early Nineties to somewhere around 25-30 per cent today.

"But, overall, the evidence suggests that the pick-up in growth has not translated into a commensurate decline in poverty," it said.

Extreme poverty

Even as income growth has been dynamic in other States, urban areas and service sectors, the report noted that extreme poverty is still concentrated in the rural areas of northern belt States, including Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.

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