HYDERABAD: A World Bank's report has bracketed Andhra Pradesh as being in `middle of the pack, neither outstanding nor poor' in carrying out reforms process and in human development index.

Though the State was a star performer on growth, it was no exception when it came to delivery of core public services such as education and healthcare, according to a survey forming part of the World Bank's Development Policy Report-2006 for India entitled `Inclusive growth and service delivery: building on India's success' released here on Monday.

Lant Pritchett, lead author of the report, and Dipak Dasgupta, lead economist of World Bank for India, told presspersons that the baseline survey of the level of learning achieved in five districts had come up with some interesting findings.

Only 18 per cent of the primary school students could do single-digit additions while 12 per cent could do single-digit subtractions and only 54 per cent could correctly repeat the number of kites in an illustration displayed to them. It showed that services were inadequate and required improvement, they said.

New challenges

Like other States, Andhra Pradesh, too, faced a few challenges having achieved a good growth rate of economy in the last one decade. These were sustaining the pace of growth, shedding complacency and improving performance in the health and education sectors, they said.

"Andhra Pradesh is no exception to the need for inclusive growth. When poverty numbers are properly adjusted, rural Andhra Pradesh looks like Nepal while urban poverty rates are half as high," Mr. Pritchett said in his presentation. He went on argue that the "lagging regions of Andhra Pradesh are under threat of instability."

Other problems

Other major problems were booming urban areas and lagging agriculture and increase in inequalities. Like in some States, growth process had not brought benefit to a large number of people. In some aspects like infant mortality rate (IMR), some districts of the State were as bad as those in Bihar. Fielding questions, they said the World Bank was not so powerful as it was normally made out to be. It does not influence policy changes. All it does is to bring best practices, ideas and knowledge from observing them across the world. They were merely recommendatory in nature and the priorities would have to be drawn by the respective State Governments.

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