A latest report released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) says that in a span of 12 years (2000-2012), India has registered growth of 1.5 percent only on the human development Index (HDI). The 2013 report says that India faces significant social challenges in the years to come as the country has been ranks 136 among 187 countries calculated for HDI.

“Despite the recent expansion in schooling and impressive growth in the number of better qualified Indians, adult illiterate population will decline,” says the Human Development Report 2013 titled ‘The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World’.

The report also flagged India for having worst gender inequality after Afghanistan. It also said that Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh, which are poorer than India and have lower HDIs, all do comparatively better than India when it comes to gender equality. “Bangladesh, with much slower economic growth and half India’s per capita income, does nearly as well—and is better on some indicators,” it said.

The report mentioned that in India, only 10.9 percent of the parliamentary seats are held by women, and 26.6 percent of adult women have reached a secondary or higher level of education, compared with 50.4 percent of their male counterparts. Further, for every 100,000 live births, 200 women die of causes related to pregnancy, and female participation in the labour market is 29 percent, compared with 80.7 percent for men in India, the report added. “The gender Inequality Index shows that high gender disparities persist in South Asia, second only to those in sub-Saharan Africa,” said the UNDP report.

Although India has done economically well in the last decade, it has not able to tackle the problem of poverty. According to the Multi-dimensional Poverty Index (MPI), which identifies multiple deprivations in the same households in education, health and standard of living, puts India's poverty headcount ratio at 54%, higher than Bangladesh and Nepal. “Bangladesh has the highest MPI value based on 2007 survey data followed by India,” the report noted.

However on the positive side, India’s HDI value went up from 0.345 to 0.554 between 1980 and 2012, an increase of 61 percent or an average annual increase of 1.5 percent.

Read the report