Geography Class 12 Notes Chapter 13 Human
Development
Development in India
India has mixed experience of development. The distribution of available opportunities
is uneven. A small section of population enjoys all the available modern facilities. On the
other hand, the marginalised sections include scheduled castes, scheduled tribes,
landless agricultural labourers, poor farmers, slum dwellers and others, which do not
have basic amenities even potable water, education, and health facilities.
Among all sections, women are the most marginalised. With the increasing
developmental activities, these marginalised sections are becoming even more
marginalised and hence are forced to live under abject poverty and sub-human
conditions. There is another inter-related aspect of development that has direct role in
making human life uncomfortable and cause environmental pollution, e.g. air, water, soil
and noise pollutions. These are leading to the tragedy of commons and threatening the
existence of human society. Consequently, the poor are being subjected to three
inter-related processes of declining capabilities, they are:
● Social Capabilities due to displacement and weakening social ties
● Environmental Capabilities due to increasing in pollution.
● Personal Capabilities due to increasing incidence of diseases and
accidents.
Thus, in turn, this has adverse effects on their quality of life and human development.
Human Development
After seeing the inability of the western or euro-centric view of development to handle
the existing issues, the concept of human development is brought against this concept.
It is considered as a solution to all the existing problems. Thus, human development is a
process of widening and providing more choices to people, providing them more
opportunities for education, health care, empowerment, income and covering all the
choices from a healthy physical environment to economic, social and political freedom.
The first systematic effort in enhancing the human development was made by United
Nations Development Programme (UNDP) by publishing the first Human Development
Report in 1990. Now, it is regularity published. UNDP is responsible for making and
amending the indicators to decide the human development of a country. It gives ranks
to all member countries, on the basis of calculated scores by using indicators and
publish them in the report.
Human Development in India
According to Human Development Report (HDR) of 2011, India ranks 134th with the
composite HDI value of 0.547 (medium human development) among 172 member
countries of the world.
There are many socio-cultural and historical factors which are responsible for the low
score condition of human development in India. These are:
● Historical factors These include colonisation, imperialism and
neo-imperialism.
● Socio-Cultural factors These include violation of human rights, social
discriminations like race, religion, gender and caste based discriminations,
social problems of crimes, terrorism and war.
● Political factors These include political stability and nature of state, forms
of government, level of empowerment, etc.
Planning Commission of India also prepares the Human Development Report (HDR) for
India and takes the states and Union Territories as units for analysis. Further, the states
take districts as their units of analysis. Planning Commission in its Human Development
Report takes the given indicators selected by UNDP along with other indicators like
economic attainment, social empowerment, social distributive justice, accessibility of
opportunities, hygiene and welfare policies made by the states.
Indicators of Economic Attainment
Economic productivity forms an integral part of human development, thus. Gross
National Product (GNP) and per capita availability are taken as measures to assess the
resources base/endowment of any country.
On one side India’s GDP at current prices (₹ 3200 thousand crores ) and its per capita
income (₹ 20813) are showing an impressive development in India in terms of resource
base. But on the other side, the existence of poverty deprivation, malnutrition, illiteracy
and different prejudices like caste, religion and gender discrimination are showing a
different face of economic achievements.
Variation in Per Capita Income
The spatial pattern of per capita income is uneven.
● States having high per capita income (More than ₹ 4000 per year at
1980-81 prices) Maharashtra, Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat and Delhi.
● States having low per capita income ( Less than ₹ 2000 per year) Uttar
Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, etc.
Variation in Per Capita consumption
● There are large regional disparities in terms of per capita consumption.
● Developed states having high per capita consumption (more than ₹ 690 per
month) are Kerala, Punjab, Haryana, Maharashtra, Gujarat, etc.
● Poor states having low per capita consumption (less than ₹ 520 per month)
are Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha and Madhya Pradesh, etc.
● These variations in both per capita income and consumption are showing
some serious problems like poverty, unemployment and
under-employment.
Poverty
● Poverty is a state of deprivation. In absolute terms, it reflects the inability of
an individual to satisfy certain basic needs for a sustained healthy and
reasonably productive living.
● In India, poverty varies among different states. Bihar and Odisha
(population living below poverty line) recorded more than 40% poverty,
while Madhya Pradesh, Sikkim, Assam, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh,
Meghalaya and Nagaland recorded more than 30% of poverty. Union
Territories record poverty less than 30% are Chandigarh, Daman and Diu
and Delhi.
● Employment rate for educated youth is only 25%. Jobless growth and
rampant unemployment are some of the major causes responsible for
poverty in India.
Indicators of Healthy Life
Healthy and long life is important for everyone and it is measured by availability of
adequate health facilities to decrease infant deaths, post delivery deaths of mothers, old
age health care, proper nutrition and safety of people.
The Health indicators are:
● Mortality rate India has been successful in declining mortality rate from
25.1 per thousand in 1951 to 8.1 per thousand in 1999. Infant mortality rate
is also declined from 148 per thousand in 1951 to 70 per thousand in 1999.
● Average life expectancy rate It is increased from 37.1 years to 62.3 years
for males, 36.2 to 65.3 for females during 1951-1999.
● Birth rate India has also brought down its birth rate from 40.8 in 1951 to
26.1 in 1999. But it is still higher as compared to developed countries.
● Sex-ratio Sex-ratio in India is declining after every decade. According to
2001 census, the findings are very disturbing particularly in case of child
sex ratio between 0-6 age group. Except Kerala (highest sex-ratio), all the
states have the declining trend in child-sex ratio. For example, Haryana and
Punjab have the child sex ratio below 800 female children on per thousand
male children (according to 2011 census, child sex ratio decline against
2001 from 927 to 919).
Indicators of social Empowerment
● Freedom from hunger, poverty servitude, bondage, ignorance, illiteracy and
other forms of domination is the key to human development.
● Empowerment and participation of the people by using their capabilities
and choices in the society, leads to actual freedom.
● People can use their capabilities and choices by understanding the society
and environment. This can happen through literacy as it opens the door of a
world of knowledge and freedom.
literacy in India
● According to 2001 census, India’s literacy is about 65.4%, while its female
literacy is 54.16% (according to 2011, 74.04% is total literacy rate, of these
82.14% and 65.46% are males and females respectively).
● Percentage of total literacy and female literacy are higher than the national
average in most of the southern states.
● Literacy rate is low in Bihar (47.53%) and high in Kerala (90.92%). It shows a
large regional disparities in context of literacy in India.
● Literacy rate is low in rural areas, in some marginalised sections of our
society like females, schedule castes, schedule tribes, agricultural
labourers, etc. Inspite of having some improved condition in literacy rate in
these section, there is still a wide gap between the rich and the
marginalised sections.
Human Development Index in India
Human Development Report in India is prepared annually by the Institute of Applied
Manpower Research in the supervision of Planning Commission by taking states and
Union Territories as the unit of study. States with high HDI value are Kerala (highest HDI
among Indian states i.e. 0.92), Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Goa and Punjab, whereas
Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Bihar (Lowest HDI among Indian States with 0.41) recorded as
lowest HDI value.
Reasons for High and Low HDI Value
There are several reasons for having high and low HDI value include socio-political,
economic or historical reasons. They are:
1. Higher number of literates is the main reason for Kerala having high HDI value. On the
other hand, Bihar, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Assam and Uttar Pradesh have low
composite value of HDI because of their lowest literacy rate.
2. Economic development also has very important role in HDI. Economically developed
states like Maharastatra, Tamil Nadu, and Punjab have higher value of HDI as compared
to states like Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh.
3. Historical reasons are also responsible for having high or low human development,
e.g. regional imbalances and social disparities which emerged under the British period
are still crucial in determining the level of development because they are still affecting
the political, economical and social system in India. Despite of having planned
development by the government, the most important goals are still far away from the
ideal level.
Population, Environment and Development
Development is important because it improves quality of life, but simultaneously
brought many problems like regional disparities, social inequalities, discriminations,
deprivations, displacement of people, violation of human rights and declining human
values and environmental degradation. UNDP in its Human Development Report of 1993
tried to amend these issues and found an important role of civil societies in bringing
about peace and human development. These civil societies can help by building up
opinion for reduction in military expenditure, demobilisation of armed forces, transition
from defense to production of basic goods and services and reduction in the nuclear
weapons in developed countries.
The view of these approaches are presented by Neomalthusians, environmentalists and
Radical ecologists. These thinkers argued to maintain a balance between population
and resources before starting any developmental activity. Sir Robert Malthus was the
first scholar who drew the attention towards the imbalance between population and
resources. Along with the problem of the scarcity of resources and growing population,
there was another problem of unevenly distributed resources over the space and their
accessibility only by few rich countries and people. So there were conflicts between rich
and poor countries for these unevenly distributed resources.
Along with Malthus, Mahatama Gandhi was also a supporter of balance and harmony
between population and resources. According to him, industrialisation has
institutionalised the loss of morality, spirituality, self-reliance, non-violence and mutual
co-operation and environment. Further, Gandhiji says that, higher goals in the life of a
person or by a nation can be achieved through the austerity for individual, trusteeship of
social wealth and non-violence.