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All books/Class 10 Social Science: Understanding Economic Development

Development

Human development

Use the Human Development Index and BMI to judge development.

Beyond income. Income is important, but it is not enough to measure development. A long list of measures would be confusing, so we choose a few of the most important. Health and education indicators, like those we used for Kerala and Haryana, are now widely used along with income.

The Human Development Report. The UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) publishes the Human Development Report. It compares countries using:

  • income: gross national income per head, adjusted so a dollar buys the same amount everywhere;
  • health: life expectancy at birth (how long a person is expected to live);
  • education: mean years of schooling of people aged 25 and above.

From these it ranks countries by the Human Development Index (HDI), out of 193 countries.

India and its neighbours (Table 1.6). Small Sri Lanka is ahead of India on every measure, while a big country like India has a low rank (130). Also, Nepal and Bangladesh have lower incomes than India, but people there live longer. Bangladesh's life expectancy is 74.7 years. By putting 'Human' before 'Development', the report makes the point: what matters most is what happens to people, their health and well-being.

Are we well nourished? Body Mass Index (BMI). You can check nutrition with BMI:

  1. Measure your weight in kilograms.
  2. Measure your height and change it to metres.
  3. Divide your weight by the square of your height (height × height).

Then compare the number with the BMI-for-age tables at the back of the book: below the normal range means underweight, above it means overweight. Discuss food and exercise habits without body-shaming anyone.

Undernourished adults. In 2019-21, the share of adults with below-normal BMI was:

  • Kerala: 8.5 per cent of men and 10 per cent of women;
  • Madhya Pradesh: 28 per cent of both men and women;
  • India as a whole: about 20 per cent of men and 23 per cent of women.

So a large share of adults is still undernourished.

HDI looks at income, health and education together: people, not just money, are what matter.

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