India has dropped by one spot to be ranked at 132 out of 191 countries in the 2021 Human Development Index, according to a report released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
India’s HDI value of 0.633 places the country in the medium human development category, lower than its value of 0.645 in the 2020 report.
The report was titled as “’Uncertain Times, Unsettled Lives: Shaping our Future in a Transforming World.”
“Like global trends, in India’s case, the drop in HDI from 0.645 in 2019 to 0.633 in 2021 can be attributed to falling life expectancy – 69.7 to 67.2 years. India’s expected years of schooling stand at 11.9 years, and the mean years of schooling are at 6.7 years,” read the report.
HDI is a measure of a nation’s health, education, and standards of living and it has globally declined for two years in a row, 2020 and 2021, stalling for the first time in 32 years.
An unprecedented array of crises, mainly the COVID-19 pandemic, has set human progress back five years and fueled a global wave of uncertainty, according to the report.
While economies recovered in 2021, the health crisis intensified, with two-thirds of countries recording even further reductions in life expectancy at birth.
“It means we die earlier, we are less well educated, our incomes are going down. Just under three parameters, you can get a sense of why so many people are beginning to feel desperate, frustrated, worried about the future,” UNDP chief Achim Steiner told AFP news agency.
“The world is scrambling to respond to back-to-back crises. We have seen with the cost of living and energy crises that, while it is tempting to focus on quick fixes like subsidizing fossil fuels, immediate relief tactics are delaying the long-term systemic changes we must make,” Achim Steiner said.
“We are collectively paralyzed in making these changes. In a world defined by uncertainty, we need a renewed sense of global solidarity to tackle our interconnected, common challenges,” Steiner said.
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