New Delhi: The emergence of India (and more importantly, China) in a post Soviet-world that has become increasingly accustomed to American unilateralism is a hot topic today. But it is important that this emergence does not get restricted to flexing of military muscle, Bollywood taking over the world or the Tatas and the Ambanis buying up companies and continents.
It is with the understanding that India’s people, too, need to emerge out of the spiral of poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, diseases, lack of healthcare, lack of sanitation and other problems that New Delhi became a signatory to the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 1990. India, along with 189 nations of the world, pledged to do the following for the betterment of its people’s lives.
MDG 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
The target is to halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than one dollar a day. In 1990, 37.5 per cent of Indian people were living below the poverty line. By 2015, India needs to bring it down to 18.75 per cent.
Another target to help achieve the bigger goal is to halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.
MDG 2: Achieve universal primary education
India needs to ensure that, by 2015, children all over the country, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling. This has to include school drop-outs as well. In that case, a fourteen year old like Chhai Lyngdoh (in the picture) will get to study instead of working in a coal mine.
MDG 3: Promote gender equality and empower women
India has to eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and to all levels of education no later than 2015.
MDG 4: Reduce child mortality
India has to reduce the under-five mortality rate by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015. In 1990, the child mortality rate was 125 per 1000 live births. That makes the 2015 target 42 per 1000 live births.
MDG 5: Improve maternal health
New Delhi has to cut down the maternal mortality ratio by three quarters between 1990 and 2015, i.e. from 437 deaths per 100000 live births in 1991 to 107 in 2015.
MDG 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
India had to make sure that all citizens suffering from HIV/AIDS have access to antiretroviral drugs and other forms of treatment by 2010 so that by 2015, the reversal in the spread of HIV/AIDS starts happening.
It also needs to halt and significantly reverse the incidence of malaria, tuberculosis and other major diseases by 2015.
MDG 7: Ensure environmental sustainability
India needs to integrate the principles of sustainable development into its policies and programmes and reverse the loss of environmental resources. India also needs to reduce biodiversity loss. It was supposed to achieve, by 2010, a significant reduction in the rate of this loss.
New Delhi needs to halve by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. It also needs to achieve a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020.
MDG 8: Develop a global partnership for development
India needs to deal comprehensively with its debt problems through national and international measures in order to make debt sustainable in the long run. In cooperation with developing countries, India needs to develop and implement strategies for decent and productive work for its young people.
And, in cooperation with the private sector, India has to make available the benefits of new technologies (especially information and communications) to its people. MDG 8 also has the 2015 deadline.
However, the country report on India, specific to the MDGs, released in late 2010, do not paint a pretty forecast at all.
While it is possible that India would reach the target of halving its poverty by 2015, states in the Hindi heartland - Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand - apart from Maharashtra and Orissa are likely to put a spanner in the works.
The report reads, "India accounts for 50 per cent of the world's hungry. Over 46 per cent of Indian children are undernourished."
Rising inequalities, inefficient delivery of public services, lack of implementation on the ground and huge variance between coverage of urban and rural areas are emerging as the principal bottlenecks.
A country of poor people, plagued by hunger, diseases and lack of development, is internally weak. It can’t aspire to go out to face the world with confidence. With 2015 becoming less distant with every passing day, time is definitely not on India’s side.
(The writer is Editor, Special Editions, at Network 18)
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