with sustainable access to improved water source (%) Percentage of Children Malnourished (underweight) (< ) . . Source: Human Development Report and World Development Indicators ( Table . shows that China is moving ahead of India and Pakistan.
This is true for many indicators — income indicator such as GDP per capita, or proportion of population below poverty line or health indicators such as mortality rates, access to sanitation, literacy, life expectancy or malnourishment. Pakistan is ahead of India in reducing proportion of people below the poverty line and also its performance in education, sanitation and access to water is better than India. But neither of these two countries have been able to save women from maternal mortality. In China, for one lakh births, only women die whereas in India and Pakistan, about and women die respectively.
Surprisingly all the three countries report providing improved drinking water sources for most of its population. You will notice that for the proportion of people below the international poverty rate of $ a day, India has the largest share of poor among the three countries. Find out for yourself how these differences occur. In dealing with or making judgements on such questions, however, we should also note a problem while using the human development indicators given above with conviction.
This occurs because these are all extremely important indicators; but these are not sufficient. Along with these, we also need what may be called ‘liberty indicators’. One such indicator has actually been added as a measure of ‘the extent of democratic participation in social and political decision-making ’ but it has not been given any extra weight. Some obvious ‘liberty indicators’ like measures of ‘ the extent of Constitutional protection given to rights of citizens’ or ‘the extent of constitutional protection of the Independence of the Judiciary and the Rule of Law’ have not even been introduced so far.
Without including these (and perhaps some more) and giving them overriding importance in the list, the construction of a human development index may be said to