THE CONTEXT: The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Report 2025 — “A Matter of Choice: People and Possibilities in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” lifts India three places to Rank 130 (HDI 0.685, 2023). The same report, however, flags a record global slowdown in human progress and warns of widening income and gender gaps.
CONCEPTUAL & THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK:
| Index | Core Dimensions | Conceptual Roots | India specific Loss/Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Human Development Index (HDI) | Life expectancy, expected & mean years of schooling, Gross National Income per capita | Capability Approach — Amartya Sen | 0.685 |
| Inequality adjusted HDI (I HDI) | Discounts HDI for distributional inequities | Welfare Economics & Sen’s “real freedoms” | 30.7 % loss – among the worst in Asia |
| Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) | 10 indicators across health, education, living standards | Alkire Foster method | 13.5 crore exited poverty (2015 16 to 2019 21) |
CURRENT GLOBAL SCENARIO
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- UNDP notes a 35‑year low in the pace of global HDI gains.
- World Inequality Lab finds the richest 20 percent of countries remain 30 times richer than the poorest 20 percent despite converging averages.
- Climate shocks and poly‑crises (pandemic, conflicts, AI‑driven labour dislocation) threaten a reversal of SDG‑10 (reduced inequalities).
INDIA’S 2023 SCORECARD — DISAGGREGATED VIEW
| Dimension | 1990 | 2022 | 2023 | Drivers & Programmes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Health: life expectancy (years) | 58.6 | 71.4 | 72.0 | National Health Mission (NHM), Ayushman Bharat, Swachh Bharat Mission |
| Education: expected years of schooling | 8.2 | 12.9 | 13.0 | Right to Education Act, Samagra Shiksha, NEP 2020 e Vidya |
| Living Standard: Gross National Income (GNI) per capita (2017 PPP $) | 2 167 | 8 721 | 9 047 | PM Mudra Yojana, Production Linked Incentive (PLI), Digital Public Infrastructure |
NOTE: Female Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR) jumped from 23.3 percent (2017‑18) to 41.7 percent (2023‑24), propelled by rural self‑employment and care‑economy schemes.
INEQUALITY LENS – THE ACHILLES’ HEEL
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- Income and Gender Gaps: India’s Inequality‑adjusted Human Development Index deducts 30.7 percent from the headline score, signalling deep income and gender disparities. This loss underscores the need for gender‑responsive budgets and progressive taxation.
- Political Empowerment Deficit: Women occupy only about 14 percent of seats in the Lok Sabha, well below the global average. The Constitution’s One‑Third Women Reservation awaits delimitation, delaying gender‑balanced law‑making.
- Digital Divide: Fewer than half of rural women own and use a mobile phone, compared with nearly 70 percent in urban India. Digital‑first public services risk excluding those already on the margins.
- Labour‑Market Gaps: The Female Labour Force Participation Rate has doubled to roughly 42 percent, yet half of India’s women remain outside the workforce. Affordable childcare and safe‑work norms are critical to sustain this momentum.
- Spatial and Caste Disparities: District‑level Human Development Index scores range from 0.425 in tribal regions to 0.779 in urban Kerala, revealing a “two‑speed India.” Targeted fiscal transfers and the Aspirational Blocks Programme can narrow these gaps.
POLICY & INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK
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- Constitutional Foundations: Article 21, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, now includes digital access within the right to life, while Directive Principles mandate social and economic justice. Rights‑based statutes translate these ideals into entitlements.
- Co‑operative and Competitive Federalism: The Sustainable Development Goals India Index ranks States and influences performance‑based Finance Commission grants, encouraging healthy policy competition.
- Outcome‑Linked Budgeting: The Union government’s Output–Outcome Monitoring Framework ties allocations to measurable results, and ten percent of Central grants to States depend on district‑level Sustainable Development Goal scores.
- Social‑Protection Stack: The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act generated nearly 2.9 billion person‑days in 2024‑25, now converging with climate‑resilient asset creation under “Green‑NREGA.”
- Digital Public Infrastructure: The Aadhaar–Unified Payments Interface–DigiLocker ecosystem processes over eleven billion transactions monthly, and the forthcoming “Meri Pehchaan” single‑sign‑on aims for universal service access.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE – OPPORTUNITY & CAUTION
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- Talent Retention: Roughly twenty percent of Indian Artificial Intelligence researchers now remain in the country, reversing earlier brain‑drain trends. Brain‑circulation can spur a domestic innovation cycle.
- Mission‑Mode Push: The ₹10,371.92‑crore IndiaAI Mission funds high‑end compute clusters and a National Artificial Intelligence Innovation Platform, extending resources to start‑ups in smaller cities.
- Responsible Artificial Intelligence: NITI Aayog’s Responsible AI for All framework—fairness, accountability, transparency and privacy—will anchor an impending Algorithmic Accountability Bill, demanding pre‑deployment bias audits.
- Sectoral Sandboxes: Pilot projects such as Pradhan Mantri Fasal AI Yojana and e‑Sanjeevani‑AI demonstrate Artificial Intelligence‑based yield prediction and tele‑health triage, boosting efficiency in agriculture and health.
- Risk Mitigation and Ethical Guardrails: A proposed Information Technology Act amendment criminalises malicious deep‑fakes, while the Bureau of Indian Standards drafts synthetic‑media watermarking norms to curb misinformation.
- Out‑of‑Box Ideas for 2047: Concepts like a publicly‑owned Indic Large‑Language Model (“Jan‑AI Stack”), compute‑credit offsets for rural schools, and “Algorithmic Panchayats” for local oversight can merge technological progress with social equity.
THE ISSUES:
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- Jobless Growth: India’s employment elasticity has collapsed to barely 15—for every one‑percentage‑point rise in Gross Domestic Product, formal jobs expand by only 0.15 percent, down from 0.39 a decade ago.
- Human‑Capital Quality: The National Achievement Survey 2021 recorded that 59 percent of Class 8 learners failed to meet grade‑level proficiency, signalling foundational learning deficits that jeopardise India’s demographic dividend.
- Health‑Financing Deficit: National Health Accounts 2021‑22 place government health spending at 1.9‑2.1 percent of Gross Domestic Product, still shy of the National Health Policy 2017 target of 2.5 percent by 2025.
- Climate Vulnerability of Livelihoods: A Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) study finds that over 80 percent of India’s districts are hotspots for extreme hydro‑meteorological events, heightening the risk of poverty reversals.
- Data and Measurement Gaps: Unlike the annual national Human Development Index, sub‑national HDI scores are published sporadically (last full State update in 2011; no official district update since 2009), impeding evidence‑based targeting.
THE WAY FORWARD:
| Pillar | Actionable Measures: |
|---|---|
| Health Security | Raise public health outlay to 2.5 percent GDP by 2027; universalise Ayushman Bharat; legislate National Health Services Act. |
| Learning Outcomes | Operationalise National Digital University; mandate AI enabled personalised tutoring in all aspirational blocks. |
| Gender Parity | Fast track delimitation to operationalise women’s reservation by General Election 2029; create gender budgeting cells in each ministry. |
| Decent Work | Tripartite Labour Market Information System; extend social security to gig platform workers under Code on Social Security 2020. |
| AI for Inclusion | Establish Jan AI Stack — open source Indic language models for agriculture, health and justice services; institute an Algorithmic Accountability Bill. |
| Fiscal Space | Re introduce wealth linked inheritance surcharge; earmark proceeds for human capital endowment fund. |
| Climate Resilience | Integrate Life (Lifestyle for Environment) indicators into HDI adjustments; expand MGNREGA to ‘Climate NREGA’ for green asset creation. |
| Data Architecture | Statutory National Data Trust with privacy preserving microdata for HDI sub indices at district level. |
| Social Capital | Community led monitoring — Gram Sabhas to vet HDI linked plans; revive Village Health Sanitation & Nutrition Committees. |
| Monitoring & Evaluation | Independent Human Development Commission to table annual ‘State of Human Development’ report to Parliament. |
THE CONCLUSION:
Human development is ultimately a question of expanding “real freedoms”. India’s incremental rise on the Human Development Index amid global headwinds underscores policy resilience but masks deep structural inequalities. The task for administrators is to transform programmes into capability multipliers while ensuring that no citizen’s freedom is traded for technological efficiency.
UPSC PAST YEAR QUESTION:
Q. Despite Consistent experience of High growth, India still goes with the lowest indicators of human development. Examine the issues that make balanced and inclusive development elusive. 2019
MAINS PRACTICE QUESTION:
Q. Examine the dichotomy between India’s headline HDI gains and its underlying inequality‑driven challenges. How can a rights‑based, data‑rich, and AI‑augmented governance framework convert incremental progress into durable, broad‑based human development?
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