Missing targets (Analysis)
- India’s efforts on Millennium Development Goals: India Country Report 2014 by Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation says that India is on track to achieving universal primary education and developing global partnership for development, but show mixed/poor outcomes in other Goals.
- Many States are below the poorest sub-Saharan countries,where as on the human development indices Tamil Nadu and Kerala are on a par with many European nations which marks efforts of India to meet the Millennium Development Goals of 2015.
- The government report ensures that by 2015 children (boys and girls alike) everywhere will be able to complete primary education. Critics questioned the quality of education offered. The Annual Status of Education Reports (ASERs) of Pratham and UNESCO study states that there is no quality education available.
- The McKinsey Global Institute estimated that 56% of Indian population, lack the means to meet their essential needs, nearly 1.5 times the government’s official poverty figures, indicating that we will fail to reach targeted poverty alleviation.
- The progress in gender parity in higher education is slow as there is a atmosphere of insecurity among women in the country.
- India’s performance in achieving the target of integrating the principles of sustainable development towards country policies and programmes and reversing the loss of environmental resources is claimed as farce.
- Between 1990 and 2015, India is said to have reduced poverty to below 50%, which is disputed by critics as the decline shown is by tampering definition of poverty and the way poverty is measured.
- India has been inching closer to the target of making technological benefits available.
- The government is increasingly cutting country’s fiscal deficit, budgetary allocations to health care and poverty alleviation and privatising essential services which will make the poor vulnerable.
- The data on providing access to safe drinking water, basic sanitation, etc are suspicious. The government has acknowledged that recent survey has grossly underestimated the number of slums in the country.
- The country sees swings across States in meeting targets for under-5 mortality rate, infant mortality rate & maternal mortality rate. India is also the largest in number of 1st day deaths in the world.
- We are on track to attain the target halt & start to reverse spread of HIV/AIDS by 2015, which is difficult to meet in case of malaria &tuberculosis.
Exams Perspective:
- Millennium Development Goals (MDG)
- Annual Status of Education Reports (ASERs)
- UNESCO
- Human Development Index (HDI)
- HIV/AIDS