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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

India in a ‘Race Against Time’ to Meet Millenium Goals by Hari Kumar

India is lagging in its effort to reach United Nations goals to reduce poverty and improve health and sanitation, but has shown significant progress boosting education, treating AIDS and addressing environmental concerns, a U.N. official said.

“We are in a race against time with just three years left” to achieve Millennium Development Goals, Noeleen Heyzer, executive secretary of the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, said last week. “The good news, though, is that our analysis shows many of these goals can still be reached with a redoubling of efforts.”

The Millennium Development Goals are eight objectives that U.N. member countries and various international organizations have agreed to achieve by 2015. The goals focus on areas such as eradicating poverty and fighting disease. The Asia Pacific MDG Report, released last week, graded the progress of the eight millennium goals using 22 socio-economic indicators. India has reached goals set in seven indicators out of 22 and is on track to achieve three others, but is lagging behind in 12 others, the report said.

Even Bangladesh, with lower per capita income, is showing better results than India in poverty reduction and health improvements.

India has already achieved the targets in boosting primary education, reducing the prevalence of H.I.V., improving forest cover and providing safe drinking water, the report said. The country’s record is continues to be poor in reducing poverty. An estimated 41.6 percent of the workforce earned $1.25 a day in 2005, down from the 49.4 percent in 1994.

Additionally, the country has performed miserably at improving the nutritional status of children, the report said. An estimated 50.7 percent of the country’s children were underweight in 1992, but the figure had dropped only to 43.5 percent in 2005, the report said. The millennium target was to reduce the number to 25 percent by 2015.

Recently Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressed his serious concern about India’s child malnutrition problem while releasing a survey on hunger and malnutrition. “Despite impressive growth in our G.D.P., the level of undernutrition in the country is unacceptably high. We have also not succeeded in reducing the rate fast enough,” Mr. Singh said, calling it a matter of “national shame.” As per the survey Dr. Singh cited, in 100 focus districts, 42 percent of children under five are underweight.

In one indicator, tuberculosis prevalence, the situation is deteriorating in India rather than getting better, the Asia Pacific MDG Report said.

Jairam Ramesh, the country’s minister of rural development, said virtually no improvement is taking place in nutritional levels, despite high economic growth in recent years. Speaking of better performance in Tamil Nadu and Kerala than the rest of the country, he said the political class was to be commended for making “these issues part of their agenda for political mobilization.”

He said more public resources are needed to improve standards in health, water and sanitation. He promised that in coming budget for 2012-13, the central government will enhance the allocation for health, water and sanitation substantially.