Launched 20 years ago with the simple line that "people are the real wealth of a nation", the United Nations' Human Development Report has become the most trusted annual indicator of progress in developing nations. The 20th anniversary report charts progress going back 20 years before that first publication - so it is an ambitious attempt to chart development achievements - or not - going back 40 years. The UN Development Programme's...

There have been reports that as many as 150 persons including children reportedly died in Bihar and Madhya Pradesh in the last year. However, Minister of State for Agriculture KV Thomas in his reply to Parliament earlier this week claimed there were no starvation deaths in the country during the last year. “No state government, Union Territory administration has reported any incidence of starvation death during last three years,” he said...

A week after the Union Cabinet gave its nod to a gender empowering legislation that will protect women from sexual harassment at the workplace, another landmark scheme — to provide financial aid to rape victims — could soon be a reality. Decks have been cleared to provide rape victims or their legal heirs with financial aid to ensure "restorative justice" in the form of legal and medical assistance, shelter, counselling...

The latest Human Development Report, or HDR, (2010), marking its 20th anniversary, is both remarkable and useful. Remarkable because it brims with intellectual confidence, born out of a sense of vindication over the “conceptual brilliance and continued relevance” of Mahbub ul-Huq’s original human development paradigm set out in the first sentence of the 1990 report — “People are the real wealth of nations.” The idea of human development, which, through...

According to the UN Human Development Report 2010, a higher percentage of women in Pakistan feel they are treated with respect than compared to Indian women. The Report titled “The Real Wealth of Nations: Pathways to Human Development” is a flagship study produced annually by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). It was released at UN Headquarters in New York on Thursday, marking its 20th anniversary. The first UNDP Human Development Report...