New Delhi: India has dropped another rank in the Human Development Index and now stands at 132, amid a general decline following the Covid pandemic. In the last Index of December 2020, it had dropped two ranks, standing at 131 out of 189 nations. The Index is a measure of countries' life expectancy, education levels, and standards of living.
Since 1990, India has dropped several spots, starting at 129. "Like global trends, in India's case, the drop in HDI from 0.645 in 2019 to 0.633 in 2021 can be attributed to falling life expectancy - 69.7 to 67.2 years. India's expected years of schooling stand at 11.9 years, and the mean years of schooling are at 6.7 years," the report said.
Switzerland, Norway and Iceland continue to top the list.
The report titled "Uncertain times, unsettled lives", which was published today, maintained that an array of crises, chief among them Covid-19, has set human progress back by five years and fuelled a global wave of uncertainty.
The UN Development Program announced that for the first time in 30 years, the Index has declined for two years straight, in 2020 and 2021. The setback has affected more than 90 per cent of the nations.
"It means we die earlier, we are less well educated, our incomes are going down," UNDP chief Achim Steiner was quoted as saying by news agency AFP.
"Just under three parameters, you can get a sense of why so many people are beginning to feel desperate, frustrated, worried about the future," he said.
After rising steadily since its inception, the Index registered a slide in 2020 as Covid-19 spread and caused a worldwide lockdown.
The downward spiral continued in 2021 and erased the gains of the preceding five years, the report maintained. Along with Covid, there were other drivers of the decline – linked to war, politics, finance and climate change.
"We've had disasters before. We've had conflicts before. But the confluence of what we're facing right now is a major setback to human development," Mr Steiner has said.
The fallout of the Ukraine war has not been factored in the Index and "without any doubt, the outlook for 2022 is grim," he added.