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In recent decades, India has significantly improved
the well-being of its people. Since the 1970s, India's
economic growth rate has risen, poverty has declined,
and social indicators have improved. The average life
expectancy at birth has increased from 49 years to the
current 63 years. The total fertility rate for India's
population—which exceeds 1 billion people—has
been lowered from six children per woman to three since
the 1960s. Similarly, since 1950, there was a dramatic
reduction in infant mortality from 146 to the current
average of 68 per 1,000 live births.
In the early 1950s, nearly half of India's population
was living in poverty. Poverty incidence began to decline
steadily in the mid-1970s. The 1990s witnessed high
levels of poverty reduction and important achievements
in literacy with enrollment of primary school-aged children
rising from 68 percent in 1992/93 to 82 percent at the
end of the decade. India today has 108 million children
aged 6 to 10 attending primary school, making it the
world's second largest education system after China.
While these improvements illustrate achievements in
a challenging environment, India's social indicators
remain weak by most measures of human development.
Structural
reforms and stabilization programs during the 1990s
have contributed to India's sustainable economic growth,
which has been relatively strong over the past two
decades, averaging between 5 and 5.5 percentage points
a year. However, vast disparities in per capita income
level between and within India's states persist.
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CURRENT
CHALLENGES
Poverty
reduction remains India's most compelling challenge
despite good progress in the 1990s. With a per capita
gross national income (GNI) of $460 in 2001, there
is a broad consensus that poverty in India has fallen
in the past decade. However, there is also an intense
debate about the methodology used to calculate poverty
levels and trends in India. The official estimates
are that poverty fell from 36 percent of the population
in 1993/94 to 26 percent by the end of the decade.
However, a recent work "Adjusted Poverty Estimates
in 1999-2000" by Angus Deaton, 2001, suggests
that poverty has fallen at a somewhat lower rate—from
36 to 29 percent of the population by 1999/2000. Either
way, over one quarter of India's population is poor.
India's
poverty, as measured in non-income indicators such
as health and education, is also a significant challenge.
Despite remarkable progress in education, India still
is home to the world's largest number of illiterates.
India accounts for 20 percent of the world's out-of-school
children and for 20 percent of the gender gap in elementary
education. Maternal mortality remains high, particularly
in rural areas, with estimates at 540 deaths per 100,000
live births. Maternal deaths in India account for
almost 25 percent of the world's childbirth-related
deaths.
While
some gender indicators have improved, such as the
declining gender gap in school enrollment and female
life expectancy now exceeding that for men, the overall
picture remains one of stark inequality. Bias against
women and girls is reflected in the demographic ratio
of 927 females per 1,000 males. Many of India's women
are malnourished with anemia, which is present in
60 percent of the female population.
Malnutrition
poses a continuing constraint to the country's development.
Despite improvements in health and well-being, malnutrition
remains a silent emergency in India. Almost half of
all children under the age of five are malnourished
and 34 percent of newborns are significantly underweight.
And
there are new challenges, including the spread of
HIV/AIDS, which if unchecked, could become a major
threat to India's future. In India, 4 to 5 million
people are infected with HIV. Although the rates in
the general population are still low, in absolute
numbers India has the second largest HIV-positive
population in the world.
India
has developed a diversified industrial base and a
relatively large and sophisticated financial sector.
Its information technology subsector—one of
the most dynamic in the world—has shown tremendous
growth in recent years, with revenues estimated at
$8 billion in 2000. Software exports are already worth
$3 billion, compared to total merchandise exports
of $43 billion. These successes have taken place against
a backdrop of India's well established democratic
system—the largest in the world.
Acknowledging
the relative achievements of the stabilization and
reform programs during the 1990s, India's future progress
in reducing poverty and improving social indicators
critically depends on the country's ability to accelerate
economic growth and maintain a stable macroeconomic
framework. India's economic growth, estimated at 5.5
percent in 2001/02, while strong, still falls short
of the government's objective of 8 percent—a
rate unlikely to be achieved without substantial progress
in fiscal consolidation and structural reform. Persistent
and large fiscal deficits remain a major concern,
but the risk of a spillover into a balance-of-payments
crisis is small, due to India's current record levels
of foreign exchange reserves. Services, the least
regulated sector in the economy, continues to be the
strongest performer, while manufacturing, the most
regulated sector, is the weakest.
With
the growing global focus on the Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs), including halving the proportion of
people living on less than one dollar a day and achieving
universal primary education by 2015, success in India
is critical to the achievement of these goals. While
recent improvements in poverty and literacy in India
are significant, both poverty and illiteracy are becoming
more concentrated in India's largest and poorest states
(for example, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar). The relevant
MDGs will not be achieved without renewed efforts
to widen economic opportunities and tackle some of
the barriers to more rapid poverty reduction and better
human outcomes in these states.
Moving
Skills and Resources Closer to Poor Communities for
Improved Results
Local participation is at the core of a wide range
of government of India programs partially financed
by the World Bank. These programs involve communities
from early stages of design through to the implementation
of project activities. Such programs are yielding
results which the communities themselves contribute
to and benefit from, including:
Renewal of 69,000 hectares (27,600 acres) of barren
agricultural land into fertile, arable land (…more)
Treatment of over 1,000,000 patients for tuberculosis,
aversion of more than 200,000 deaths, and prevention
of 2,000,000 infections
(…more)
Delivery to approximately 4 million mothers and 7.5
million children of health, nutrition, and education
services through the world's largest network of community-based
nongovernment women workers (…more)
Increased enrollment of girls and lower caste boys
in primary schools (…more)
Expanded access to drinking water and sanitation in
over 1,100 villages in 12 districts (…more)
Vaccination of 130 million children against polio
(…more)
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