An index of achievement

Published : Jun 23, 2001 00:00 IST

THE Human Resources Develop-ment Report 2000, released recently by the Idukki District Panchayat in Kerala is perhaps the first such attempt in the country to rank local bodies in a district according to internationally accepted human development indices. For the first time, a Human Development Index (HDI) and a Gender-related Development Index (GDI) have been prepared for ranking the 50 panchayats in the district on the basis of their achievements in human resource development.

"Such reports will be of help to planners and policy-makers to evaluate the relative backwardness of particular areas and take remedial measures, to people's representatives and the people themselves to raise demands based on actual needs, and to district planning committees to plan and coordinate development activities in a district," project director Dr. Jos Chathukulam of the Centre for Rural Management, Kottayam (to which the Idukki District Panchayat had entrusted the job of preparing the report), told Frontline.

The Human Development Reports (HDRs) produced by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) since 1990 have had a significant impact on the way economists, social scientists and policy-makers view social and economic advancement. While earlier the assessment of a country or region's development was made on the basis of economic growth alone (for example, based on economic indicators such as measures such as gross national product), the HDRs put the focus on human development as a reflection of national or regional well-being.

Hence, the HDI (a composite index devised by the visionary economist Mahbub-ul Haq who pioneered and led the production of the series of HDRs) measures a country's achievements in terms of three aspects of human development - the opportunity that it offers its citizens to lead a long and healthy life, to acquire knowledge, and to have access to the resources needed to acquire a decent standard of living - and has become an accepted alternative measure of development. The emphasis is on the fact that people and their lives should be the ultimate criterion in assessing the development of a country, not economic growth alone. The HDI is today recognised as an index - although a rather crude, symbolic one at that - that reflects the wide differences between or within countries or regions or just how far each country or region has to go to maximise its human potential.

In a speech he made at the memorial meeting for Mahbub-ul Haq at the United Nations on October 15, 1998, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen explained the importance of the HDI as an indicator of social progress: "Mahbub's basic approach must not be identified simply with the use of HDI, which he chose - and this is the important point - as an instrument of public communication. We have to see the HDI as a deliberately constructed crude measure, offered as a rival to the GNP (an overused and oversold index that Mahbub wanted to supplant). He did succeed in getting the ear of the world through the high publicity associated with the transparent simplicity of the HDI as an index... The crude index spoke loud and clear, and received intelligent attention, and through that vehicle the complex reality contained in the many tables in the rest of the Reports also found an interested audience... By skilful use of the attracting power of the HDI, Mahbub got readers to take an involved interest in the large class of systematic tables and detailed critical analyses presented in the Human Develop-ment Reports."

Following the model of the UNDP's Human Development Reports, there have been several attempts to rank nations, States and sub-regions within countries in a similar manner. In India, despite the existence of wide disparities among the States, a report ranking the States on the basis of human resource development is yet to be produced.

For the first time in India, Madhya Pradesh - significantly, a BIMARU State (one among Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) - produced a Human Development Report in 1995 dealing with education, health and gender issues and bringing out the disparity among its 45 districts in the matter of development. The State released a second report in 1999, which included typical rural indices of development such as livestock population, net and gross area irrigated and the availability of veterinary centres (Frontline, March 12, 1999). The report also had a GDI, the first by any State in the country. Following Madhya Pradesh's example, Karnataka brought out an HDR in 1999 (Frontline, August 13, 1999).

THE 73rd and 74th constitutional amendments provided a lot of powers to the panchayats to plan development activities, organise district-level development projects and constitute district planning committees to coordinate them. But the need for a proper assessment of the development lacunae that exist at the local level before such initiatives are launched has not been properly addressed. This is true also of Kerala, which had during the past four years of the People's Plan Campaign for the Ninth Plan, one of the most effective decentralisation experiments in the country, set apart 40 per cent of Plan funds for the exclusive use of local bodies.

'The HRD Idukki District 2000' is the first comprehensive attempt to address this need. The report ranks the 50 panchayats in this central high-range district of Kerala on the basis of 17 basic indicators and about 120 other criteria, including land area, population, population density, literacy rate, population of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, employment participation, number of small-scale industrial units, panchayat roads, street lights, schools, financial institutions, public wells and taps, telephones, birth rate, infant mortality rate, longevity, types of houses, taxes per capita, house tax, tourism revenue, employment tax, land use, cropping patterns and animal husbandry.

According to the report, Konnathadi panchayat is ranked One as per the HDI (0.751) and the GDI (0.699). While Karimkunnam and Rajakkad panchayats are ranked second as per the HDI (0.742), the former has only the third place as per the GDI (0.692). Vattavada panchayat has the last place as per both the indices, a reflection of its relative backwardness in terms of literacy and longevity.

ANOTHER interesting finding is that all panchayats in Thodupuzha block have high ranks according to the HDI, while all panchayats in Devikulam block have low ranks. The report says this is a clear indication of the social backwardness of the Tamil labour population in the plantation sector in the panchayats in the Devikulam block bordering Tamil Nadu. However, the same panchayats top the list with regard to some other criteria, such as employment participation. Except for a few gram panchayats, all other panchayats in the district outside the plantation/settler farmer areas are ranked high while those in these sectors fall behind.

However, the report cautions that although HDI is an indicator of socio-economic development, it should not be considered as a comprehensive index of the backwardness or development of a panchayat. It says that it does not reflect the internal disparity within panchayats. For example, it points out that although panchayats such as Nedumkandom, Kumili, Kattappana, Munnar and Adimali are ranked high in the matter of small-scale industrial development, trade, income generation, spread of financial institutions and transport facilities, their HDI ranking is low because of the general social backwardness of their large Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe populations. Moreover, the GDI prepared on the basis of literacy levels, longevity and employment participation of women does not provide a complete reflection of the social status of women. This is because, the report points out, there are several other factors such as the participation of women in social life and ownership of assets that have also to be taken into consideration to assess the social status of women.

Jos Chathukulam said that these internationally recognised indices are useful to understand the general development or lack of it among panchayats. A complete understanding is possible when the other factors evaluated in the report are also taken into consideration. Despite its limitations, the report's status as a pioneering venture ranking local bodies on the basis of an HDI is expected to help further research and studies on development planning in the country.

The report has relied on data obtained from various government departments, panchayat-level government statistics, the 1991 Census data, data from the development reports prepared by the various gram panchayats under the People's Plan Campaign and those collected as part of the project. The extensive data thus collected also form part of the report, which has the added advantage of being in the local language, Malayalam. Jos Chathukulam said that although the education index is normally based on both literacy and enrolment figures, the report has taken into account the literacy factor alone (this is because enrolment at the primary-secondary school levels is near total in Kerala).

The disparities that exist within the district with regard to settlement patterns, agricultural production, literacy levels and health indicators, all find reflection in the indices. However, a full understanding is possible only when these are read together with the data provided along with the report. In their preface to the report, District Planning Committee chairman P. Palanivel and vice-chairman K.J. Kurien have referred to the fact that since improvement in basic amenities is a crucial factor in the development activities at the grassroots level, the availability or lack of basic amenities should also be taken into consideration while preparing HDI reports for panchayats in the future.

Yet, despite the limitations, the Idukki District Panchayat's HRD report has helped put people once again at the centre of the grassroots development debate. At a time when a change of government has brought with it a cloud of uncertainty over the democratic decentralisation experiment launched by the Left Democratic Front government, the Idukki District Panchayat's Human Development Report is one more example of the potential for local-level development initiatives that the experiment had offered to the people of Kerala.

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