Human Development Index 2021

Human Development Index 2021

News: According to the Human Development Report 2021-22, India’s rank on the Human Development Index (HDI) has slipped from 130 in 2020 to 132 in 2022, in line with a global fall in HDI scores in the wake of the Covid- 19 pandemic.

What is HDI?
• HDI is a composite index that measures average achievement in human development taking into account four indicators - Life expectancy at birth, Expected years of schooling, Mean years of schooling and Gross national income (GNI).

Key Findings (India perspective)
• India’s HDI value stood at 0.633 in 2021, which was lower than the world average of 0.732. In 2020, too, India recorded a decline in its HDI value (0.642) in comparison to the pre-Covid level of 2019 (0.645).
• In 2021, India’s life expectancy at birth was recorded at 67.2 years.
• Expected years of schooling at 11.9 years; mean years of schooling at 6.7 years;
• The gross national income per capita stood at USD 6,590.
• India has been ranked 122 on the Gender Inequality Index.

Key Findings (Global perspective)
• Ninety percent of countries have registered a reduction in their Human Development Index value in 2020 or 2021, reversing much of the progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals.
• A large contributor to the Human Development Index’s recent decline is a global drop in life expectancy, down from 72.8 years in 2019 to 71.4 years in 2021.

Other notable observations made:
• Without an abundance of insect pollinators, humans face the mind-boggling challenge of growing food and other agricultural products at scale.
• It stated that humans were unprepared for a world with climate crises like fires and storms and other planetary-level changes.
• Plastics are now everywhere, in country-sized garbage patches in the ocean, in protected forests and distant mountaintops and in people’s lungs and blood.