First Draft

Contents
Preface 1. Acronyms 2. List of Tables 3. Viewing Indias Social Sector from MDG-lens: Some Reality-Bites 4. Rural Poverty: Jeopardising Indias Effort towards MDGCommitments 5. Scarcity in the State of Surplus: Exploring the Starving India 6. The Challenge of Educating India: The Task Ahead 7. Empowering Women in India: An Unfinished Agenda 8. Making India Healthy: Still A Distant Dream

Preface
Countries across the globe today are fanatical with development and in the current era of sustainable development, the issue of achieving the millennium development goals (MDGs) has been gaining special attention of the development experts, academicians, researchers and policymakers as MDGs are considered to be the most comprehensive framework for tracking the overall growth of a nation across the globe. A cursory view on the millennium commitments makes it apparent that the first six goals fall under the broad purview of social sector which puts an intense focus and concerted efforts on tackling the issues of poverty alleviation (Goal 1), hunger reduction (Goal 1), universalisation of primary education (Goal 2), women empowerment (Goal 3) and health sector development (Goal 4, 5 and 6) to ensure a sustainable growth across the globe. So, social sector development lies at the heart of Millennium Commitments which has come to acquire a very important and new salience in the literature and practice of sustainable development and an inadequate attention on social sector may jeopardise any countrys overall progress towards MDGs. In recent years, India has emerged as one the most progressive nation of the world in terms of its booming economy - making waves in the field of science and technology, nuclear energy etc. India has attracted global attention for rapid economic growth; global multi-nationals and growing industries have changed the face of India with people being employed in corporate, having a fairly high standard of living and an increased purchasing power. In current context of development, the Indian economy is regarded among the fastest growing in the world - but what about social sector progress? Trends of growing expenditure on social sector by the government in the recent years reflect the emphasis on the social sector. Available statistics and different development reports make it quite evident that over the years, India has made substantial progress in key human development areas like health, education and purchasing power. Sustained and high economic growth in the post-reform period reduced the poverty ratio significantly. Noteworthy improvement has also been noticed over time in literacy rates leading to a decline in the absolute number of illiterates. But this just shows the glorious side of the story for India. As far as the context of MDG-Commitments is concerned, Indias overall performance in social sector growth has been mixed in the last decade. The mid-term appraisal of Indias 10th Five-Year Plan expresses concern that while some progress has been made in education and health indicators over time, India continues to lag far behind levels achieved by East and Southeast Asian countries and there still remains huge room for improvement in making primary education, food, basic health care services available and accessible to its entire population. Although all relevant MDG-indicators of social sector have moved towards their 2015 targets, their performances have been uneven. To understand this variation, it is important to analyse the reasons of the slowing down of the infant mortality rate, the apparent plateauing of chronic hunger rate, the rise in youth unemployment rate, and most important of all what factors work in accelerating the pace of rural poverty reduction. Firstly, recent statistics and reports explore that the proportion of people in India living in poverty is decreasing but the number of poor Indian is increasing. The paradox of India is that growth has been

instrumental in reducing poverty rates, but poverty rates have not fallen fast enough to reduce the total number of poor people. This is because population is growing faster than the poverty rate reduction. While urban India has made progress in poverty reduction, its rural counterpart is unlikely to meet the goal without significant additional policy effort and resources. So for India, rapid economic growth does not have a substantial impact on rural poverty reduction and at the same time, India is having a new opportunity also to harness the economic growth and reduce poverty through employment creation and social protection schemes. Strong, sustained and shared growth must be the key priority for future macroeconomic policy and at the same time, without inclusive growth it will be difficult to significantly reduce poverty. Secondly, for India, ensuring food for all still remains a distant dream. The country achieved self-sufficiency in food grain production in the 70s and has sustained it since then; but the achievement of food grain security at the national level did not percolate down to households, resulting into high chronic food insecurity among the poor. Though India is one of the largest producers of food in the world, yet millions of people struggle to get two square meals a day and an equal number are under-nourished. While efforts need to be made to increase production and productivity of food grains, providing access to the needy remains a major challenge. Thirdly, as far as the issue of primary education is concerned, while the country continues to make advancements towards primary school enrolment but this growing enrolment rate is yet to translate into increased primary education completion rates. This slow progress demonstrates the importance of improving the quality of education rather than aiming solely for the quantitative target. Fourthly, Indian women have made progress in more or less every sphere of life. India continues to maintain its positive trend towards progress in gender equality and womens empowerment especially in political arena and this becomes much more evident when we notice the mounting number of women representatives in Panchayat system of rural India as well as their dominance and increasing participation in national-level politics, diminishing gender disparity in primary school enrolment etc. But maternal Mortality Rate (MMR), the most common measure of maternal health, domestic violence, female foeticides etc. continue to be high and are still regarded as normal phenomenon which aptly reveals the fact that gap still exists in the process of empowering women in India. Last but not the least, though in recent years significant progress has been observed in health sector but India has still to go a long way in improving the major health indicators and tackling the challenge of making basic health care facilities available and accessible for its population. Improvements in health indicators like maternal mortality and infant mortality rates have been much slower than expected. There is widespread under-nutrition among women and children, and maternal and child health still remain areas of concern especially for rural India. On the other hand, limited positive changes have been perceived in the quality of life of the rural poor. Rural India still struggles for its basic necessities of life like basic health care facilities access to food, education, safe drinking water, proper sanitation etc. In spite of some improvement in nutritional status in the national level, nearly half of the rural children are suffering from malnutrition. However, improvements in stemming the HIV/AIDS pandemic have been significant both in preventing new infections and making antiretroviral treatment available to infected people.

Much time has passed since the world leaders came together and agreed on the essential eight global Millennium Development Goals - the most prominent global parameters for assessing any countrys overall growth and progress that have to be achieved by 2015. Now, with less than three years remaining to the target date of 2015, this assessment is of utmost importance as it will help countries identify the targets that require concerted efforts for achievement of the MDGs. While the full achievement of the Millennium Development Goals may still elude us for years to come, the goals and targets of the MDGs are already fast becoming irrefutable and irrepressible global norms with a compelling legitimacy and once again failure to achieve them will not constitute just accidental lapses, but an unmistakable symptom of leadership failure. Inspite of significant investments and concerted efforts it appears to be quite exigent for the country to achieve its millennium commitments particularly in its social sector arena which are expected to be attained by 2015. This book basically focuses on Indias approach and current state of progress in the context of social sector which has received a major boost through the countrys Millennium Commitments and simultaneously has made an attempt to explore the emerging issues and challenges of this sector that have been instrumental in jeopardizing Indias journey towards its millennium commitments. With less than three years remaining to reach the deadline of 2015, this assessment is of utmost importance as it will help countries identify the targets that require concerted efforts for achieving of the MDGscommitments. Each of the sectoral agenda like poverty, food insecurity, primary education, women empowerment and basic health care has been analyzed with the dynamics of its contemporary scenario as well as with the suggestive measures which may determine the future course of action and may guide the Indian policy-makers to tackle the particular issue on a priority basis for ensuring a sustainable growth in social sector.