India and MDGs
Kabir Swarup
| India will not meet hunger, health, sanitation MDGs: report |
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On a more positive note, India is on target to achieve the Millennium Development Goals relating to halving the number of its citizens living in poverty, achieving gender parity in primary education and providing universal access to clean drinking water, says the Millennium Project report |
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India is unlikely to achieve at least four of the United Nations' eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that aim to solve global problems related to poverty and inequality, according to a recent global progress report on MDGs prepared by the UN's Millennium Project. 'Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals', released by the UN agency in January 2004 and prepared by Millennium Project director Professor Jeffrey D Sachs, notes that India is off-track on the goals of halving the number of hungry people, lowering child mortality rates, maternal mortality rates and access to sanitation facilities in urban areas. On the positive side, India is on target to achieve the MDGs that aim to halve the number of its citizens living in poverty, achieve gender parity in primary education and provide universal access to clean drinking water. As far as literacy rate is concerned, India is likely to achieve the target though the report does not comment on this because of the absence of requisite data. According to the UN Millennium Project analysis, conducted in partnership with the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, the states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh -- where most of India's poor live -- will need an average per capita investment of $ 115, $ 110 and $ 113 respectively, between 2005 and 2015. The MDGs, set by the United Nations to tackle a range of global problems, were agreed to by 189 countries under the Millennium Declaration of 2000 and are to be achieved by 2015. They are global targets to dramatically reduce extreme poverty in its many dimensions -- income poverty, hunger, disease, exclusion, lack of infrastructure and shelter -- while promoting gender equality, education, health and environmental sustainability. MDG-based poverty reduction strategies, the report says, must anchor the scaling up of public investments, capacity building, domestic resource mobilisation and official development assistance. The report adds that these strategies should focus on a range of different sectors such as rural and urban development, health, education, gender equality, environmental sustainability, water and sanitation, science and technology and innovation. The report, which has been termed as a global action plan for poverty, says that developing country governments must craft and implement MDG-based poverty-reduction strategies in a transparent and inclusive process, working closely with civil society organisations, the domestic private sector and international partners. The UN Millennium Project analysis also shows that India will 'graduate' from the need for official development assistance well before 2015, given its high level of economic growth. Source: The Financial Express, February 3, 2005 |