India ranked 60th out of 79 developing nations in the Global Inclusive Index which is last among of the BRIC nations and at the bottom in South Asia. Does the Government care as long as they have agenda to win elections?
The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Inclusive Development Index (IDI) is being built on the basis of 12 performance indicators. IDI provides a more comprehensive picture of development than only GDP growth. This is based on three pillars: Growth and Development, Sustainability, and Inclusion and Intergenerational Equity.
India’s score in the IDI has been a very disappointing 60th position out of 79 developing economies. According the report published by WEF, India has been below Pakistan and China in the inclusive development index. While, China is quite high up in the index at 15th position, Pakistan is in 52nd position. India lags behind other South Asian countries as well, such as Bangladesh in 36th position and Nepal in 27th position. Among, the BRIC nations, India has come last. India trails behind Russia in the 13th position and Brazil in 30th place.
Topping the list of developing nations is Lithuania, while Azerbaijan comes second and Hungary in the third position. Other top ten nations are Poland in the 4th position, Romania 5th, Uruguay 6th, Latvia 7th, Panama 8th, Costa Rica 9th, and Chile in the 10th position.
IDI indicates that most developing economies miss the key opportunities in raising economic growth and reducing inequality simultaneously. This is because measurement tools and growth models, despite guiding policy makers for a number of decades, faces the requirement of considerable readjustment.
The report said, “India, with a score of only 3.38, ranks 60th among the 79 developing economies on the IDI, despite the fact that its growth in GDP per capita is among the top 10 and labour productivity growth has been strong”.
The poverty in India is also on a decline, the report said. The problem with India lies with very high debt-to-GDP ratio. This puts a question mark to the sustainability of the government spending.
There is separate spending of IDI for the developed economies. In this index, Norway tops the list, followed by Luxembourg, Switzerland, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, and Austria respectively.
A scale of 1-7 is used to measure the IDI scores. The developing and developed economy score are strictly incomparable because the poverty definitions differ between these two indexes.