On June 15, AAP Minister Atishi Marlena addressed the Cambridge India Conference on ‘India at 100: Towards Becoming a Global Leader,’ where she went on an anti-India tirade. While India reclaimed its spot as the fifth-largest economy in the world, Atishi Marlena downplayed India’s economic feats, calling it a “media narrative,” and instead claimed that the Human Development Index is a better indicator.
“A lot of media narratives about how India is growing, sometimes it’s shining sometimes it’s a trillion dollar economy. We’re also told that India’s GDP has now crossed the 3.5 trillion dollar mark, and we’re told that India is the fastest-growing G20 economy and many other such pieces of information but the reality is far more worrying and underwhelming.” She disregarded the economic feats and claimed the Human Development Index is a better indicator which “really tells you about the state of the country.”
She talked about the Human Development Index and how India ranks 132 out of 191 countries. She said, “This is India at 75.” Furthermore, she said that a lot of countries, especially India’s neighbours, “in comparison to whom we consider ourselves far more developed and far more economically ahead of, are much ahead of us in these indicators.” She gave examples of Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
Notably, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) released its report on the Human Development Index for 2021-22 in September 2022. The report, at the onset, stated that 90 per cent of the countries listed in the report had witnessed a decline in their HDI value in either 2020 or 2021, and India was no exception.
The UNDP acknowledged that India’s decline could be attributed to the Russia-Ukraine war, the Covid-19 pandemic and ‘dangerous planetary changes.’ The report highlighted, “Human Development – a measure of a nation’s health, education, and average income – has declined for two years in a row – 2020 and 2021, reversing five years of progress. This is in line with the global decline, indicating that human development across the world has stalled for the first time in 32 years.”
In its report, the UNDP pointed out, “The last two years have had a devastating impact on billions of people worldwide when crises like COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine hit back-to-back and interacted with sweeping social and economic shifts and dangerous planetary changes.” Furthermore, the UNDP has pointed out that India’s HDI value has been catching up to the world average since 1990, indicating a faster rate of progress than the global rate in human development. “This is a result of policy choices made by the country over time, including investments made in health and education,” the UNDP had said.
Notably, Atishi Marlena noted that one of the indicators used in the Human Development Index is the opportunities women have in the country and society. The UNDP Resident Representative in India Shoko Noda had said, “India’s decline in human development mirrors this trend – impacted by intersecting crises. But there is good news. Compared to 2019, the impact of inequality on human development is lower. India is bridging the human development gap between men and women faster than the world.”
Shoko Noda further said, “This development has come at a smaller cost to the environment. India’s growth story reflects the country’s investments in inclusive growth, social protection, gender-responsive policies, and push towards renewables to ensure no one is left behind.” She added, “Policies that focus on the 3Is (investment, insurance and innovation) will enable people to thrive in the face of uncertainty. India is already a frontrunner in these areas with its push towards renewable energy, boosting social security for the most vulnerable and driving the world’s largest vaccination drive through Co-WIN, supported by UNDP.”
Notably, the UNDP has also praised India for lifting 27 crore people out of multi-dimensional poverty and providing access to clean energy, water and sanitation. The body stated that the country boosted access to social protection for vulnerable communities and demonstrated climate leadership. “The world’s largest democracy is also fast-tracking the implementation and monitoring of the SDGs at the national and sub-national levels to meet the ambitious goals,” it added.
Atishi Marlena’s Claims on Access to Food
At the Cambridge India Conference, Atishi Marlena said, “We’re told that India has the largest number of billionaires, growing billionaires, the number of billionaires grew from 102 to 166 between 2020 and 2022, but there is another figure that also grew from 2020 to 2022, and that is the number of hungry people in the country, those who do not have enough food, and that number in the same period, when the number of billionaires was going up, went from 19 crores to 35 crores,” citing the Global Hunger Report 2022.
Notably, the Government of India has contested the report calling it “misinformation.” The Union Ministry of Women and Child Development said, “A consistent effort is yet again visible to taint India’s image as a nation that does not fulfil the food security and nutritional requirements of its population. Misinformation seems to be the hallmark of annually released Global Hunger Index.” The ministry added, “The Global Hunger Report 2022 released by Concern Worldwide and Welt Hunger Hilfe, NGOs from Ireland and Germany respectively, has ranked India at 107 among 121 countries…”
The government called the report “disconnected from reality” and that it chooses to “deliberately ignore efforts made by the government to ensure food security” during the pandemic, claiming that India is running the “largest food security programme in the world.”
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