Government releases Millennium Development Goals- India Report 2005

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Central Government releases Millennium Development Goals - India

Report 2005

New Delhi | February 13, 2006 6:12:28 PM IST

G. K. Vasan, Minister of State (independent charge), Ministry of

Statistics and Programme Implementation, released the first

Millennium Development Goals - India Country Report for the year

2005 on Monday.

The Millennium Declaration adopted by the General Assembly of the

United Nations in September 2000 reaffirmed its commitment to the

right to development, peace, security and gender equality, to the

eradication of many dimensions of poverty and to overall sustainable

development.

These are intended for the Member Countries to take efforts in the

fight against poverty, illiteracy, hunger, lack of education, gender

inequality, infant and maternal mortality, disease and environmental

degradation. The Millennium Declaration adopted eight development

goals, 18 time-bound targets and 48 indicators. he Millennium

Development Goals (MDGs) are:DG 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and

hunger; DG 2: Achieve universal primary education; DG 3: Promote

gender equality and empower women; DG 4: Reduce child mortality;DG

5: Improve maternal health;DG 6: Combat HIV/ AIDS, malaria and other

diseases; DG 7: Ensure environmental sustainability; and MDG 8:

Develop a global partnership for development.

The First Country Report on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

captures Indias achievements, challenges and policies with reference

to the goals and targets and reveals that there have been

substantial improvements in the lives of people of the countries

over the years.

This has been possible due to the planned implementation of

programmes despite the enormous and complex problems and diversities

of our nation. The Central and State Governments have set up goals

more ambitious than the MDGs. With the well thought out planning,

comprehensive development strategies devised in the national policy,

and matching implementation process, it is hoped that India will be

able to meet the challenges and achieve all the MDG targets much

earlier than the targeted dates.

Indias position with reference to the various goals are as follows:

(i)To achieve the Goal of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger,

India must reduce by 2015 the proportion of people below poverty

line from nearly 37.5 percent in 1990 to about 18.75 percent. As on

1999-2000, the poverty headcount ratio is 26.1 percent with poverty

gap ratio of 5.2 percent, share of poorest quintile in national

consumption is 10.1 percent for rural sector and 7.9 percent for

urban sector and prevalence of underweight children is of the order

of 47 percent. National Rural Employment Act is a positive step to

reduce the poverty ratio further.

(ii)To achieve universal primary education under Goal-2, India

should increase the primary school enrolment rate to 100 percent and

wipe out the drop-outs by 2015 against 41.96 percent in 1991-92. The

drop-out rate for primary education during 2002-03 is 34.89 percent.

The gross enrolment ratio in primary education has tended to remain

near 100 percent for boys and recorded an increase of nearly 20

percentage points in the ten years period from 1992-93 to 2002-03

for girls (93 percent). The literacy rate (7 years and above) has

also increased from 52.2 percent in 1992-93 to 65.4 percent in 2000-

01.

(iii)To ensure gender parity in education levels in Goal-3, India

will have to promote female participation at all levels to reach a

female male proportion of equal level by 2015. The female male

proportion in respect of primary education was 71:100 in 1990-91

which has increased to 78:100 in 2000-01. During the same period,

the proportion has increased from 49:100 to 63:100 in case of

secondary education.

(iv) Goal 4 aims at reducing under five mortality rate (U5MR) from

125 deaths per thousand live births in 1988-92 to 42 in 2015. The

U5MR has decreased during the period 1998-2002 to 98 per thousand

live births. The infant mortality rate (IMR) has also come down from

80 per thousand live births in 1990 to 60 per thousand in 2003 and

the proportion of 1 year old children immunised against measles has

increased from 42.2 percent in 1992-93 to 58.5 percent in 2002-03.

(v)To achieve Goal-5, India should reduce maternal mortality (MMR)

from 437 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1991 to 109 by 2015. The

value of MMR for 1998 is 407. The proportion of births attended by

skilled health personnel has been continuously increasing, (from

25.5 percent in 1992-93 to 39.8 percent in 2002-03) thereby reducing

the chances of occurrence of maternal deaths.

(vi)In so far as Goal-6 is concerned, though India has a low

prevalence of HIV among pregnant women as compared to other

developing countries, yet the prevalence rate has increased from

0.74 per thousand pregnant women in 2002 to 0.86 in 2003. This

increasing trend needs to be reversed to achieve MDG 6. The

prevalence and death rates associated with malaria are consistently

coming down. The death rate associated with TB has come down from 67

deaths per 100.000 population in 1990 to 33 per 100,000 population

in 2003. The proportion of TB patients successfully treated has also

risen from 81 percent in 1996 to 86 percent in 2003.

(vii)Goal-7 aims at ensuring environmental sustainability. As per

assessment made in 2003, total land area covered under different

forests has been 20.64 percent due to Governments persistent efforts

to preserve the natural resources. The reserved and protected

forests together account for 19 percent of the total land area to

maintain biological diversity. The energy use has declined

consistently from about 36 kilogram oil equivalent in 1991-92 to

about 32 kilogram oil equivalent in 2003-04 to produce GDP worth Rs.

1000. The proportion of population without sustainable access to

safe drinking water and sanitation is to be halved by 2015 and India

is on track to achieve this target.

(viii)Goal-8 is regarding the developing global partnership for

development. It is basically meant for the Developed Countries to

provide development assistance to developing countries.. The

Government of India holds the following views regarding the role of

the developed countries in achieving this goal:

(a)The financial support needed to achieve the targets under this

Goal had been estimated for the least developed land locked and

small countries by a high-level panel on Financing for Development

at an additional amount of 50 billion dollars which would be

required for this purpose every year till 2015.

( However, a huge gap still exists for those countries between the

development assistance required to meet the MDGs and what has been

pledged by the developed countries so far.

Recent months have seen new commitments toward reaching the

internationally accepted 0.7 percent of Gross National Income (GNI)

target. We have reminded that these potential increases still leave

development assistance donor countries as a group well short of 0.7

percent.

(d)It is also a matter of satisfaction that actual disbursements of

ODA, in recent years, have shown a welcome reversal of the declining

trend that lasted for almost a decade since the early 1990s. In this

regard, it is important to realize that unless aid commitments

translate into actual delivery, securing MDGs will remain elusive

goals. We do hope that all the developed countries would scale up

the ODA to realize the goals reaffirmed at the Monterrey Consensus.

(e)It has also been our consistent position that additional

resources for implementing the development agenda should be

channelized through the existing multilateral agencies. Moreover,

allocations must be based on pre-defined and transparent criteria.

Our own development experience clearly indicates that, ultimately,

it is the availability of untied additional resources for use in

accordance with national development strategies, which is most

beneficial for recipient countries.

(f)To deal with the problems of debt, the Heavily Indebted Poor

Countries (HIPC) Initiative was launched by the World Bank and IMF

and endorsed by 180 governments. In regard to the HIPC Initiative,

India is of the view that the Initiative should be met by additional

funding from the developed countries and the flow of concessional

assistance to other countries should not be reduced. India also

opposes the concept of equitable burden sharing since some of the

non-Paris Club creditor countries are themselves poor countries.

(g)We have supported the G-8 initiative on irrevocable debt

cancellation for the HIPC countries which has now been adopted by

IMF and the World Bank as the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative

(MDRI). We have always been supportive of all efforts being extended

to the low-income countries (LICs), including those in Africa, where

debt burdens are serious threats to attainment of the MDGs.

(ix)With regard to one of the targets of the Goal 8, i.e. in

cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of

new technologies, especially information and communications, India

has made substantial progress in recent years. The overall tele-

density has remarkably increased from 0.67 percent in 1991 to 9.4

percent in June 2005. Use of Personal Computers has also increased

from 5.4 million PCs in 2001 to 14.5 million in 2005 and there are

5.3 million internet subscribers as on March 2005 (2.3 internet

users per 100 population and 0.5 per 100 internet subscribers).he

National Employment Guarantee Act, Sarva Siksha Abhiyan, Total

Literacy Campaign of the National Literacy Mission, 73rd and 74th

constitutional amendments providing reservation for women,

commitment for women empowerment in the NCMP, National Health

Mission, Total Sanitation Campaign and Bharat Nirman are some of the

important steps taken by the Government which will help in achieving

the Millennium Development Goals. (ANI)

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