India has moved one spot up in the human development index (HDI) to 130 from 131 last year, according to latest rankings of 189 countries released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on Friday.
Among the other South-Asian countries, Sri Lanka ranked 76 with the HDI value of 0.77 and Maldives stood at 101 with the HDI value of 0.717 were ahead of India. On the other hand, neighbours Bangladesh and Pakistan were ranked at 136 and 150 respectively. India’s HDI value is above the average of 0.638 for the region.
HDI measures the progress in key dimensions of human development such as education, health and living standards.
According to the latest index, India’s HDI value in 2017 was 0.640, which put the country in the medium human development category. According to UNDP, between 1990 and 2017, India’s HDI value has increased from 0.427 to 0.640, an increase of almost 50 per cent. Around the same period, India’s life expectancy at birth too increased by nearly 11 years.
Also, the country’s Gross National Income (GNI) per capita increased 26.6 per cent between 1990 and 2017.
The top five countries in the global HDI ranking were Norway (0.953), Switzerland (0.944), Australia (0.939), Ireland (0.938) and Germany (0.936).
On the other hand, Niger (0.354), the Central African Republic (0.367), South Sudan (0.388), Chad (0.404) and Burundi (0.417) have the lowest scores in the HDI ranking.