India VS China : Continued

Read an excellent article in The Hindu about how its insane for India to chase China in growth rate. India should compete with it on other issues like Social Indicators of Health, Employment, Literacy, Infant Mortality etc. The article is written by Nobel laureate Amartya Sen.

Sen argues that India is growing at a better rate than Bangladesh, but still lagging in most of the social factors which indicate the overall well-being of the society. We should try to improve these (While continuing to grow, ofcourse) , rather than focusing too much on how much India's GDP is growing vs the Chinese.

Here are a few stats give out by Dr Sen.

India,         China ,    Bangladesh

GDP growth rate

(approx)                                8%   , 10%  ,   6%


Life expectancy                     64.4 ,    73.5 ,  66.9

Infant mortality                  50/1000 ,   17 ,   41

Under-5 mortality rate     66/1000 ,  19 ,  52

Adult literacy rate              65 ,  94,   54

Children immunised

with DPT vaccine                66% ,  97% ,  94%

Health care

spend (as % of GDP)           1.1% , 1.9% ,   NA


GNP per capita    (USD)    3,260 , 6,770 ,   1,580

Though India is better off than Bangladesh in adult literacy rate, its worse off in female literacy rate. This has been the reason for immense social well-being in Bangladesh, empowerment of women. India is still lagging in female literacy rates which is the prime reason (among others) for poor performance in other indicators like IMR, U5MR, population growth rate etc.

Now, given these facts can we say that India is doing better than Bangladesh just because our GNP is growing faster ? Absolutely not. It can be argued that higher GDP overall means higher spends in education, healthcare and infrastructure, but somehow these basic issues are ignored while we blow the trumpet of growing at 8% (or so) and overtaking China by 20XX.

 

[Source:  http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/article1453228.ece?css=print]