The 2010 Human Development Index is out. It offers some good news for Bangladesh. Though Bangladesh ranked 129 among 169 UN members states (out of a possible 192 states in the world), it ranked 3rd in terms of improvement since 1980 in its assessed Human Development Index, itself a weighted average of education, wealth and health statistics.
This means that out of 95 countries for which comparable data exists, its rate of improvement in the last 3 years has been amongst the most impressive. Nevertheless, though within the panel of the low performing states its HDI has risen remarkably over that thirty year period, its objective ranking remains low. Its HDI is still floundering within those countries to which the muddied definition of “low human development “applies. Indeed, its HDI remains below the South Asia regional average.
The Human Development Index, a measure of development (social, human) progress that Pakistani economist Mahbub-ul Huq and Indian economist Amartya Sen devised, a measure that since 1990 has been operationalized since 1991. The measure has done much to uncouple the strongly held idea that wealth and human progress are causally related. Richer countries are not necessarily those in which human welfare flourishes: consider the downtrending of the U.S HDI over the past few years. Thus, the HDI’s main cut has been to map out different policy paths to achieve developmental goals and social progress, of which improvement in children’s development ranks with highest priority and greatest urgency, without handicapping economic growth.
Bangladesh has therefore made formidable in these measures, principally in terms of literacy and life expectancy. But it has tremendous room for improvement, including, of course, literally every index that makes up the HDI report. It would be a remarkable achievement for this government and successive government to push and pull Bangladesh into a separate and higher ranked panel of countries, those considered medium develop countries (beat out Honduras or Namibia, without beggaring those countries).
The wrong move, the grossly incompetent and globally declaimed move, now would be to steer away from the path Bangladesh is on in terms of its HDI, a most commendable achievement. It would be a catastrophe of the highest human order were any Bangladeshi government to engage in such moves that reduce Bangladesh and the Bangladeshi people to the level of misery that President Robert Mugabe has forced on the people of Zimbabwe, once the bread basket of Africa, that continents most promising country in terms of human welfare. The current government and its opposition best beware.
