India and Human Development
India and Human Development: The HDI (Human Development Index) for India was 0.640 in 2018, ranking 130th out of 189 countries. Between 1990 and 2017, India’s life expectancy at birth increased by nearly 11 years, with even more significant gains in expected years of schooling. Today’s Indian school-age children can expect to stay in school for 4.7 years longer than in 1990. Whereas, India’s GNI per capita increased by a staggering 266.6 percent between 1990 and 2017. However, inequality remains a challenge for India as it progresses economically. The gap between the rich and the poor seems to be widening. An indicator of the level of health enjoyed by Indians is that in 2017, terrorism claimed the lives of 766 Indians, or 0.007% of all deaths, while health reasons claimed 6.6 million Indians, or 90% of all deaths. In 2017, the last year for which comparable data are available, India’s spending on defence was double its health expenditure, according to the 2017-18 budget.