Why are the human development indicators in health, literacy, infant mortality, nutrition still so low?
India’s ratings in the human development index are low. So in that sense the state cannot absolve itself of responsibility in the social sector. But at the same time I maintain that the state alone cannot be expected to provide all the initiatives in these areas. The private sector must come forward. Take the example of health workers and paramedics. We are facing a huge shortage of health workers and so both the state and the private sectors need to invest in this sector so that the numbers of trained personnel increase sufficiently to meet this shortfall. Many of your articles have highlighted that the prevailing methods of estimating poverty are flawed and are serving to make poverty invisible. How should these empirical findings be improved? How should poverty be measured? The interpretational issue of what constitutes poverty has been reopened. So far it has been defined along the patterns of income. But we need to look at it in its broader sense beyond just income. I believe we n
