ABSTRACT
In South Asia and beyond, human development continues to be in a state of crisis. Each successive Human Development Report (HDR hereafter) and the pervasive global failure to achieve the Millennium Development Goals are constant reminders of this crisis. The Human Development Report (HDR) 2003 was an early warning in this regard. At the current pace, the Report suggested, it will take another 100 years to halve the level of hunger in South Asia; 50 years to achieve universal primary education; 20 years to reduce by two thirds the mortality rate among children under fi ve; 10 years to reduce by half the number of those living under $1 a day), and so on (UNDP 2003: 33). As the Report also stated, not only was progress proving elusive, there were also signifi cant ‘development reversals’ in the 1990s:
21 countries experienced a drop in the Human Development Index (HDI), which in the words of the HDR’s lead author represents an unprecedented development reversal:
• 54 countries recorded an average growth rate of below zero for the last decade;
• 12 countries recorded a decline in primary school enrolment rates; • 14 countries showed an increase in child mortality; and • in 37 out of 67 countries with data, poverty rates (the proportion of a
This is, however, only part of the story; an even more distressing dimension of human development is its great unevenness. HDR 1995 brought to light the signifi cant unevenness among men and women in terms of human development, and how gains in human development continued to be distributed unevenly among them. The 1995 Report also took us beyond the usual indicators of longevity, literacy and incomes to reveal gender differences in terms of political and economic participation. A central fi nding in this regard was that even in countries with high levels of human development, gender differences were signifi cant. Most notably, in no country were women systematically included in decision-making processes; in most countries their exclusion was systematic and pervasive.
