Human Development Report 2011

• The Human Development Report 2011 of the UNDP affirms what critical scholars have been saying for years now: the high economic growth achieved by India has not translated into a better quality of life for the vast majority of its citizens.
  
• Among 187 countries ranked in the HDR, India comes in at a dismal 134 in the main composite index that looks at life expectancy at birth, mean years of schooling, expected years of schooling, Gross National Income per capita, and other metrics. Failure to invest in core areas, such as education and health care, has led to the incongruity of better per capita GNI but not a higher HDI.
  
• In the gender inequality index, India fares poorly, trailing neighbours Bangladesh and Pakistan, although it is better placed in terms of GNI per capita. These are proof positive that a serious course correction is needed in government policy. The first order priority should be to massively scale up public investments in education and health care in the coming Plan period.

The Human Development Index (HDI) is a comparative measure of life expectancy, literacy, education and standards of living for countries worldwide. It is a standard means of measuring well-being, especially child welfare. It is used to distinguish whether the country is a developed, a developing or an under-developed country, and also to measure the impact of economic policies on quality of life. The index was developed in 1990 by Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq and Indian economist Amartya Sen.

Countries fall into four broad human development categories, each of which comprises 47 countries: Very High Human Development, High Human Development, Medium Human Development and Low Human Development (46 countries in this category).

Due to the new methodology adopted since the 2010 Human Development Report, its HDI figures appear lower than the HDI figures in previous reports.

From 2007 to 2010, the first category was referred to as developed countries, and the last three are all grouped in developing countries. The original "high human development" category has been split into two as above in the report for 2007.