It is a mixed bag for India in meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) target, finds India Country Report 2015. Twelve targets under eight MDG was set by United Nations for nearly 200 countries in 2,000 to be met by 2015. While India seems to be on target in several areas, a few areas of concern remain.
The report brought out by Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation said that while India has achieved the target of halving the poverty head count ratio, eliminating gender inequality in primary and secondary education, trend reversal in the fight against HIV/ AIDS, meeting target of drinking water facility and improving drastically telephone and internet penetration, the country still staggers to meet its target on hunger, ensuring sanitation facilities to households and reducing maternal mortality rate (MMR).
Besides the country is moderately on track on targets of achieving universal education and reducing child mortality as sharp decline in the recent years in Infant Mortality and Under-5 Mortality are likely to take India close to the target.
Despite fluctuations, trend reversal has been achieved in the fight against Malaria and TB. Measures have been taken to reverse the loss of environmental resources and progress has been achieved in improving the environment by improving the coverage of forest area, protected areas, reducing ozone depleting CFC emissions, yet there are areas of concern like Carbon Di Oxide emission and energy intensity.
On target of halving extreme poverty between 1990 and 2015, and proportion of people whose income is less than one dollar a day, India claims to have prospered substantially problem is containing hunger. While the all India Poverty Head Count Ratio (PHCR) estimate has come down from 47.8% in 1990 to 23.9% by 2015 and the Poverty Gap Ratio reduced both in rural and urban areas, India is still struggling to meet the target of halving the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.
The target was to bring the proportion of underweight children below 3 years from 52% in 1990 to 26% by 2015. But the National Family Health Survey shows that this proportion declined only from 43% in 1998-99 to 40% in 2005-06. At this rate of decline the proportion of underweight children below three years is expected to reduce to 33% by 2015, which indicates India is falling short of the target.
Similarly on sanitation aspect, the National Sample Survey 2012 revealed that 43.4% of households in India had no latrine facilities. This means 59.4% of rural households and 8.8% in urban areas had no access to sanitation. However, Government feels that by 215 the target could be met in at least in urban areas where the percentage of households without sanitation facility has come down to 10.74% (against the target of 14.18%).
But the progress is quite lagging behind in rural areas where the likely achievement in 2015 is 60.96% of households without sanitation facility vis-a- vis the target of 46.77%. At all India level, 2015 target is unlikely to be met the percentage of households without sanitation facility is likely to be 47.31% against the target of 38.09%.
On MMR, while pregnancy related deaths of women in India have declined over the years, a lot more is to be done. Statistics show that the number of maternal deaths per year has come down from about one lakh deaths (1991-01) to 44,000 in 2011-13. But despite more than 50% reduction in number of maternal deaths in the last two decades, even now 120 women die of causes associated with pregnancy, in a day (about 43,800 per year).