Latest update April 22nd, 2026 12:49 AM
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Measuring State Success
We return to the problem (vexed to some) of measuring the performance of the state. Almost a decade ago, noted Agricultural scientist, M.S. Swaminathan, identified the need to rate the performance of states in terms of the well-being of their people. While acknowledging the groundbreaking effort of the UNDP with its Human Development Index, Human Poverty Index, Gender Empowerment Index etc, he proposed that the following 11 group of indicators might not only measure but could also have a positive impact on priorities in public policies and investment.
Nutrition security
: Physical, economic and social access to balanced diets to every child, woman and man, based on a whole life-cycle approach.
Water security:
Safe drinking water and adequate water for agriculture, industry and ecosystem maintenance.
Literacy and techniracy:
Total literacy and attention to quality improvement in education, ranging from pre-school to university; special attention to the technological and skill empowerment of illiterate or semi-literate women and men through learning by doing, a process which I termed “techniracy”; abolition of child labour and introduction of “earn while you learn’’ schemes so that economically underprivileged youth can go to school, and preventing adolescent girls from becoming school push outs.
Health security:
Strengthening primary health care facilities and making them gender sensitive; control of all preventable diseases including tuberculosis, preventable blindness and eradication of diseases for which vaccines are available; reduction in birth rates through attention to reproductive health and the provision of user preferred family planning services; increase in average life span; reduction of infant mortality rate and maternal mortality rate and incidence of low birth weight children; adoption of a maternal and child care code; fight against HIV/AIDS; special attention to the physically and mentally handicapped and control of diseases associated with different kinds of environmental pollution with particular attention to pollution- related respiratory and other diseases affecting unorganised labour.
Shelter:
Minimum essential housing as a basic human need; amelioration of sub-human living conditions prevalent in urban slums and other habitations where the deprived and destitute live; priority to hygiene, sanitation and rain water and solar energy harvesting in the design of all urban and rural housing.
Ecological security:
Conservation and enhancement of life support systems like land, water, forests, bio-diversity, the oceans and the atmosphere; efficient harvesting and use of rain water; recycling of solid and liquid wastes and composting of all organic wastes; safe disposal of hospital waste; bio-environmental control of mosquitoes; anticipatory action to mitigate the potential adverse effects of climate change and sea level rise.
Livelihood security
: Transition from unskilled to skilled work; integrated attention to rural on-farm and non-farm employment as well as to environmentally and economically sustainable micro-enterprises supported by micro-credit; a new deal to the self-employed through technology, training, techno-infrastructure and producer-oriented domestic and external trade; special attention to unemployed youth.
Energy security:
Building sustainable energy systems with concurrent attention to thermal, hydro, nuclear and renewable forms of energy (wind, solar, bio-gas and bio-mass); energy use efficiency and economy in the farm, industrial and domestic sectors.
Gender equity:
Engendering all areas of public policy, elimination of adverse sex ratio, and provision of support services to working women, taking into account the multiple burdens on a woman’s day to day life.
Folk, classical and modern art, culture, music and drama:
Generation of awareness and appreciation of cultural heritage and revitalisation of cultural traditions, and dying art and crafts; and respecting diversity and pluralism in human communities as well as animal rights.
Technological leapfrogging and providing the substrate conditions essential for enhanced national and foreign investment:
Rapid progress in bio-, information and communication, renewable energy technologies and launching a movement for including the excluded in technological empowerment by promoting a new social contract between scientists and society; providing equal attention to connectivity and content in efforts to bridge the digital divide; blending traditional wisdom with frontier science and technology in order to develop and disseminate eco-technologies rooted in the principles of ecology, economics, gender and social equity and employment generation; and including access to appropriate technologies in the minimum needs programme.Surely our political elite can agree to the above as the basis of a people-centred development plan.
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