Amid a disturbing rate of deceleration in global development and a growing divide between the rich and the poor, India has inched up on the Human Development Index. In the 2025 Human Development Report, ‘A Matter of Choice: People and Possibilities in the Age of AI’, released on Tuesday, India ranks 130 out of 193 countries, from 133 in 2022. It registered an HDI value increase to 0.685 in 2023 from 0.676 in 2022. Coming on the back of two debilitating pandemic years, it can be said that India’s recovery has been strong in the three fields HDI measures: “a long and healthy life, access to knowledge and a decent standard of living”. India’s life expectancy, at 72 years in 2023, is the highest level it has reached since the inception of the index in 1990 (58.6 years). Children, the report noted, are expected to stay in school for 13 years on average, up from 8.2 years in 1990; and Gross National Income per capita has risen from $2,167.22 in 1990 to $9046.76 in 2023. It gave a shout out to programmes such as MGNREGA, the Right to Education Act, the National Rural Health Mission and other initiatives for the improved status, but also sounded a word of caution about rising inequality, particularly significant income and gender disparities.
The female labour participation rate may have risen to 41.7% in 2023-24, as the Economic Survey of 2024-25 pointed out, but a stronger ecosystem needs to be built to ensure women join the workforce and are able to retain their jobs. There is a lag in political representation of women as well with no indication yet when the constitutional amendments reserving one-third of legislative seats for women will come into force. Underprivileged girls and boys still struggle to get an education, and until this anomaly is corrected, India’s HDI value will not rise. Though the report highlights that 13.5 crore (of India’s population of 144 crore) “escaped multidimensional poverty” between 2015-16 and 2019-21, income and gender inequalities have pulled down India’s HDI by 30.7%, “one of the highest losses in the region.” The thrust of the HDR this year was on AI and how human beings may benefit from it on development parameters. India, it said, has been able to retain 20% of AI researchers, up from nearly zero in 2019. Going forward, India must leverage AI to deliver on many fronts from agriculture to health care, education to public service delivery. But it is imperative that proper policy and safeguards are in place to thwart the risk that AI may deepen existing inequalities.
Published – May 08, 2025 12:10 am IST