Bangladesh still has a long way to go

Bangladesh has moved one notch up in the Human Development Index (HDI) of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). With an average GDP growth rates hovering around six per cent annually in the last few years, it was not expected that Bangladesh would perform badly in terms of the HDI of 2014. But what is really surprising is that the country moved up by only one point despite significant progress in some fields. The country has improved only one step ahead to 142 from the previous year's143 among 187 countries. However, Bangladesh has improved significantly in the Gender Inequality Index among the South Asian countries as it has ranked at 115, 12 position ahead of India and Pakistan (both of which ranked 127).
All development plans including budget and Annual Development Programme (ADP) aim at improving well-being of the people. In order to quantify in terms of an index, Dr Mahbub-ul Haq, a celebrated Pakistani economist, had teamed up with Prof Amartya Sen of India to develop the Human Development Index to measure human well-being. Wikipedia has traced the background of HDI: "Haq was sure that a simple composite measure of human development was needed in order to convince the public, academics, and policy-makers that they can and should evaluate development not only by economic advances but also improvements in human well-being. Sen initially opposed this idea, but he soon went on to help Haq develop the Index in the future. Sen was worried that it was going to be difficult to capture the full complexity of human capabilities in a single index but Haq persuaded him that only a single number would shift the attention of policy-makers from concentration on economic to human well-being."   
The HDI is being published by the UN each year since 1990. It is a composite measure of 3 dimension of human development: living a long healthy life (measured by life expectancy, being educated (measured by adult education and enrolment at primary, secondary and tertiary level) and having a decent standard of living (measured by purchasing power parity).
The index, in fact, is not a comprehensive measure of human development. It does not include income inequality. It does not include the difficult measurements like respect for human life and political freedom. It actually provides a broad prism for viewing human progress and the complex relationship between income and well-being.
Bangladesh's performance in HDI, compared to other South Asian countries,  has, however, drawn attention of one of its architects Prof Amartya Sen. Even the Nobel laureate has been effusive about Bangladesh's success story of gender equality. The large number of women health workers or schoolteachers has actually helped Bangladesh to overtake India in every aspect of the HDI, he noted. Gender equality is a prerequisite for overall development, he said.
Does the HDI really mean that the country has fared well enough to say its people are now more prosperous?
With several Millennium Development Goals already attained, it was almost certain that Bangladesh would fare well in HDI. The country has already met several targets of the MDGs like reducing poverty gap ratio, attaining gender parity at primary and secondary education, under-five mortality rate reduction, containing HIV infection with access to antiretroviral drugs, children under five sleeping under insecticide treated bed nets, detection and cure rate of tuberculosis under directly observed treatment short course and others.
In addition, Bangladesh has made remarkable progress in the areas of poverty reduction, reduction in the prevalence of underweight children, increased enrolment at primary schools, lowering of infant mortality rate and maternal mortality ratio, improved immunization coverage and reduction in the incidence of communicable diseases.
Now the areas in need of the government's greater attention are hunger-poverty reduction and employment generation, increases in primary school completion and adult literacy rates, creation of decent wage employment for women, increase in the presence of skilled health professionals at delivery, increase in correct and comprehensive knowledge on HIV/AIDS, increase in forest coverage, and coverage of information and communication technology.
As the HDI measures the extent to which a government equitably provides its people with a long and healthy life, education, and a decent standard of living, much is yet to be done in Bangladesh in providing healthcare as well as stopping dropout rates in primary education.
Most of the union healthcare centres at the doorsteps of millions of people in rural areas are without doctors. To cite an example, a trained female para-medic runs one union health centre in Matlab Upazila of Chandpur district. This is a usual sight in rural areas. As a result, most of the poor rural people have virtually been left to the mercy of exorbitant private medical services. The government-run health services are still to trickle down to the grassroots. Even the HDI demonstrates that high national income alone does not guarantee human progress.    The same is the case with income inequality in Bangladesh. While a section is getting rich, the vast majority are still wallowing in abject poverty.
That is why all human development indices have to be measured correctly in order to provide a correct perspective to the national policymakers. Bangladesh needs correct steps so as to truly reflect the human development in the country. Otherwise, the HDI will always remain for Bangladesh at just one notch up or down well above the 100 mark.
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