HDI and India

HDI i.e. Human Development Index is said to be the indicator of the standard of living in a country. The HDI provides a composite measure of three dimensions of human development: living a long and healthy life (measured by life expectancy), being educated (measured by adult literacy and enrollment at the primary, secondary and tertiary level) and having a decent standard of living (measured by purchasing power parity, PPP, income). Internationally it is accepted that this is not a comprehensive representative of the total quality of the life in a country. It does not, for example, include important indicators such as inequality and difficult to measure indicators like respect for human rights and political freedoms.

As mentioned above if you consider two factors, inequality and education together then the point arises of depth of the education available in a country. This particularly will be true in case of India. Let us first see the calculated parts of HDI as Life expectancy at birth ranked 121 with 63.6 years. Adult literacy rate for age 15 years and older ranked 107 with 61%. GDP per capita PPP US$3139 ranked 114. Gives HDI value 0.611 and overall rank combining all the factors above is 127. But this does not by any means take into consideration the level of skills and the depth of education available in the country.

After due consideration it seems necessary to reformulate the calculation of HDI with added weightage to the inequality of society, as almost unanimously we have accepted the capitalism as part of our global society and on the same principle the facilities of education available within the country. It seems highly plausible that there will be considerable shuffle in the current HDI listings. This surely will give India a little higher level than rank 127. It seems more important especially with the emergence of India as a global outsourcing hub with specialization in IT and financial services and educational institutes like IIMs and IITs with a global recognition. Indian human resource is one of the most sought after entities in the world. This chasm of global demand and HDI rank 127 has to be filled. No definition can be eternal; it has to evolve with time. And now is about time we pay attention to HDI rankings.

With emergence of the powers like BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries, many such definitions need to be looked into. Let us kick start the mission with HDI.

Courtesy http://hdr.undp.org/hdr2006/statistics/countries/country_fact_sheets/cty_fs_IND.html

Indian cricket and Dada

At last Sourav Ganguly (dada) is getting the chance to come back to the highest earning cricket team in the world. Well that is the best I can praise this team. The money they make is by no means an indicator of their performance. This team just reminds me of the state of business in India for so many years till the Indian economy opened up since 1991. You keep protecting an ill performing organization for any amount of time, there is no scope for such an organization improving. Applying the same principle to this cricket team you should have shut down this business a long ago.

The point most difficult to understand is that how can such a pathetically performing team can earn the most by such a huge margin over the second best Australian team. There are so many sponsors running behind to put their money on. Real Madrid lost a lot of sponsors since they started the current stint of ill-performance. Applying the logic Indians never started performing, still the money started pouring in this absolute waste of time – cricket. (I’ll elaborate on this opinion of mine in some other blog, bear with me!)

There was the time when John Wright retired as coach to Indian team, when dada was leading the side. Then came the nuisance called Greg Chappell. The first thing he did with a well performing, rather the best performing team for a long time is that he chopped and changed around it. They say in US, “if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.” That’s what he did. He tried to better the best. There were ill performing players including the ‘Prince of Calcutta’ himself, but the problem was not limited to him only. Rather he was solution to many other problems and undoubtedly he was the best motivator on the field. Instead of locating all the problems together Chappell pinpointed and played the politics with dada. There was a time when Sachin and dada together had made 16 opening partnerships of more than hundred runs, better than any other pair in the world. With the entry of the crap called Sehwag this stint was terminated. (I can never accept Sehwag as a batsman, just does not fit in definition.) Now as the crap is out of team I hope the sense prevails and sachin and dada come back with their previous form.

Another point I feel for dada is that he seems to be more matured and avoiding all the controversies altogether. If he just keeps doing it, there is a good chance that he would be leading the side, in the light of his motivational qualities and experience. May god bless dada. Amen!