The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has ranked India on the 10th position in its Social Protection Index (SPI) ahead to its counterpart nations China and Malaysia despite of registering less ranking in United Nations Developments Programmes’ report list of per capita income, Human Development Index (HDI) and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) index. This SPI shows, ‘which country provides its citizen up to what level of social protection without relating it to the subject of wealth of the country.’
Japan and Korea has topped the list while Pakistan has got the second last position after Papua New Guinea in the list of 31 Asia-Pacific countries despite of having similar position with India in UNDP’s Human Development Report. Uzbekistan and Mongolia have been listed above India while Philippines, Nepal, Indonesia and Bangladesh have got the below position in the ADB’s SPI list.
Releasing the list, ADB surprisingly stated, “HDI or GDP per capita and the SPI are not always measuring the same dimensions of development. In fact, the HDI says nothing about key social protection issues such as support for the poor, the elderly, and the disabled.”
“This is visible from the fact that while India and Pakistan have similar levels of per capita gross domestic product, they score very differently on the SPI,” ADB added.
Defining about the SPI, ADB says, “The index provides a combined measurement tool of the extent to which Asian and Pacific countries provide welfare, labor market, social security, health insurance, micro-credit, child protection, targeted education, and health support programs to their citizens, especially those living below the poverty line.”
“The poor countries like India can afford to provide social cover in the form of health insurance, labour market, child protection, education among other things, if there is government will,” says ADB in the release report.
India measure 0.46 score on the scale ranging from zero to one, while Japan, the topper has marked 0.96 score. Pakistan has been marked a meager score of 0.07.
The score of India shows that despite of getting some level of social protection, the impact of this social protection programs on the incomes of the poor is low. The higher score represents the overall better condition of the country’s citizen while bad marks reflects the poor conditions of the citizens in all terms of the relevant nations.
The purpose behind releasing this report, ADB’s Vice-President of Knowledge Management and Sustainable Development, Ursula Schaefer-Preuss said, “The development community’s commitment for alleviating poverty, and to assist our developing member countries to meet the Millennium Development Goals in the Asia-Pacific region remains the priority challenge for ADB.”
“This publication on the Social Protection Index provides us with an important and so far unique tool to have a better understanding of the challenges that are ahead of us,” added Ursula.
The extract of report stated that Asian-Pacific countries spends on an average of just below 5% of their gross domestic product on social protection and achieve an overall average coverage level of 35% of key target groups including the unemployed, elderly, poor, and disabled.
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