Indicators of development - Can you explain it please?

Question

I know that these are one of the main indicators but could you tell me about them please

· Social Indicators of development

· Political Indicators of development

· Economical Indicators of development

· Environmental Indicators of development

Answer 1

Social Indicators of development

These include level of education and availabilty of and access toeducation facilities, quality of health and availability / access of common people to modern health facility, the cultural life, the harmony (absence of conflicts) among different communities, etc.

· Political Indicators of development

The extent of freedom enjoyed by common people in pursuing their political convictions in a peaceful manner, presence of democracy and human rights, progessive elimination of oppression by the State or one group of people by another group of people, universal suffrage, tolerance of different view points, etc.

· Economical Indicators of development

These include, per capita GDP or national income, reduction in the incidence of poverty, progressive improvement in standards of living, extent of freedom in the choice of vocation and mobilty among geographical areas for the pursuit if gainful employment, openness of the economy to international trade and capital flows, lower incidence of corruption, transparent competive markets and transparent regulation of markets, extent of free enterprise, etc.

· Environmental Indicators of development

Extent of hygenic cleanliness, control and regulation to control air, noise poluution, conservation of natural resources, soil conservation, afforestation, restoration of land damaged by mining, etc.

All the desirable qualities in different areas are the objectives of a society - how far the society has achieved this is a measure if development. Development indicators and indices are in vogue; they are popular amongst people with busy lives as a way of condensing complexity to ‘snap shots’ that can be digested and appreciated. This popularity is unlikely to diminish, indeed the opposite will likely be the case. But care does need to be taken as the creators and promoters of these tools have a great responsibility.

The Human Development Index (HDI) is a creation of the United Nations Development Programme and represents the practical embodiment of their vision of human development as an alternative vision to what they perceive as the dominance of economic indicators in development. Economic development had the gross domestic product (GDP) so human development had to have the HDI. In essence the HDI represents a measure of the ‘quality of life’.

Since its appearance in 1990 the HDI comprises three components:

-life expectancy (a proxy indicator for health care and living conditions).

-adult literacy combined with years of schooling or enrollment in primary, secondary and tertiary education.

- real GDP/capita ($ PPP; a proxy indicator for disposable income).  

The Human Development Index of 2006 and its three components.The choice of these three components for the HDI is not surprising, and they can be found in many lists of development indicators. It can certainly be argued that the selection of only three components for human development is problematic. Income inequality, for example, is not included alongside GDP/capita and neither are there any elements of ‘consumption’. The UNDP have argued that these three can act as proxy indicators for many others. For example, provision of a clean water supply and/or adequate nutrition would be reflected in life expectancy. Indeed, given that the UNDP wanted an index that was relatively transparent and simple to understand it is also not surprising that they decided to include only three components. As a key part of this strategy the UNDP decided to present the HDI within a country ‘league-table’ format and labels of ‘high’, ‘medium’ or ‘low’ human development applied by UNDP depending upon each countries value for the HDI.

It is often reiterated that one of the necessary drivers to bring about human development is good governance, and controlling corruption is an important element of this. The assumptions are straightforward. Corruption can result in resources being diverted from the public good to private consumption with the result that impacts intended to be of wider benefit are lost. Corruption may also drive up the costs of doing business with the result that investment is deterred and economic growth will suffer. But the very nature of corruption makes it difficult to gauge. After all, those benefiting from corruption are unlikely to say so and openly declare how much they receive. Payers may be less reticent to talk about the extent of corruption as they are one of the losers, but there may be a danger of them exaggerating their problems and evidence may become somewhat anecdotal.

The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), created by the Berlin-based Transparency International (TI; a non-governmental organization) and first released in 1995, has been designed to provide a more systematic snapshot of corruption in the same way that the HDI provides a snapshot of human development. Like the HDI it combines a number of different ‘indicators’ into one, but unlike the HDI the indicators which are combined all measure corruption. Whereas the HDI has three quite different components (an heterogeneous index), the CPI is an homogenous index in the sense that all the components upon which it is based seek to measure the same thing.

Like the HDI, the CPI is based on data collected over a number of years prior to release of the index. While the HDI 2006 is based on data from 2004 the CPI for 2006 uses 12 surveys and expert assessments from 2005 and 2006 with at least three of them being required for a country to be included in the CPI.