Abstract
This chapter discusses the outcomes of public policy implementation from all of the eight countries of the South Asian region. In some cases, finding data consistency and availability has been a challenge, but overall it is consistent. Primarily, data from World Bank reports and databases across 1990–2017 are used. GDP (growth and per capita trends), health (life expectancy, infant mortality rate, survival to 65 years of age, availability of doctors and beds), education (literacy rate, mean and expected years of schooling), human development (Human Development Index), poverty (Multidimensional Poverty Index), unemployment (youth and total), and subjective well-being or happiness (life satisfaction, happy life years, World Happiness Report rankings) are tracked for the given period and comparisons are made through graphical depiction and narration in order to examine trends in each area. After reading this chapter, the reader will gain a clear understanding of the status of human well-being indicators in each country in South Asia and of the region as a whole. It would also help the reader to have a comparative view of South Asia region vis-à-vis other regions of the world. In addition, these outcomes are expected to provide appropriate guidelines for future policy direction.
The five ornaments of a country are health, wealth, crops, happiness and security.a
a[Thiruvalluvar] Thiruvalluvar was a great Tamil saint, poet and philosopher who wrote Thirukkural during 4th century BC, having 133 chapters of 10 couplets each, providing lessons for art of living. It has been translated in many languages. The present verse (chapter 74, verse 738) is taken from the translation done by Rajaram (2009, p. 151).
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Notes
- 1.
The first Human Development Report (1990) had a mention of this data at p. 9 which provided a broader rationale for focusing on human development apart from economic growth as reflected through per capita income statistics.
- 2.
See Box 2.1 which provides a brief profile of Mahbub ul Haq.
- 3.
- 4.
See Haq (1996).
- 5.
- 6.
For award details see http://hdr.undp.org/en/hd-awards.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
See UNDP (1990, p. 10).
- 11.
See UNDP (2018, p. 6).
- 12.
A detailed note on GDP, its relevance and need for alternate measure has been provided in the concluding chapter.
- 13.
Richard Stone was a British economist who is also known as the father of national income accounting. He along with Kuznets, is also credited with a contribution on developing the concept of GDP based on different methods of its calculation. Both of them were noble laureates for economic sciences, Kuznets in 1971 and Stone in 1984, for their respective contributions.
- 14.
Adam Smith talked about the invisible hand first in his book The Theory of Moral Sentiments and then elaborated it in The Wealth of Nations. It is the efforts put by individuals for following self-interest but inadvertently resulting in the public good.
- 15.
- 16.
See World Bank Group’s flagship report titled ‘Doing Business 2018—reforming to create job’ available on http://www.doingbusiness.org/content/dam/doingBusiness/media/Annual-Reports/English/DB2018-Full-Report.pdf.
- 17.
The ranking of other countries of the South Asia region are—Nepal 105th, Sri Lanka 111th, The Maldives 136th, Pakistan 147th, Bangladesh 177th, and Afghanistan 183th.
- 18.
OECD stands for Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. It is a group of 36 member countries including the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, Japan, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, etc.
- 19.
The Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) measures multidimensional poverty which is calculated on the basis of three dimensions of poverty: health (nutrition and child mortality), education (years of schooling and school attendance), and living standards (cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing, and assets).
- 20.
Informal sector is determined by the nature of job and reflects that kind of jobs that are not recognised as normal income sources and, in most cases, taxes are not paid by the workforce employed in this sector.
- 21.
This data is for 2010 as updated on September 2018, World Development Indicators.
- 22.
The background of Education for All or EFA program has been discussed in Chap. 3.
- 23.
See UNDP (2014, p. 40).
- 24.
See UNDP (2018, p. 56: Table 9).
- 25.
See Kaufmann, Kraay, and Mastruzzi (2010) for detailed methodology of the indicators.
- 26.
The information is based on the Corruption Perception Index 2017 retrieved from: https://www.transparency.org/news/feature/corruption_perceptions_index_2017.
- 27.
See Veenhoven (1984a).
- 28.
See Veenhoven (1984b).
- 29.
This is an adaptation used by Ruut Veenhoven, given in the Exhibit 4/1a at page 67 of Veenhoven (1984a).
- 30.
See R. Veenhoven, Distributional findings on Happiness in Multiple nations (ZZ), region South Asia, World Database of Happiness, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Accessed on 2018-02-06 at http://worlddatabaseofhappiness.eur.nl.
- 31.
The waves are the intervals of collection of data on life satisfaction as reflected in Fig. 2.23.
- 32.
This information is taken from the website of the World Values Survey http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSContents.jsp.
- 33.
It is important to mention here that it was this tiny kingdom which had voiced its concern for the happiness of its citizens over gross domestic product in the UN session of 1972. Ever since it has been following this philosophy, amid criticism from different corners, on its only philosophical value and not on measurement. It was in 2010 that Bhutan went ahead with measuring GNH and published its report. In 2015, Bhutan published another report on perception of GNH. Detailed version on GNH in Bhutan is provided in Chap. 4.
- 34.
See UNDP (2014: 55).
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Shrotryia, V.K. (2020). Human Well-Being Indicators in South Asia Region. In: Human Well-Being and Policy in South Asia. Human Well-Being Research and Policy Making. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33270-9_2
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