Social Development Index: addressing social equity

development began to focuses on people with the rationale that improving people’s lives that ultimately improve social development as its objective

INDIA SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT 2006, Council for Social Development, Oxford University Press, New Delhi 2006 pp.225 Price Rs. 395

Review by S. Venkatesan

January 22, 2007: Traditionally, the concept of development has been mainly considered in terms of economic growth or income. But over the years, perspectives on development and its rationale have changed. A fundamental shift occurred in 1990, with the introduction of the concept of human development (UNDP, 1990). Thus, development began to focuses on people with the rationale that improving people’s lives that ultimately improve social development as its objective. Therefore, the concept of development today concerns on people’s achievements in both economic and social spheres, be it acquiring wealth or income, be educated or knowledgeable and living a long and healthy life. Further it expended to view social development as a process that encourages the expansion of people’s capabilities, an enhancement of freedoms and human rights and recognition of participation.

Social Development Index (SDI):

The analysis and measurement of social development has been made in terms of a composite index consists of both economic and social indicators in recent development discourse. For instance, Human Development Index (HDI), Human Poverty Index (HPI) and Gender Development Index (GDI) by UNDP in its human development reports (HDR). The Social Development Index (SDI) prepared by the Council for Social Development (New Delhi) for the first Report on India Social Development 2006 was commendable and .

The SDI mainly consists of six major dimensions of social development in India namely, demographic, health, education, basic amenities, poverty & unemployment and social deprivation. Further these dimensions have been measured by various indicators.

The demographic aspects are defined in terms of three indicators viz. Contraceptive Prevalence Rate (CPR), Total Fertility Rate (TFR) and Infant Mortality Rate (IMR). The health dimension includes two variables, namely, institutional delivery and undernourished children. The third dimension – basic amenities consist of four variables, namely, households living in pucca house, households with access to safe drinking water, access to toilet facility and access to electricity. Educational dimension has been captured by three variables – literacy rate, pupil-teacher ratio and school attendance rate. Poverty & Unemployment aspect includes, again, three variables, namely, unemployment rate, poverty rate and inequality (Gini Ratio). The sixth dimension in the composite index of social development, namely, social deprivation consists six variables, namely disparity ratio of literacy rate between SCs and general population, STs and general population, female and male, disparity ratio of MPCE of Muslims and general population, disparity ratio of female unemployment between total unemployment and child sex ratio.

Methodology of construction of SDI

The Social Development Index (SDI) was constructed based on the method used by UNDP in the campsite Index namely, Human Development Index (HDI). This method basically follows three steps to arrive at composite index. First it adopts the range equalization, secondly making the indicators scale free – wherein each indicator is divided by the range of the particular indicator so that values vary between 0 and 1. Thirdly, adding up the scale-free values of the indicators within each dimension for each state. Finally in the fourth step, the aggregate index (SDI) arrived at the summation of all six dimensions value divided by the total number of dimensions which in the SDI case was 6. This index has been presented for both rural/urban for twenty major states.

Need for Equity Dimension: SDI for Social Groups

While the original concept of social development defined in term of the human development approach which clearly states that the development as people’s achievements in both economic and social spheres, the aggregate index at state level can be useful for government to examine how the state fared in improving people’s lives, and ask how some states managed to achieve higher levels of social development in comparison to others. But it does not give the achievements made by different section of population. Thus, there is a need to look inward, within the state/region to identify groups that fare poorly in social development. Therefore, it would be more rational to treat disparity as the variation among social groups rather than over the administrative units.

In this context, the disparity in achievements such as disparity between caste groups (notably between Scheduled Castes/Tribes and Other Castes) disparity between different religions (such as Hindus, Muslims, Christians etc) and gender disparity are examples of more meaningful groupings from social analytical point of view. Such analysis is not only necessary to address the issue of inter-social group variation in development outcomes, which in turn is a valuable input for policy makers and governments to target and allocate resources. But, it will make the description more relevant to the political discussion. Sen repeatedly cautioned against this pointless aggregation.

the passion for aggregation makes good sense in many contexts,

but it can be futile or pointless in others. Indeed, the primary view

of the living standard is in terms of a collection of functioning and

capabilities of people, with the overall ranking being the

secondary view (Sen 1987).

In this context, the SDI would be more appropriate to bring the people first in development achievement and its variation among different section of people. To construct the SDIs at the social groups level, the SDI and its component indicators can be disaggregate at social groups level. In addition to the present SDI, effort have to made to capture the most important indicators such as distribution of ownership holding of land combined with data on access to capital or employment, access to public goods, and so on, can be more illuminating than the state level analysis. NSSO in its 37^th, 48th and 59^th rounds for example, collected information on ownership holding of land, which may be analysed to assess variation in ownership of asset among social groups.

Further, we also have to address other aspects of social development, for example, how can human rights or freedom or self respect/dignity be incorporated in the SDI? If the present approach is meant for highlighting the importance of freedom and human rights in social development, then various ways must be sought to capture different quantitative variables of these aspects such as atrocities, violence of civil or political rights etc. in the composite index. Other wise, it would be incomplete with out human freedom. Therefore, in addition to theses, the Social Development Report can extend or include other important socio-economic indicators and construct composite indices for scheduled caste/tribes and others separately. The report, nonetheless, valuable inputs to the policy makers, reference source for scholars and researchers and knowledge base for advocacy and campaign.