Human Development Report 2004
Cultural Liberty in Today’s Diverse World
Accommodating people’s growing demands for their inclusion in society, for respect of their ethnicity, religion, and language, takes more than democracy and equitable growth. Also needed are multicultural policies that recognize differences, champion diversity and promote cultural freedoms, so that all people can choose to speak their language, practice their religion, and participate in shaping their culture—so that all people can choose to be who they are.
http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2004/
This study from the United Nations Development Programme includes a list of 177 countries from the most developed to the least developed, sorted according to a grand number of criteria related with human development. (See "Human Development Indicators".)
Out of the 177 countries included, India ranks #127, placing it in the low end of medium human development and almost on the edge of low human development. It is preceded for example by Namibia (126), Mongolia (117), Viet Nam (112), Occupied Palestinian Territories (102), Iran (101) and China (94).
Interestingly, many of the old "cradles of culture" seem to have been left out of the loop a good while ago. Any thoughts as to why so?
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Out of the 177 countries included, India ranks #127, placing it in the low end of medium human development and almost on the edge of low human development. It is preceded for example by Namibia (126), Mongolia (117), Viet Nam (112), Occupied Palestinian Territories (102), Iran (101) and China (94).
When you look at the "human development indicators" that they took to measure the differences, you see the trend toward modernization as the main factor in all of them. China is relatively strong in modernization, and naturally so also the small nations like Viet Nam etc. The last Government of India had policies with a turn towards reality management by reducing government spending (in education for instance), hiking prices of basic food, and other unpopular measures, that in a sense impoverished people even more. Coming with parameters from outside the country would put a self-contained nation like India naturally to a disadvantage.
I think India is really "the mother of cultural diversity", but the existing diversity is overshadowed by the nationalist drives toward keeping it together, at the risk of marginalizing those differing social identities. I think we see the same among traditional Gaudiya vaishnava lines which exist in clear diversity, while the modernization trend pushes them toward unification, or rather disqualifies those that do not fit an expected set of criteria.
I rather like the fact that India is not at the forefront in these polls/studies. The longer it can survive they way it was, the better. What the U.N. has to say about the quality of human life is not mirroring the true reality of for instance a Xth world country like the U.S., so what to speak of a complex place like India.
