Very Short Answer Type Questions
Q1: When was the first Human Development Report published by the United Nations?
Ans: In 1990.
Q2: What is the infant mortality rate in India?
Ans: 47 per thousand.
Q3: What is the literacy rate in India?
Ans: 74.04% (2011).
Q4: Which state has the lowest literacy rate in India?
Ans: Bihar—63.82% (2011 census).
Q5: What is the poverty ratio in India?
Ans: 26%.
Q6: What are the three indicators of HDI?
Ans: (i) Longevity of life (ii) Knowledge (iii) High standard of living.
Q7: What is the total number of literates in India ?
Ans: 77.84 crores (2011 census).
Q8: Define the term poverty.
Ans: A state of deprivation.
Short Answer Type Questions
Q9: What is the main goal of human development? Name the three aspects it encompasses.
Ans: The main goal of human development is the well-being of people. It goes beyond just economic factors. The three main aspects of human development are economic development, social development, and cultural development.
Q10: Explain the concept of Human Development Index (HDI) as a composite index.
Ans: HDI is a composite index developed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to measure various dimensions of human development. It includes longevity of life, knowledge base, and a decent standard of living. By combining these factors, it provides a comprehensive overview of a country's human development.
Q11: Explain the regional disparity in literacy rates between southern and northern states in India.
Ans: Southern states have higher literacy rates due to factors such as urbanization, efforts by Christian missionaries and social organizations, enlightened administration, and a higher proportion of non-agricultural workers. In contrast, northern states face challenges like poverty, low status of women, high dropout rates, and prejudices against female education.
Q12: Define poverty and discuss its implications on human development.
Ans: Poverty is a state of deprivation where individuals lack basic necessities for a sustained, healthy, and reasonably productive living. It severely hampers human development by limiting access to education, healthcare, and economic opportunities, preventing individuals from leading a dignified life.
Q13: Enumerate the indicators used for measuring the level of Human Development.
Ans: The indicators used for measuring human development include health indicators (related to longevity, birth rate, death rate, infant mortality, nutrition, and life expectancy), social indicators (such as literacy, school enrollment, dropout ratio, and pupil-teacher ratio), and economic indicators (involving wages, income, per capita GDP, poverty incidence, and employment opportunities).
Q14: Describe the trends in fertility and mortality rates in India since 1951.
Ans: India has experienced a decline in death rates, infant mortality rates, and child mortality rates since 1951. While birth rates have also declined, the total fertility rate, representing the average number of children per woman, decreased from 6 to 2.9. These changes indicate an overall improvement in health and a decrease in the risk of death at various stages of life.
Long Answer Type Questions
Q15: Explain the relationship between environment, Resources, and Development. State the views of different writers.
Ans: Population, Environment and Development. Development in general and human development in particular is a complex concept used in social sciences. It is complex because for ages it was thought that development is a substantive concept and once it is achieved it will address all the socio-cultural and environmental ills of the society. Though, development has brought in significant improvement in the quality of’ life in more than one way but increasing regional disparities, social inequalities, discriminations, deprivations, displacement of people, abuse of human rights and undermining human values and environmental degradation have also increased.
Population and Resources. At the other extreme of this approach lie the views expressed by the Neo-Malthusians, environmentalists and radical ecologists. They believe that for a happy and peaceful social life proper balance between population and resources is a necessary condition. According to these thinkers, the gap between the resources and population has widened after eighteenth century.
There have been marginal expansion in the resources of the world in the last three hundred years but there has been phenomenal growth in the human population. Development has only contributed in increasing the multiple uses of the limited resources of the world while there has been enormous increase in the demand for these resources. Therefore, the prime task before any development activity is to maintain parity between population and resources.
It is not the availability of resources that is as important as their social distribution. Resources everywhere are unevenly distributed. Rich countries and people have access to large resource baskets while the poor find their resources shrinking. Moreover, the unending pursuit for the control of more and more resources by the powerful and use of the same for exhibiting ones prowess is the prime cause of conflicts as well as the apparent contradictions between population resource and development.
Indian culture and civilisation have been very sensitive to the issues of population, resource and development for a long time. It would not be incorrect to say that the ancient scriptures were essentially concerned about the balance and harmony among the elements of nature.
Mahatma Gandhi in the recent times advocated the reinforcement of the harmony and balance between the two. He was quite apprehensive about the on-going development particularly the way industrialisation has institutionalised the loss of morality, spirituality, self-reliance, non-violence and mutual co-operation and environment. In his opinion, austerity for individual, trusteeship of social wealth and non-violence are the key to attain higher goals in the life of an individual as well as that of a nation. His views were also re-echoed in the Club of Rome Report “Limits to Growth” (1972), Schumacher’s book “Small is Beautiful” (1974), Brundtland Commission’s Report “Our Common Future” (1987) and finally in the “Agenda-21 Report of the Rio Conference” (1993).
