Business
India has made notable progress on MDGs: UN
New Delhi, Feb 4
India has made notable
progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set
for 2015, but much needs to be done on the fronts of poverty and
education, a UN report said Wednesday.
Though India has made
notable progress towards reaching the MDGs, achievements across the
goals vary, according to the report titled "India and the MDGs".
The
report said India has already achieved the target for reducing poverty
by half by official estimates and was close to doing so by international
estimates. However, the progress was uneven.
"Over 270 million
people in India in 2012 still remained trapped in extreme poverty making
the post-2015 goal of eliminating extreme poverty by 2030 challenging
but feasible," the report said.
Similarly, though India has
achieved gender parity in primary school enrolment, latest data suggests
that India is off-track on targets to achieve universal enrolment and
completion.
"Large number of children still remain out of school
and fail to complete primary education. The quality of education is also
a major concern," it said.
India, the study said, was set to
achieve the targets of reducing hunger by half, maternal mortality by
three quarters and has halved the proportion of population without
access to clean drinking water.
Shamshad Akhtar, UN
under-secretary general and executive secretary of the UN Economic and
Social Commission for Asia, said: "Over the years, the MDGs have pushed
governments around the world to mainstream poverty reduction, gender
parity, education and health and such basic needs as water and
sanitation in their development agenda."
"India's achievements
towards the MDGs are beyond doubt considerable... yet the progress has
been uneven across goals and across states, and inequalities have
risen," she said. "The key message is not to leave anyone behind."
The MDGs are eight international development goals that were established following the millennium summit of the UN in 2000.
All
189 UN member states at the time (there are 193 currently), and at
least 23 international organisations, committed to help achieve the
goals by 2015.
Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health
Foundation of India (PHFI), said: "There was a problem with MDGs as they
had aggregate indicators and they did not have gender and income
segregation."