New Delhi,15 May:India has been ranked at 10th place, above China and Malaysia, in the ADB’s new Social Protection Index (SPI) that measures social security indicators like health care, education and children welfare.
Of 31 Asia-Pacific countries, ranked in the SPI, India ranks below Japan and South Korea as well as other central Asian countries like Uzbekistan and Mongolia.
Apart from China and Malaysia, the countries which are ranked below India include Philippines, Nepal, Indonesia and Bangladesh. Pakistan was ranked at the bottom, only ahead of Papua New Guinea.
The Asian Development Bank (ADB), in the new Index, has established that providing social protection is not subject to the wealth of a nation.
Emerging economies like India can also provide social cover in the form of health insurance, labour market and education among other things, provided the governments decides to do so.
On a scale between zero and 1, India has scored 0.46 points, with Japan topping the chart with 0.96 points.
However, the ranking of India shows that although people are getting some level of social protection, its impact on the incomes of the poor is low.
Social protection is basically a term coined for showing the extent to which Asia-Pacific countries provide for labour market, welfare, social security, micro-credit, health insurance, child protection and education programmes to their citizens, mainly to those living below the poverty line.
The ranking is expected to influence international donors who work for supporting social protection activities.
The countries who have ranked above average in the SPI, the priorities for international donors for assisting them could be improving the efficiency, functioning, and targeting of the current social protection system.
In contrast, the priority for countries with below average SPIs is more likely to be the development of new, affordable, social protection programmes.
The new index aims at helping the governments to plan new steps for improving the overall provision level and a basis for monitoring the outcomes of changes.
Surprisingly, the multilateral funding agency has reasoned, the human development index and the gross domestic product per capita do not effect the social protection cover.
"HDI or GDP per capita and the SPI are not always measuring the same dimensions of development. In fact, the HDI says nothing about key social protection issues such as support for the poor, the elderly and the disabled," ADB said.
For instance, while India and Pakistan have similar levels of per capita GDP, they score very differently on the SPI. India rates a 0.46, while Pakistan is at 0.07.
The funding agency said nations which had SPI higher than HDI showed that these countries had limited resources and so the priority of the governments should be improving the efficiency and assessing the sustainability of the current level of social protection.
It added that the nations with uniformly low SPI and HDI rankings projected that there was an urgent requirement of improving the social protection and formulating innovative and highly targeted priorities.
The index is thus instrumental in combating poverty and meeting the Millennium Development Goals as it has quantified the overall impact of social protection activities in terms of expenditure, beneficiaries or the impact of the programs.
Courtsey : DD NEWS