The UN Human Development Report is the untold story behind growing economies, documenting how countries perform on taking health, education, and nutrition to the people. Based on these indicators, the report ranks countries. India has usually figured low on the list of 170-odd countries. But what is striking is that despite the high economic growth of the past few years, India hasn’t moved up substantially on the human development index.

Ahead of the launch of this year’s report , scheduled for November 22, Kevin Watkins, lead author of the report, spent time with Express staff explaining the significance of this year’s theme — climate change — and its link to human development. The recent IPCC reports focussed on the science of climate change; the UN Human Development Report will look at its human aspects.

Watkins, a PhD in modern Indian history, is a senior visiting fellow with the economics governance programme at Oxford. In the 1960s he was a student of the Delhi School of Economics. He says India was different then, but held promise, as it still does. The discussion was moderated by Senior Editor Sonu Jain.

KEVIN WATKINS: The human development report is an annual report and has been coming out since 1990. The first author was M. Haq. It was created to draw attention to one of the great anomalies in development: there are big discrepancies between how many countries perform on economic indicators of development, like average income, and what is happening to their people in areas like education, nutrition etc. I think India is one step back.

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