Human Development Report 2004; Oxford University Press; Price: Rs.495; 285 pp This is the time of the year when this reviewer — and increasingly I believe right-thinking people all over the world — remember the great Pakistani economist, the late Mahbub-Ul-Haq. By all accounts a true nationalist who was forced into voluntary exile by the succession of tin-pot generals and corrupt self-serving politicians (Benazir and Nawaz) in Pakistan, Ul-Haq served the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for many years as its chief economist. In the mid-1980s, presumably fed up with the unwarranted propaganda which third world leaders and dictators in particular trumpet about the wonderful progress made in societies under their watch, Ul-Haq devised a human development index (HDI) to measure governments’ actual attainments in raising living standards in countries around the world. The seasonal fruit of his pioneering effort is UNDP’s Human Development Report (HDR) published in July every year. For reasons best known to themselves, Indian economists and the media tend to accord a tepid welcome to UNDP’s topical, subject-driven, inevitably well-argued and indeed brilliant HDRs — the labour of love of hundreds of highly qualified economists and social scientists from around the world. But then praise for any genuinely innovative intellectual effort is rare in this perverse, backbiting society built by Nehru’s socialist heirs now transformed into loud but unconvincing liberalisers. These painstakingly researched annual reports are more than dry statistical compilations. Every year the HDR is built around a human development proposition which is advocated and examined in detail. For instance in the millennium year 2000 the annual report of UNDP discussed the theme ‘Human rights and human development’ in extenso. In 2002 its message was ‘Deepening democracy in a fragmented world’ and last year it was ‘Millennium development goals’. The purpose of these chosen themes supported by case histories and statistical evidence collected from around the world is self-evident: to advise lackadaisical governments and intellectually barren establishments on ways and means to enrich the lives of their subjects and transform this lonely planet into a habitation of stable, prosperous nation states living in harmony with each other. In HDR 2004 the learned authors led by the India-born Nobel Laureate Dr. Amartya Sen advance the case for ‘Cultural liberty in today’s diverse world’ as an important input for human and societal development. Against the backdrop of rising religious fundamentalism and grim portents of an imminent clash of civilizations, Human Development Report 2004 argues in favour of respecting and accommodating minority cultures, which contrary to popular demagoguery, stabilises and enriches societies. “Human development is first and foremost about allowing people to lead the kind of life they choose — and providing them with the tools and opportunities to make those choices… Unless people who are poor and marginalised — who are more often than not members of religious or ethnic minorities or migrants — can influence political action at local and national levels, they are unlikely to get equitable access to jobs, schools, hospitals, justice, security and other basic services,” says the foreword. Quite obviously the proposition that cultural plurality…
