Despite an improved performance, India continues to be ranked below neighbours Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal in the Inclusive Development Index released by the World Economic Forum.

India has been ranked 62 out of 74 emerging economies on a metric focussed on the living standards of people and future-proofing of economies by the WEF. Pakistan has been ranked 47, Sri Lanka is at 40, and Nepal at 22; Uganda (59) and Mali (60) are also higher on the index than India.

This Inclusive Development Index has been developed as a new metric of national economic performance as an alternative to GDP.

The WEF study said, “Designed as an alternative to GDP, the Inclusive Development Index (IDI) reflects more closely the criteria by which people evaluate their countries’ economic progress.”

India, the WEF said, reflects an ‘improving trend’. There has been a 2.29 per cent improvement in the overall five-year trend of the IDI for India.

The study said, “The country performs best (44th) in terms of Intergenerational Equity and Sustainability, profiting from a low dependency ratio that is set to further decline as the economy reaps the dividends of an extremely young population (28 per cent of the Indian population was younger than 14 years in 2017).”

Though the incidence of poverty has declined in India over the past five years, six out of 10 Indians still live on less than $3.20 per day.

Both labour productivity and GDP per capita posted strong growth rates over the past five years, while employment growth has slowed. Healthy life expectancy also increased by approximately three years to 59.6, the study added.

Norway tops the chart According to the study, Norway tops the chart followed by Iceland and Luxemburg in advanced economies.

Lithuania, Hungary, and Azerbaijan are the toppers among the emerging economies.

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