Question

Kerala with lower per capita income has better Human Development ranking than Punjab. Hence, per capita income is not a useful Criterion at all and should not be used to compare States. Do you agree ? Discuss.

Answer 1

Yes, I agree because Kerala is at top in HDI ranking with 0.638 the reason is people of Kerala are mostly Educate or literate, Kerala is at 2nd position in Health and have good access to resources. But Punjab is in 2nd position in HDI with 0.537 value, punjab is behind due to lack of education, health and access to resources. So, per capita income is not important.

And the MEASURES of HDI are:
1.Education
2.Health
3.Access to resources.

It is surely helpful to you

Answer 2

No, I do not agree with the statement that per capita income is not a useful criterion at all. Kerala, with lower per capita income has a better human development ranking than Maharashtra because, human development ranking is determined using a combination of factors such as health, education, and income. So, this does not imply that per capita income is not useful. Rather, per capita income is one of the development factors and can not be neglected. The World Bank uses per capita income as the criterion for measuring development and comparing states. But this criterion has certain limitations because of which determination of Human Development Index (HDI) is done using this criterion along with some other development factors like health, education etc. If the rate of population growth, is higher than the rate of growth of national income, this will lead to fall in per capita availability of goods and services and economic welfare.