India vs Pakistan: Who does it better on human development scale?

Reacting to the terrorist strike at the army camp in Uri, Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged Pakistan to go to war against poverty, unemployment, illiteracy and infant mortality instead, saying let’s see who wins those wars. But a Business Standard examination of various human development indicators suggests that while currently India fares better on most key indicators, Pakistan is better placed on a few.  

On life expectancy at birth, India fares marginally better than Pakistan. For India, life expectancy at birth was estimated at 68 years in 2014, while for Pakistan it was marginally lower at 66.1 years. For females too, life expectancy in India is only marginally better at 69.49 years, while for Pakistan, it is 67.15 years. In terms of female literacy though, India is much better placed with 59.2 per cent of adult females literate aged 15 and above literate in 2011, while for Pakistan the comparable figure is 41.9 per cent.

On lowering infant mortality, India has made considerable progress. At the aggregate level, the infant mortality rate in India has declined from 46.3 per 1000 live births in 2010 to 37.9 in 2015, while for Pakistan, the comparable figures are 73.5 in 2010 and 65.8 in 2015. On undernourishment, too, India performs better with 15.2 per cent of the population undernourished in 2015, compared to 22 per cent in the case of Pakistan.

But on other development indicators, Pakistan fares better. Taking the World Bank’s poverty line of $1.9 a day, 21.25 per cent of India’s population was below the poverty line in 2011 as compared to 8.3 per cent for Pakistan in 2010. Similarly on open defecation too, which has grave implications on health Pakistan fares better. Data from the World Bank shows that 61.3 per cent of India’s rural population defecates in the open, as opposed to 21.4 per cent in the case of Pakistan.