India trails on two targets under Millennium Development Goals

India is lagging in respect of two targets under its Millennium Development Goals while it's on track for five and moderately progressing on another four, Parliament was told today.
"As per the latest data, out of the 12 targets, India is on track for five and moderately on track for another four. It's lagging in respect of two targets, and progress under one component is not statistically discernible," Statistics Minister V K Singh said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha today.
India's Millennium Development Goals (MDG) framework consists of eight goals and 12 targets.
MDGs are international development goals that United Nations member states and numerous international organisations, including India, have agreed to achieve by 2015.

These include eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality, reducing child mortality rate and ensuring environmental sustainability.
According to the reply, there is slow progress on India's MDG target of halving the proportion of people who suffer from hunger between 1990 to 2015. Similarly, reducing maternal mortality by three quarters between 1990 to 2015 has seen a slow pace.

But India is pacing up moderately on goals related to achieving 100 per cent primary schooling for boys and girls, reducing child mortality, reversing loss of environment and increasing access to drinking water and sanitation.
The country is on track on targets relating to bringing down the number of people whose income is less than USD 1, eliminating gender disparity at all levels of education, reducing spread of HIV/AIDS, incidence of malaria and other diseases and making available benefits of new technologies.

India needs to achieve a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020. This pattern (target) is "not statistically discernible", the minister said in his reply.