India down 2 notches in UNDP's human development index

India ranks 136th in among 187 countries ranked in the latest Human Development Index (HDI) published in the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) 2013 Human Development Report. India was ranked 134th in the previous Human Development Report published last year.

Norway, Australia and the United States lead the rankings of 187 countries and territories in the latest Human Development Index (HDI), while conflict-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo and drought-stricken Niger have the lowest scores in the HDI.

The HDI is a measurement of national achievement in health, education and income.

The 2013 Human Development Report has been updated by additional indices that measure gender equity, extreme poverty, and HDI inequalities.

Within the South Asia region also India's ranking was perhaps the lowest among top three economies. Afghanistan achieved the fastest growth (3.9 per cent), followed by Pakistan (1.7 per cent) and India (1.5 per cent).

The average HDI value for South Asia was 0.558, the second lowest in the world. Between 2000 and 2012, the region registered annual growth of 1.43 per cent in HDI value, which is the highest of the regions.

Yet, Niger and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, despite their continuing development challenges, made the greatest strides in HDI improvement since 2000, the report shows.

The new HDI figures show consistent human development improvement in most countries.

''Over the past decades, countries across the world have been converging towards higher levels of human development, as shown by the Human Development Index,'' says the 2013 Report. ''All groups and regions have seen notable improvement in all HDI components, with faster progress in low and medium HDI countries. On this basis, the world is becoming less unequal.''

Fourteen countries, including Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Angola, Timor-Leste, Myanmar, Tanzania, Liberia, Burundi, Mali, Mozambique, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Niger, recorded impressive HDI gains of more than 2 per cent annually since 2000.

Most of these countries are African countries or those emerging from long periods of armed conflict. Yet all have made significant recent progress in school attendance, life expectancy and per capita income growth, data show.

Most countries in higher HDI brackets also recorded steady HDI gains since 2000, though at lower levels of absolute HDI improvement than the highest achievers in the low-HDI grouping.

Hong Kong, Latvia, Republic of Korea, Singapore and Lithuania showed the greatest 12-year HDI improvement in the Very High Human Development quartile of countries in the HDI; Algeria, Kazakhstan, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba were the top five HDI improvers in the High Human Development countries; and Timor-Leste, Cambodia, Ghana, Lao People's Democratic Republic and Mongolia were the HDI growth leaders in the Medium Human Development grouping.

The overall trend globally is toward continual human development improvement. Indeed, no country for which complete data was available has a lower HDI value now than it had in 2000.