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CHAPTER

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Millennium Dev Development Goals (MDGs)
INTRODUCTION
In September 2000 at the UN Millennium Summit, 189 world leaders adopted the UN Millennium Declaration which laid down the Millennium Development Goals [MDGS] made up of 8 goals and 18 targets to be achieved by 2015. These goals and targets have vast array of interlinked dimensions of development ranging from the reduction of extreme poverty to gender equality, to health, education and environment. The March 2002 UN International Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Mexico and the September 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johansberg, South Africa reaffirmed the commitments of rich and poor countries to these goals and their development targets.

GOALS AND TARGETS


Goal 1. Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger. Targets: 1. Halve, between 1990 and 2015,the proportion of people whose income is less than one dollar a day. 2. Halve between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.

Goal 2. Achieve universal primary education. Target: 3. Ensure that, by 2015,boys and girls will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling. Goal 3. Promote gender equality and empowerment of women. Target: 4. To eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005 and at all levels by 2015. Goal 4. Reduce child mortality. Target: 5. Reduce by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015 the under-five the mortality rate. Goal 5. Imrove maternal health. Target: 6. Reduce by three-quarters between 1990 and 2015 the maternal mortality ratio. Goal 6. Combat HIV/AIDS,malaria and other diseases. Targets: 7. Halve halted by 2015 and begin to reverse the spread of HAV/AIDS. 8. Halve halted by 2015 and begin to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases. Goal 7. Ensure environmental sustainability. Targets: 9. Integrate the principles of sustainable development jnto country policies and programmes and reverse the loss of environmental resources. 10. Halve by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable access to drinking water and basic sanitation. 11. By 2015 to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers. Goal 8. Develop a global partnership for development Targets: 12. Develop further an open,rule-based,predictable,non-dicriminatory and financial system which includes a commitment to good governance, development, and poverty reduction both national and international. 13. Adress the special needs of the least developed countries relating to tariff and quota free access for exports,enhanced program of debt relief for and cancellation of official bilateral debt, and more generous official development assistance for countries commited to poverty reduction. 14. Address the special needs of land-locked countries and small island developing states through the Program of Action for Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States. 15. Deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries through national and international measures. 16. Develop and implement strategies for decent and productive work for youth in cooperation with developing countries. 17. Provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries in cooperation with pharmaceutical companies. 18. Make available the benefits of new technologies,especially information and communications technologies, in cooperation with the private sector. STRATEGIES Strategies to achieve MDGs are as follows: (a)campaign and mobilize for the MDGs through advocacy;(b)to support government in tailoring the MDGs to local circumstances and progress report in this regard;(c) implementing and evaluation of financing options; and (d)share the best strategies for meeting the MDGs in terms of innovative manner.

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Besides,the Millennium Declaration and the Monterrey Consensus specify that the primary responsibility of achieving Goals 1 to 7 and their Targets rests with developing countries.But these countries cannot achieve them without the policy changes in developed countries for aid,debt,trade and technology transfers to achieve Goal 8. The commitments by developed countries with regard to these have been detailed in Goal 8. The Monterrey Consensus called on developed countries that have not done so to make concrete efforts towards the target of 0.7% of GNP as ODA (official development assistance) to developing countries and 0.15% to 0.20% to the least developed countries.Similarly,the World Summit on Sustainable Development also urged developed countries to effectively implement such assistance to developing countries and least developed countries.The Doha Ministerial Declaration of WTO (World Trade Organisation) in 2001 also affirmed poverty reduction goal and committed duty free,quota-free market access for products from the least developed countries. HOW TO ACHIEVE THE GOALS The following measures have been suggested to achieve the Millennium Development Goals: Goal 1: Halving the proportion of people in extreme poverty and hunger require ambitious plans. Strong economic growth is a pre-requisite in developing and least developed countries.But mere economic growth is not enough. Rather emphasis should be on policies that include poverty-reducing growth such as (a)increasing equitable investments in basic health, education,nutrition, water and sanitation services; (b)providing skills,credit,land and other economic assets to the poor;(c)providing labour-intensive employment by promoting small and medium size enterprises;(d)helping small farmers to increase productivity and diversify by providing micro finance for implements,seeds,poultry and cattle rearing ,etc. For halving the proportion of hungry people requires access to food in plentiful and increasing the productivity of hungry farmers.To provide plentiful food to poor farmers, governments should create buffer stocks at the local levels where such farmers live. In rural areas where landless hungry people live,they should be provided secure tenure of land In regions where agricultural productivity is low,farmers should be made conversant with productivity increasing techniques through extension services. Above all,increased public investments are needed on infrastructure such as roads,bridges,storages,etc. to engage disguised unemployed rural poor. Goal 2: Achieving universal primary education is crucial for improving health,nutrition and productivity thereby meeting the other goals.Education contributes to better health and better health increases productivity that promotes economic growth. This requires spending more on primary education by the state in establishing schools throughout the country. In particular,schools should be located in areas where poor households live so that cost and time of going to schools are minimum.To make primary education universal, it should be free of costs in terms of fees,uniforms and text books.There is also the need to give mid-day meals to students because hungry children cannot learn. To encourage parents to send their daughters to school,schooling hours should be scheduled in such a manner that girls could attend to household chores and female teachers work in schools. In places where the number of male and female students is large,there should be dayshift for girls to give parents a sense security and evening shift for boys. Goal 3: Promoting gender equality and empowering women are also central in achieving all other goals because women are the agents of development.Women need to be given better

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education health and more employment opportunities like men. Educated women bring up fewer and healthier children thereby lowering mortality and fertility rates.In many developing and less developed countries women work on the farms besides attending to household chores. If they are educated and healthier they can help in increasing farm productivity by adopting better farming techniques. This will enhance household incomes. Educated and healthier women by working outside the home increase family incomes in semi-urban and urban areas in such countries.Thus better education and good health and equal employment opportunities empower women to enhance their autonomy. Goals 4-6: Reducing child mortality, improving maternal health and combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases require large health budgets in order to provide such basic health infrastructure as clinics,dispensaries and health care centres in rural areas, semi-urban and urban areas inhabited by the poor people. However, governments in developing and less developed countries do not have enough resources to provide these basic health facilities. So they necessitate internal and external help from private health care providers and NGOs to establish hospitals ,health care centres,etc. where medical services are provided free to poor patients and with normal charges to others. Goal 7: Halving the proportion of poor people without access to safe drinking water and improved sanitation. Safe drinking water,improved sanitation and better hygiene are prerequisites for better health care. But these come under municipal authorities which lack resources to finance infrastructure for these services. Supply of potable water requires water purification and bulk water transmission and distribution systems. Improved sanitation requires public sewage collection and waste water treatment systems in order to prevent raw sewage from entering rivers and contaminating ground water.These systems are also required to be maintained properly. All these services involve high costs which are beyond these means of municipal authorities.Therefore, they are required to be subsidized by the national government. The charges for these services from the people should not be too high and should be subsidized for the poor by the state government. However,in rural and backward regions of developing and less developed countries where it is not possible to provide such high cost infrastructure for safe drinking water and improved sanitation, low cost community services should be provided such as protected dug wells, public sandpipes, pour-flush latrines, simple pit latrines, ventilated pit latrines, connections to septic tanks and covered public sewers. These are labour-intensive services which can be provided by community involvement in such areas. Another aspect of Goal 7 is ensuring environmental sustainability that requires managing ecosystems in order to provide services which sustain human livelihoods. To promote environmental sustainability requires policy changes in developing and developed countries and involvement of people in converting ecosystems. Some of the policy changes are : (1) Involvement of communities in managing their environmental resources. (2) Compliance with environmental standards. (3) Clear property and user rights. (4) Laying down policies relating to environmental protection, management and environment development strategies. (5) Removing subsidies on fossil fuels, large scale commercial fishing, etc. that damage the ecosystems in developing and developed countries. (6) Improving international management and protection of international water sheds and climate changes by sharing their cost burdens equitably among nations.

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(7) Increasing investments in science and technology by developed and developing countries for renewable energy technologies. (8) Creating an observatory for monitoring the functioning of major ecosystems. (9) Creating an international fund to remove environmental degradation to which developed countries should contribute more. Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development. This requires policy changes in develop countries for aid ,debt ,trade and technology transfers to developing and less developed countries. These are essential to achieve Goals 1-7. But as pointed out by the Millennium Declaration and the Monterrey Consensus the primary responsibility for achieving Goals 17 lies with developing countries. If developing countries are to achieve these Goals by 2015, developed countries should adopt the following measures: 1.AID.To fill financing gaps of developing countries, developed countries should increase total official development assistance to o.7% of gross national incomes. They should also improve their practices, especially in keeping with development priorities in developing countries to untied aid, reduce administrative burdens for them , and to decentralize. 2.Debt. To deal with debt problems of developing and Heavily Indebted Poor Countries(HIPCs) requires some debt cancellation so that their debt burdens are sustainable. For this ,developed countries should finance a compensatory financing facility for external shocks like collapses in commodity prices and shrinking export earnings of HIPCs . They should also finance large debt reduction for HIPCs when they reach their completion levels to ensure sustainability. 3. Trade. Trade policies of developed countries are discriminatory against exports of developing countries. Therefore, they should remove tariffs and quotas on exports of textiles, clothing ,and agricultural products of developing countries. Agricultural subsidies of developed countries are very high which lead to unfair competition with agricultural exports of developing countries.Developed countries should therefore remove subsidies on agricultural exports from developing countries. 4. Technology. With increased technological innovations ,developed countries should channelize them to developing countries. They should ensure their transfer, protection ,and remuneration of traditional knowledge in the TRIPS Agreement under the WTO.

IMPLEMENTATION OF MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS (MDGS) IN INDIA


Indias achievements with reference to the various goals and targets are given below: Goal 1. Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger. As on 1999-2000, the poverty headcount ratio was 26% with poverty gap ratio 5.2%. The following measures have been taken to reduce poverty in India (a) increase credit flow by making Kisan Credit Cards available to farmers;(b) ban on child labour; and (c) ban on bonded labour . The following schemes are in operation to reduce poverty in rural areas: Swarna Jayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY); Sampoorna Grameen Rozgar Yojana (SGRY); Jai Prakash Rozgar Guarantee Yojana (JPRGY); National Rural Employment Programme (NREP) ;and National Employment Guarantee Act. Goal 2. Achieve Universal Primary Education. The Government has made free and compulsory primary education a fundamental right of children. The drop out rate for primary education was about 35% in 2002-2003.The literacy rate (7 years and above ) increased from 52.2% to 65.4%. The Government has taken a major initiative by launching the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and National Literacy Mission which aim at universalisation of primary education in partnership with States. Goal 3. Promote Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women. Women as an independent

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large group Represent 48% of the country s total population. Empowering women as a process demands a life-cycle approach.Therefore,every stage of their life cycle counts as a priority in the planning process. The female-male proportion in respect of primary education which was 71:100 in 1990-1991 had increased to 78:100 in 2002-2003. In the case of secondary education ,the proportion had increased from 49:100 TO 63:100. The three-fold strategy of National Policy for the Empowerment of Women includes: (a)Social Empowerment.To create an enabling environment through various affirmative development policies and programmes for the development of women besides providing them easy and equal access to all the basic minimum services so as to enable them to realize their full potential. (b) Economic Empowerment.To ensure provision of training,employment and income-generation activities with both forward and backward linkages with the ultimate objective of making all potential women economically independent and self reliant by providing reservation for women by the 73 rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments. (c) Gender Justice.To eliminate all forms of gender discrimination and thus allow women to enjoy not only the de-jure but also de-facto rights and fundamental freedom on par with men in all spheres, such as political,economic,civil ,social and cultural. Goal 4. Reduce Child Mortality. Infant and under-5 mortality rates are excellent indicators of the health status of children.This goal aims at under-5 mortality ratio from 125 deaths per 1000 live births in 1988-1992 into 42 in 2015. The under-5 mortality rate decreased to 98 per 1000 live births during 1998-2002.The infant mortality rate had also come down from 80 per 1000 live births in 1990 to 60 per 1000 in 2003. The ongoing major child health care programmes include:(a) essential new born care; (b) immunization to prevent morbidity and mortality due to vaccine preventable diseases; (c) food and micro-nutrient supplementation programmes aimed at improving the nutritional status; and (d) programmes for reducing mortality due to acute respiratory infection (ARI) and diarrhea. Goal 5. Improve Maternal Health. The human resource development is essential to improve maternal health. To achieve this goal, India should reduce maternal mortality rate (MMR) from 437 deaths per 10000 live births in 1991 to 109 by 2015. Adequate skilled health personnel is essential for an efficient and effective functioning of health system. Around 7 lakh nurses have been registered in the various state councils in the country. Of these, only about 40% are active in private sector and others in government sector. The proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel increased from 25.5% in 1992-1993 to 39.8% IN 2002-2003, thereby reducing the chances of occurrence of maternal deaths. Goal 6. Combat HIV/AIDS Prevalence among 15 to 24 Year Old Women and other Major Diseases. So far as this goal is concerned, though India has low prevalence of HIV/AIDS among pregnant women as compared to other developing countries, yet the prevalent rate increased from 0.74 per 1000 in 2002 to 0.86 per 1000 in 2003.According to the UN 2011 Aids Report, close to 1.2 million people in India were newly infected with HIV in 2009. This increasing trend needs to be reversed. Despite this,the UN Report pointed out that there had been a 50% decline in the number of new HIV infections in the last 10 years in India. A new scheme for HIV/AIDS among adolescents was launched in 2002 under NACP -Phase-II. It aimed at sensitizing them on issues like safe motherhood, reproductive health rights,

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sexuality and sexual responsibility. National AIDS Control Programme (NACP) Phase-III was launched in 2007.Under it,emphasis was also to be given on educating youth and focus on say no to unsafe sexual behavior. Goal 7. Ensure Environmental Sustainability. It includes sustainable development of energy, safe drinking water and forest resources. (a) Energy. The Energy Conservation Act ,2000 was passed which led to the setting up of Bureau of Energy Efficiency that has introduced stringent energy conservation norms for energy generation ,supply and consumption.Integrated Energy Policy, 2008 aims at exploring alternative technologies and possible synergies that would increase energy efficiency and meet requirements for energy sector. One of the objectives of this policy is to set up National Energy Fund for research and development in energy sectors. (b) Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation. National Water Policy ,2002 aims at providing clean drinking water and improving the quality of drinking water. Rural drinking water is one of the six components of Bharat Nirman which was started in 2005. Rajiv Gandhi National Drinking Water Mission has been started. Total sanitation campaign is currently operational in 580 districts of different states.Further, a new national urban sanitation policy was announced in October 2008. (c) Forest Management. The total land area covered under different forests was 20.64% in 2003 due to government efforts.The reserved and protected forests together account for 19% of the total land area to maintain biological diversity. The Indian Biological Diversity Act,2003 and National Environment Policy ,2006 were enacted for effective management of forests and to maintain biological diversity. Goal 8. Develop a Global Partnership for Development. The Government of India holds the following views regarding the role of developed countries in achieving this goal. It has been Indias consistence position that additional resources for implementing the development agenda should be channelized through the existing multilateral agencies.Moreover, allocations must be based on pre-defined and transparent criteria. Indias development experience clearly indicates that , ultimately, it is the availability of untied additional resources for use in accordance with national development strategies , which is most beneficial for recipient countries. With regard to one of the targets of this goal ,i.e. in cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications, India has made substantial progress in recent years. The overall tele-density had remarkably increased from 0.67% in 1991 to 9.4% in June 2005. Use of personal computers had also increased from 5.4 million PCs in 2001 to 14.5 million in 2005 and there were 5.3 million Internet subscribers as on March 2005. UN Report on MDGs points out that India will graduate from the needs for official development assistance well before 2015, given high level of growth.

PROGRESS OF MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS


We discuss the progress made towards the achievement of Millennium Development Goals by 2015. The UN MDGs Report 2010 points out seveal major accomplishments including combating extreme poverty and hunger, improving school enrollment and child health, expanding access to clean water and HIV treatment and controlling malaria. Specifically, the Report compares

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statistics in measles deaths, as the number of deaths in sub-Saharan Africa has decreased dramatically. But the Report brings bad news with the good, suggesting that progress has been uneven when comparing certain world regions. In addition to unevenness, the progress has been slow. Five major objectives are still largely unmet: poverty, global hunger, employment, access to education, and gender equality. Within each of these, some progress has been made, but the full goal has not been realized. Enrolment in primary education reached only 89% in 2008, up from 80% in 1991. But the dropout rate from primary school remained high regardless. The Report goes into detail on significant health-related Millennium Development Goals that have been achieved. HIV infections fell 30%, deaths among children 5 and younger have deceased as well and statistics show measles are less deadly than they used to be. There have also been some areas with little progress, like neonatal infant death rates, which account for 36% of deaths for children 5 and under. Maternal mortality lacks positive progression, as maternal death rates today are the same as in 1990. The Report highlights some emerging issues that have arisen since the start of the MDG: climate change, financial markets, food security, conflict refugees; these are some challanges that have had little or no development towards the 2015 goal. The Report further states that the global economic crisis will leave an additional 50 million people in extreme poverty in 2009 and some 64 million by the end of 2010 relative to a nocrisis scenario, principally in sub-Saharan Africa and eastern and south-eastern Asia. Moreover, the effects of the crisis are likely to persist: poverty rates will be slightly higher in 2015 and even beyond, to 2020, than they would have been had the world economy grown steadily at its pre-crisis pace. The success of Goals 1 to 7 hinges on Goal 8 which calls for a global partnership for development whereby the developed countries have the obligation to finance and support developing countries to achieve the targets of MDGs. But this has not happened. The developed countries had pledged to contribute 0.7% of their GDP as aid to meet MDGs. In 2009, the Official Development Assistance (ODA) was 0.31% of GDP of developed countries. The US contributed only 0.2% of its GDP to aid and the European Union only 0.48% of its GDP. Thus the combined ODA of developed countries was 0.31% of their GDP which was not even half of 0.7% target. Only five countries met this target of GDP aid to developing countries: Denmark, Luxumbourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. In the area of trade also not much progress has been made. Tariffs by developed countries on their imports of agricultural products, textiles and clothing from developing countries remained between 5 and 8% in 2008 which were lower by only 2 to 3 percentage points than in 1998. The UN Report admits that Millennium Development has been very unequal in certain regions, with countries like China making huge headway, while other countries like sub-Saharan countries have made no progress. However, it points out, The very fact that the challenges of poverty, food, energy, global recession, and climate change are all interrelated has presented the global community with a unique opportunity to tackle them together. For this, the developed countries should come forward to help the developing and least developed countries through aid and trade policies. As stated by UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, Policies and interventions will be needed to eliminate the persistent or even increasing inequalities between the rich and the poor, between those living in rural or remote areas or in slums versus better-off urban populations, and those disadvantaged by geographic location, sex, age, disability or ethnicity.

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