India’s UNSDG progress at 57%; Budget key for urbanisation, women’s empowerment, poverty reduction

Despite the reality of overall better performance by a couple of regions, they have been trapped down by the serious nature of the challenging issues highlighted.
Representative image
Representative image
Updated on
3 min read

Having completed almost a decade of implementing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs) in the country, Indian governments at the national and regional levels must put all the effort, reorient actions, and effective monitoring in place to achieve the targets by 2030.

So far, the average achievement across the UNSDGs by all regions is 57 per cent, though a larger scale of achievement is registered over a few goals and by many regions. Owing to poor actions and performance on a few goals, the achievement is behind the national average, largely due to the ineffective administration of a good number of the goals.

In six of the seventeen goals, the achievement performance is abysmally low in the country. Precisely, making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable has continued to be daunting and causing serious concern since the performance score is only 39 per cent, which is far below the country’s achievement.

Similarly, gender equality & empowerment of women, promoting healthy lives, and development of equitable quality education for all have been distant dreams of the deprived Indians, having scored 49 per cent.

The even harsher situation is that over 52 per cent have been seriously challenged by hunger without food security and nutritional deficiencies. This is an alarming state of affairs across the country, which predominates the multi-dimensional poverty scenario that has affected almost half of the Indians. Further, despite the reality of overall better performance by a couple of regions, they have been trapped down by the serious nature of the challenging issues highlighted.

It is against this backdrop, that this year’s Union Budget assumes paramount significance as the first one in the third term of the national government. India needs to showcase better performance with target-centric public actions, if not the best success in the UNSDGs, given the remaining five years down the line.

This Budget needs to be thrust upon the issues of paramount concern, with substantial budgetary allocations for achieving sustainable urbanisation, women’s empowerment, quality health, and educational services. Undoubtedly, these issues of concern build a healthier, inclusive, and progressive society in the long run by completely arresting the development starvations faced by many states.

Further, effective administration of these issues also brings about equality across different sections and facilitates building an orderly society. Thus, showcasing the best performance on a sustainable basis over these issues from now on is indeed necessary to acquire the status of a developed nation by 2047.

Prominently, with an onset trend in increasing urbanisation roughly to half of Indians, the strategy should be to develop the non-metropolitan, but other major urban areas by earmarking specific outlays for the creation of prospective economic opportunities, coupled with economic infrastructure in the manufacturing and service sectors.

Also, the development of human settlement infrastructures in the hitherto neglected urban areas not only arrests development starvations, but also minimises workforce migration to major prospective cities. It goes without saying that this strategy decongests main cities, including state capitals. Further, the development of small towns and semi-urban areas with public investment assumes greater significance in strengthening socioeconomic rural-urban linkages.

It is also necessary to minimise underemployment in the rural sector, more so in agriculture. Secondly, given the demographic dividend, skilling and reskilling to harness global opportunities for the educated, but unemployed youth is of paramount importance for economic mainstreaming with employment opportunities.

Promoting self-employment activities for educated youth on a large scale, with financial support and incentives, would impact families to free themselves from poverty, besides disengaging from social stress, especially in rural areas. Thirdly, financial deepening and financial literacy for women are other grey areas that need immediate attention from the government. Unfortunately, the financial inclusion mission has only taken the hitherto excluded ones to the banking thresholds.

But it hasn’t yet created a conducive environment to minimise dependence on doorstep money-lenders and escape from their harassment. Financial institutions, particularly banks in rural areas, need to orient about the financial products and give up rigid attitudes toward meeting women’s financial needs, more so for household entrepreneurial activities. Tailor-made financial products for the common man, with proper rural financial institutional linkage, are yet to become a reality in the country and are lacking completely in the entire design of women empowerment.

Perhaps dreaming of being developed without advancement would be a lofty ambition, unless solutions are in vogue for the mainstreaming issues confronting Indian society. Also, achieving the United Nations’ goals would be a reality only after the creation of the welfare of the people and social order. To realise the same in all measures, the Budget is expected also to prioritise social advancement programmes, apart from designing economic growth-oriented strategies for the country.

M Mahadeva is an author, a retired professor and former member of Karnataka Public Service Commission, based in Bengaluru.

Related Stories

No stories found.

X
The New Indian Express
www.newindianexpress.com