India was on Monday ranked at the 62nd place among emerging economies on an Inclusive Development Index, much below China’s 26th position and Pakistan’s 47th.
Norway remains the world’s most inclusive advanced economy, while Lithuania again tops the list of emerging economies, the World Economic Forum (WEF) said while releasing the yearly index at Davos before the start of its annual meeting, to be attended by several world leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump.
The index takes into account the “living standards, environmental sustainability and protection of future generations from further indebtedness”, the WEF said.
It urged the leaders to urgently move to a new model of inclusive growth and development, saying reliance on GDP as a measure of economic achievement is fuelling short-termism and inequality. India was ranked 60th among 79 developing economies last year, as against China’s 15th and Pakistan’s 52nd position.
The 2018 index, which measures progress of 103 economies on three individual pillars — growth and development; inclusion; and inter-generational equity — has been divided into two parts. The first part covers 29 advanced economies and the second 74 emerging economies.
The index has also classified the countries into five sub-categories in terms of the five-year trend of their overall Inclusive Development Growth score — receding, slowly receding, stable, slowly advancing and advancing.
Despite its low overall score, India is among the ten emerging economies with ‘advancing’ trend. Only two advanced economies have shown ‘advancing’ trend.
Among advanced economies, Norway is followed by Ireland, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Denmark in the top five.
