With reference to 'Human Development Index', which of the following statements is/are correct ?
1. The UNDP published its first Human Development Report in 1990, which had a Human Development Index.
2

Question

With reference to 'Human Development Index', which of the following statements is/are correct ?
1. The UNDP published its first Human Development Report in 1990, which had a Human Development Index.
2. The first team that developed the Human Development Index was led by Mahbub-ul-Haq and S. Priesner.
Select the correct answer using the code given below :

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — D, Only 1. Statement 1 is right: the United Nations Development Programme published its first Human Development Report in 1990, and that inaugural report is precisely where the Human Development Index made its debut. Statement 2 is wrong on the leadership of the team. Mahbub ul Haq, the Pakistani economist, was appointed Special Adviser to the UNDP Administrator in 1989 to produce that first report; as project director he alone led it, and the international scholars he assembled around him were Amartya Sen, Paul Streeten, Inge Kaul, Frances Stewart and Richard Jolly. 'S. Priesner' does not appear in the documented record of that team at all, so the pairing in statement 2 fails. Only statement 1 stands, and the key marks (d).

Why the other options are wrong — (a) This inverts the truth values. It rejects the well-documented fact that the first Human Development Report appeared in 1990 carrying the HDI, and accepts the mis-stated leadership of the team.  (b) Statement 1 is correct, but statement 2 is not. The team that produced the 1990 report was led by Mahbub ul Haq as project director; the name paired with him in the standard record is Amartya Sen, whose capability approach the index is built on, and not the second name printed in the question.  (c) Statement 1 is unambiguously true — UNDP's first Human Development Report was published in 1990 and introduced the Human Development Index — so an option that rejects both statements cannot be right.

Concept: The Human Development Index was UNDP's answer to the habit of judging countries by national income alone. Mahbub ul Haq conceived it and directed the first Human Development Report in 1990, drawing on Amartya Sen's work on capabilities: development, on this view, is the expansion of what people are able to be and do, so it should be measured on health, knowledge and command over resources together. As first published the index combined life expectancy at birth, adult literacy and the logarithm of GDP per capita at purchasing power parity. Since the 2010 report the components are life expectancy at birth, mean years of schooling with expected years of schooling, and gross national income per capita at PPP, combined as a geometric mean.

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