UPPSC 2025 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 55 of 150

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).

• (a)Only 2 — 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)Both 1 and 2 — 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)Neither 1 nor 2 — 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.

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.

UPPSC's favourite way of building an HDI question is to keep one clean, checkable statement about the report — its year, its publisher, its components — and to corrupt a second statement by attaching an unfamiliar or slightly wrong name. That is exactly what happens here, and it is why 'Only 1' is such a frequent answer pattern on this topic. Attribution note a student should carry: the index is Haq's creation, Sen's ideas are its foundation, and the wider 1990 team included Paul Streeten, Inge Kaul, Frances Stewart and Richard Jolly — but Haq led it alone as project director, so any statement that gives the first team a co-leader other than Haq is suspect. A typed reproduction of this paper that circulates online prints 'Prof. Paul Streeten' in place of 'S. Priesner'; the commission's own answer-marked booklet, which is the source used here, prints 'S. Priesner'. The key's (d) survives either reading, because Streeten was a member Haq recruited and not a co-leader.

• UNDP published its first Human Development Report in 1990 and introduced the Human Development Index in it
• Mahbub ul Haq, appointed Special Adviser to the UNDP Administrator in 1989, conceived the report and directed the first edition
• The scholars he brought together for the annual reports included Amartya Sen, Paul Streeten, Inge Kaul, Frances Stewart and Richard Jolly
• The 1990 index used life expectancy at birth, adult literacy and log GDP per capita (PPP); since 2010 it uses life expectancy, mean and expected years of schooling, and GNI per capita (PPP), combined as a geometric mean
• Companion measures introduced later: the Human Poverty Index in the 1997 report, replaced by the Multidimensional Poverty Index in the 2010 report, alongside the Inequality-adjusted HDI and the Gender Inequality Index

• Crediting the HDI to Amartya Sen alone — Sen supplied the theoretical foundation, but Mahbub ul Haq created the index and directed the first report
• Confusing the first Human Development Report (1990) with the report that introduced the Human Poverty Index (1997) or the Multidimensional Poverty Index (2010)
• Accepting an unfamiliar second name in a statement simply because the first name in it is correct

UPPSC asks about the report's year, its publisher, its authorship and India's rank; UPSC leans on what the index is made of and what it deliberately leaves out, so revise the components and the companion indices alongside the history.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Human Development Index was first published in the Human Development Report of which year?

  • (a)1985
  • (b)1990
  • (c)1995
  • (d)2000

  Answer(b) 1990 — UNDP's first Human Development Report, directed by Mahbub ul Haq, introduced the index.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Since the 2010 Human Development Report, the standard of living dimension of the HDI is measured by

  • (a)GDP per capita at current US dollars
  • (b)Gross National Income per capita at purchasing power parity
  • (c)Net National Product per capita
  • (d)Per capita household consumption expenditure

  Answer(b) Gross National Income per capita at purchasing power parity — it replaced the earlier GDP per capita (PPP) measure in 2010.