WHAT?

The Human Development Index (HDI) is a composite index developed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to measure a country’s average achievements in human development.

BY WHOM?

It was introduced in 1990 by economists Amartya Sen and Mahbub ul Haq to shift the development discourse beyond income.

PARAMETERS AND INDICATORS

It shows average performance in three important areas of human development:

1. living a long and healthy life (measured by Life Expectancy Index (LEI))
2. having access to education (measured by Education Index (EI))
3. having an acceptable standard of living (measured by and Income Index (II))

HDI = (LEI×EI×II)^1/3

The three indicators of HDI are

1. Life expectancy at birth: The life expectancy at birth means how many years a newly born individual is expected to survive in this world. This indicates the element of health in the HDI.
2. Expected years of schooling and mean years of schooling: It comes under the knowledge dimension of the HDI index. The level of education is measured by the expected years of schooling life of a child at the entry age and the mean years of schooling of the adult population.
3. Gross National income: The standard of living of people is measured by the gross national income per capita adjusted for the price level of the country.

 UNDP releases the list of the rankings of the countries according to their HDI in order to seek the attention of the policymakers, the media, and the non-governmental organizations of the countries to change the approach from general economic statistics to human outcomes.

Human Development Index (HDI) – 2025 Report Summary

1. India’s Performance in 2025 HDI Report : Rank: 130 out of 193 countries (Improved from 133 in the previous report)
2. HDI Score: 0.685 (up from 0.676 in 2022)
3. Category: Medium Human Development (Close to entering the "High Human Development" category — 0.700 and above)

Data of India’s Human progress

RELATED INDICES

REGIONAL COMPARISON

Global Comparisons (2025)