Health shield: A public health centre in Vaishali

Patna, June 3: The state government has decided to set up a Bihar Human Development Mission to keep track of key indicators that ensure a better quality of life.

“Development of human resources is one of the major priorities of the government. Putting the mission in place would help the government get regular feedback on key human development indicators and take corrective steps if any deficiency is found,” a senior officer, who spoke under cover of anonymity, told The Telegraph.

The formal launch of the mission is expected by mid-August.

The officer said the government would first like to develop a mechanism for monitoring key schemes that are supposed to address issues concerning the human development index. This would help assess the impact of such schemes and suggest steps in case any deficiencies are detected. This, the officer said, has to be done before the launch of the mission.

“The chief minister himself would take a final call about the nature of the work and the persons who would be entrusted with the responsibility of carrying out the all-important task of the mission. A high-level meeting would soon be held in which the chief minister would be apprised about the groundwork being carried out in the run-up to the formation of the mission,” the officer said.

The move is being seen as a corollary to the government’s decision to come out with a human development index report for the state. (The Telegraph had reported this in its edition dated May 21).

The report, likely to be ready in a month, is being jointly prepared by the planning and development department and the A.N. Sinha Institute. Apart from giving an overall picture of the state on four parameters — per capita income, life expectancy at birth, literacy rate and gross enrolment ratio in schools — the report would also furnish details for each of the 38 districts of Bihar.

The survey and data collection work for generating this report was started around a year ago. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has provided financial and technical help for carrying out the survey.

“After finalising the first human development index report for Bihar, we would take technical help from UNDP to fine-tune it and give it the form of an international-level report,” a source in the planning and development department said.

The concept of human development index as a parameter to measure the well being of people of a country was first brought into play in 1990 by UNDP. The index was used to distinguish whether a country was developed, developing and under-developed, and also to assess the impact of economic policies on the quality of life of the people.