By Agreima Tyagi, Nandini Singh & Aneesh K A
A nation’s success should not be measured solely by how much it produces, but by how well its people live and how responsibly it stewards the world they inhabit.
While India appears to be thriving in theoretical and statistical terms, this perception often masks a more stark reality - one characterized by overcrowded urban spaces, strained healthcare infrastructure, underfunded educational institutions, and deteriorating environmental conditions. Despite measurable gains in income, life expectancy, and educational outcomes, many individuals continue to grapple with declining life satisfaction, heightened psychological distress, and a growing sense of exclusion from the benefits of development.
While nations attempt to pursue economic growth and technological advancement, the question is at the very core: Is development truly meaningful if it is not able to enhance the quality of human life more equally? Each year, with the publication of the Human Development Index (HDI), nations around the world rejoice over incremental gains.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Report 2025, "A Matter of Choice: People and Possibilities in the Age of AI", urges refashioning the question with a growing sense of urgency. The report provides a close examination of global trends in development, with India standing at position 130 out of 193 nations, with an HDI of 0.685. Although slightly higher than its previous rank of 133rd in 2022, India continues to fall in the category of medium human development.
The report showcases remarkable gains in life expectancy across 1990 (58.6 years) and 2023 (72 years), better education outcomes, and a fourfold Gross National Income per capita. These gains are far outweighed by the persistence of inequality, gender imbalance, and human capital under-investment. This raises a critical question: Can higher incomes and AI-fostered productivity make up for the lack of dignity, equality, opportunity, happiness, and environmental performance?
Advances in statistics notwithstanding, India's growth is seen to be skewed, with inequality reducing the country's HDI by more than 30%, one of the highest in the region. This inequality also reveals the fallacy of defining the advance of society or happiness in terms of per capita income. Actual human development does necessitate economic growth, but also the spread of choice and opportunity. The spread of Artificial Intelligence and its incorporation into the trajectory of the development of India holds out much promise, but also needs a people-centric policy response.
HDI is a composite index that summarizes three important aspects of human progress: health, education, and life expectancy. Health is summarized by the life expectancy at birth, which indicates the quality of medical services and population health. The extent of educational attainment is summarized by the average number of schooling years that adults have achieved, as well as the expected schooling years of children, reflecting the level of a country's investment in human capital.
Economic well-being is summarized by Gross National Income per capita, PPP-adjusted. The HDI is computed on the basis of the geometric mean of standardized indices in the aforementioned three aspects. Although the HDI has been a key indicator of national progress, it presents a narrow picture of human well-being by excluding subjective and environmental factors. The HDI has traditionally given priority to economic-related indicators such as health, education, and income, without taking into account the subjective view of people regarding their lives and the sustainability of living standards.
According to the HDI Report 2025, India's HDI value moved from 0.676 in 2022 to 0.685 in 2023 with a consistent upward trend. This increase is typically due to gains in income and education, but does not indicate gains in quality of life or overall well-being. Look closer, and even with economic development, India dropped to 126 in the World Happiness Report (2024) from 117 in 2022.
Further, the 2024 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) ranks India among the bottom five in the world at 176 out of 180 with a weak score of 27.6 out of 100 (Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy, 2024). This is a contradictory tendency: there is development growth as indicated by the HDI, but there are declining assessments of life satisfaction and environmental health. This raises a disturbing question: What kind of development is being felt?
In this context, the proposed Sustainable Well-Being Index (SWBI) becomes extremely important as a more advanced and robust indicator. SWBI incorporates two new factors - the Happiness Score and the EPI - to provide a more refined image of human development. Such developments do not merely extend beyond statistical enhancements; they are conceptual shifts that recognize the quality of life, ecological well-being, and emotional fulfillment of populations. For instance, the framework demonstrates that countries with high HDI rankings can still receive low SWBI scores due to poor environmental conditions or widespread social discontent, highlighting the disconnect between economic numbers and lived reality.
The formula of SWBI, where equal weightage is given to five factors (Health, Education, Income, Happiness, and Environmental Quality) and each is standardized to a 0-to-1 scale prior to their aggregation through geometric mean, addresses HDI’s and other Indicators’ shortcomings directly. On the basis of the HDI Report 2025, India's HDI is 0.685, which shows an improvement in areas of education, income, and health. But when the 2024 scores for EPI and happiness are included, the picture is different, showing slight improvement. Normalization of these values on the 0-1 scale provides the following values: Health Index (0.800), Education Index (0.590), Income Index (0.681), Happiness Index (0.38), and EPI Index (0.061). Applying the formula SWBI = (0.800×0.590×0.681×0.38×0.061)^1/5 provides a value of 0.398. The drop of 0.287 points seen is not statistical rounding but is a reason for concern regarding developmental progress.
The drop of 41.9% in score while keeping reality in mind shows that the exclusive use of HDI can prove misleading. Therefore, the embracing of the SWBI facilitates a paradigm shift from considering development as mere accumulation and instead considering it as actual empowerment, enriching debate with such questions as: Are we actually making strides if our citizens are neither happy nor living sustainably?
The need for the SWBI, therefore, is not only analytical but also ethical, forcing the redetermination of progress on the basis of dignity, environmental stewardship, and emotional well-being. A country that scores well on the HDI but low on the EPI and Happiness Index is not moving ahead; rather, it's trying to move ahead in an imbalanced way. However, it is very much possible to narrow down the SWBI-HDI gap, and this calls for an urgent cautionary warning. Policies must shift from being only about economic growth to encouraging social trust, employment security, sound mental health, and social engagement to achieve happiness.
In the EPI context, India's positioning should be addressed. Strict enforcement of pollution laws, clean energy investment, promotion of clean transport, and reforestation and recovery of water bodies are not just needed but also required steps. Urban policies need to become climate-intelligent, and rural India needs clean technology availability. By integrating development goals with environmental well-being and actual human experience, India can improve its SWBI tremendously.
The message is unquestionable: We don't have to give up growth for well-being, but we do need to redefine growth so it includes well-being. If rising numbers fail to translate into happier lives or a healthier planet, then it is crucial to rethink what we define as progress. True development must extend beyond income and infrastructure to encompass emotional well-being, social trust, and environmental sustainability. A nation’s success should not be measured solely by how much it produces, but by how well its people live and how responsibly it stewards the world they inhabit. In the end, growth without joy and sustainability is growth without meaning.
(Agreima Tyagi and Nandini Singh are graduate students, and Aneesh K A is an Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, CHRIST University, India)
(The views expressed are not necessarily those of The South Asian Times)
