Assam institute to help prepare Arunachal HDR

ITANAGAR: The Arunachal Pradesh government has signed a memorandum of understanding with a Guwahati-based institute on Saturday to prepare the second Human Development Report (HDR) for the state.
The state government inked the pact with OKD Institute of Social Change and Development to prepare the report within 18 months based on the theme of "Rethinking Sustainability with global and national commitment on sustainable development goals i.e Planet and People for prosperity".
The state government felt that there is an urgent need to prepare the second report using the latest available data as the first report was published almost 14 years back. As a result of it, state planners, academicians, research scholars and policy makers were facing numerous difficulties in their respective fields, a government statement read.
The first HDR was prepared in 2005 in collaboration with the Rajiv Gandhi University here. "The major motivation to bring out the next HDR was that there should be people centred development. The Human Development Index not only focus on economic opulence but also other aspects of human lives," the statement read.
Arunachal chief secretary Satya Gopal also assured support to the institute in its assigned work and expressed hope that the report would address the issue of inequality in human development in Arunachal Pradesh. The chief secretary added that the report should provide a framework to study the inequality trends, understand their drivers, their impact as well as provide a framework that could help in taking informed policy decisions in order to ensure sustainable development and reduction in inequalities in society, the statement added.
In 1990, the first HDR introduced a new approach for advancing human wellbeing. Human development - or the human development approach - is about expanding the richness of human life, rather than simply the richness of the economy in which human beings live.