Sustainable Development (original) (raw)

The United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set the stage for developing countries to reduce extreme poverty and the problems that accompany it, such as hunger, high rates of infant, child and maternal mortality, insufficient disease control, lack of education, illiteracy, gender disparity and environmental degradation. Each goal has a specific target level for progress, such as halving poverty or reducing infant mortality rates by two thirds. All goals are to be reached by 2015, using 1990 as the benchmark year. By setting a time frame and specific levels of reductions for a variety of indicators, progress towards the goals is measurable, if data on indicators is available. Tracking progress is an essential step towards meeting the goals, as problem areas can be identified only through monitoring and evaluation, and interventions and strategies can then be developed to target them. South Asia as a whole seems likely to halve poverty levels by 2015, due in large part to India's progress on this MDG indicator. However, the situation is not as promising in other areas, such as reduction of high rates of infant, under-five and maternal mortality. There are wide inter-country, interstate and intra-state differences in levels of progress towards the goals throughout South Asia. In a country as large and as populous as India, tackling problems such as high maternal mortality rates at the state and even at the district levels could determine whether India as a whole achieves the MDGs. Over one billion of the roughly 1.37 billion residents of South Asia reside in India, which means that India's achievement of any of the goals brings South Asia as a whole a step closer towards regional goal attainment.