Some years ago, NITI Aayog said it would prepare a ‘single, informative dashboard for all the twenty-nine (later 32) global indices’ on which India was ranked. This monitoring exercise was ‘not just to improve rankings but to improve systems and drive reforms to attract investments and to shape India’s perception globally’.

This did not happen, for whatever reason, but that should not stop us from doing it ourselves. For one of my books, I looked at more than four dozen global indicators to compare where India stood now compared to 2014. I periodically revisit the data and it is instructive to know what the position is. Let’s have a look.

On the Human Development Index, India’s rank in 2014 was 130 and its rank today is unchanged. The UN report says that “inequality reduces India’s HDI b

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