What are the Millennium Development Goals?
The concept of Millennium Development Goals or MDGs originated in the Millennium Declaration of the UN General Assembly in the year 2000. It consisted of eight goals, that were framed to address the different socio-economic-environmental issues in different parts of the world. The member nations of the UN were to achieve these goals by the year 2015. The eight goals are as under
Goal 1: Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger
Goal 2: Achieve Universal Primary Education
Goal 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women
Goal 4: Reduce Child Mortality
Goal 5: Improve Maternal Health
Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and TB
Goal 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability
Goal 8: Develop Global Partnership for Development
Eighteen (18) targets were set as quantitative benchmarks for attaining the goals. A revised indicator-framework drawn up by the Inter-Agency and Expert Group (IAEG) on MDGs came into effect in 2008. This framework had 8 Goals and 21 targets. It is as follows:
Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
- Target 1A: Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people living on less than $1.25 a day
- Target 1B: Achieve Decent Employment for Women, Men, and Young People
- Target 1C: Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger
Goal 2:
Achieve universal primary education
- Target 2A: By 2015, all children can complete a full course of primary schooling, girls and boys
Goal 3:
Promote gender equality and empower women
- Target 3A: Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015
Goal 4:
Reduce child mortality rates
- Target 4A: Reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate
Goal 5:
Improve maternal health
- Target 5A: Reduce by three quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio
- Target 5B: Achieve, by 2015, universal access to reproductive health
Goal 6:
Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
- Target 6A: Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS
- Target 6B: Achieve, by 2010, universal access to treatment for HIV/AIDS for all those who need it
- Target 6C: Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases
Goal 7:
Ensure environmental sustainability
- Target 7A: Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs; reverse loss of environmental resources
- Target 7B: Reduce biodiversity loss, achieving, by 2010, a significant reduction in the rate of loss
- Target 7C: Halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation
- Target 7D: By 2020, to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum-dwellers
Goal 8:
Develop a global partnership for development
- Target 8A: Develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, non-discriminatory trading and financial system
- Target 8B: Address the Special Needs of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs)
- Target 8C: Address the special needs of landlocked developing countries and small island developing States
- Target 8D: Deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries through national and international measures in order to make debt sustainable in the long term
- Target 8E: In co-operation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable, essential drugs in developing countries
- Target 8F: In co-operation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications
Where India stands in achieving the MDGs?
India has not endorsed this revised framework of 2008, but is following the MDG 2003 Framework. It includes all the eight goals, but only 12 targets. The other Targets has been discarded either due to their irrelevance w.r.t India or due to the non-availability of supporting data.
According to the latest official report, India's progress towards achieving MDGs is as shown below:
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