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Indian democracy, a role model for developing world

The United Nations today acknowledged Indian democracy as a role model for the developing world and said New Delhi's track record on human rights promotion and development has sweeping significance for a rights-based approach to progress.

The United Nations Human Development Report 2000 released today, which placed India four notches ahead on the Human Development Index to rank 128, said the country was a powerful example of the creative use of human rights instruments in social transformation.

India's approach, the report said, encouraged the capacity of people to change laws, institutional arrangements and norms to consistently fight for improvement in the quality of their lives.

"The research for HDR 2000 came up again and again with India as a leading country in the promotion of human rights and mobilisation of rights to press for social transformation," the report said.

It praised India for significant progress in participation of women in local politics, creative use of public interest litigation, effectiveness of its vibrant civil society and mobilisation of its democratic institutions.

Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, who has written the conceptual framework of the report, said, "Human development and human rights are close enough in motivation and concerns to be compatible, yet different enough in strategy and design to supplement each other fruitfully."

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