I don't know what you mean "neo-liberal", but nobody is using _PPP numbers_ in India to support neo-liberal policies.....
It is "buried" in the statistics they (the neo-liberal proponents) use. For example, on Thursday you helpfully posted the Financial Express's article on the statement from the Government releasing the HDI statistics. The first line (quoted from your post) reads: "India's human development index (HDI) has shown a steady improvement in the last couple of years. India's ranking, however, at 127 out of 177 countries remains the same as in the previous year..."
Well, this HDI, that has "shown steady improvement in the last couple of years" is partly based on the PPP version of India's GNI (and only that version is presented). What the Government should really have to answer for is why - after decades of significant improvement - the infant mortality rate and the under-five mortality rate have NOT improved "in the last couple of years". For reasons I explained earlier, these are much more illustrative statistics when it comes to human development. In fact there were almost 2.5 million child deaths EACH year. According to UN and Government of India-agreed estimates the vast majority of these deaths could have been prevented and were unnecessary - if these poor children had been given a small fraction of the "political commitment" shown the business community.
BTW, I would *guess* that for the pro-neo liberals virtually every GDP\GNI statistic in the India vs. China debate uses the PPP version.
Btw, the Human Development Report for India is prepared by India's Planning Commission. What WB has to do with it?
Ulhas
Yes the last Report was 2001 (publ. 2002) and prepared by the IPC, funded by the UNDP. The various Indian state reports (worth looking at, see http://hdr.undp.org/reports/view_reports.cfm?country=IND&countryname=INDIA%20 ) were prepared by the state governments and funded by UNDP. These reports are different than the global Human Development Report which publishes the global HDI and is published exclusively by UNDP itself. The press report you posted referred to the global UNDP report. It prepares the HDI based on the data received from the World Bank (for national accounts).
Paul
