January 02, 2026
In his Hindustan Times column, OHT’s Dr. Ramanan Laxminarayan revisits the World Development Report 1993, a landmark World Bank report that reshaped how development is understood. The report challenged the long-held belief that economic growth automatically leads to better health. Instead, it showed, using global evidence, that health is a precondition for development, not merely its outcome.
The report demonstrated that some of the highest-return public investments are basic health interventions such as vaccination, sanitation, clean drinking water, maternal care, and nutrition. Countries that pursued rapid growth without protecting population health paid a high price. Russia’s declining adult life expectancy and Brazil’s stalled progress after early economic gains highlight how poor health can undermine productivity and long-term growth.
“Thirty years after it was published, the World Development Report lesson is poorly understood. We can continue to chase GDP and hope that health follows. Or we can learn what was already evident in 1993: That the most important infrastructure a nation builds is the health and capability of its people — and that without it, GDP growth will always be fragile, unequal, and incomplete.”
Read here.
