Page 30 - DECO303_INDIAN_ECONOMY_ENGLISH

Unit 2: Structure of Indian Economy

Notes

Case Study Human Development and Gender Development in
India

conomic development is a process whereby the real per capita income of a country
increases over a long period of time. The increase in the quality of human beings
Eby education, health, nutrition, etc. help to increase the physical output (Schultz,
1978). Therefore, human resource development along with physical capital formation
plays a useful role in economic development. In fact, effective use of physical capital itself
is dependent upon human resources. Therefore, large scale investment is needed in human
resources if physical capital available is to be exploited more fully and in a more efficient
way (Adiseshiah, 1970).
Human resource development is the process of increasing knowledge, skill and capacities
of all the people in a given society (Pramanik, 1980). In economic terms, it means
accumulation of human capital and its effective utilization for the development of the
economy. Human development and human resource development, though different, are
linked by the fact that human development provides the preconditions for human resource
development to contribute to economic growth.
A widely accepted indicator of economic well-being of a country is its real per capita
income, but it gives only a partial picture, ignoring social and cultural aspects of
development of people. Morris (1979) defined development in terms of improvement in
the quality of life of people. Quality of life has multiple dimensions ranging from economic
to social, environmental, political, and psychological and philosophical aspects. Computing
a quality of life index involved the problems of choice of indicators and of assigning
weights to them. Since all components do not move in same direction, a composite index
creates its own problems of interpretation.
After much effort, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) unveiled Human
Development Index (HDI) in 1990. It was a bold attempt of UNDP to capture the diverse
content of multidimensional character of human development. HDI is a reasonable proxy
for several dimensions of well-being of the people, and most importantly, in the absence
of an alternative single measure that better measures human development. It defines
human development as a process of enlarging people’s choices. These choices are captured
by HDI in three fundamental dimensions – a long and healthy life, knowledge level and
a decent standard of living. The Human Development Report focused on gender issues
also to take into account the struggle of women for their rights and developed a Gender
Development Index (GDI) also.
India’s achievement with respect to human development has been rather poor, despite
elements of human development being a part of India’s Five Year Plans (Tilak, 1999). Its
spending on social sector (human priority) is reportedly only 2.5 per cent of GDP at the
end of 1991. The stringent financial situation immediately after 1991 led to a further
reduction in social sector spending if the early trends in the sphere continued. Hence, the
human development and gender development before and after 1991 would help to
understand the social commitment of the governments in India.

Questions
1. Explain the interrelationship between human development and economic
development.
2. Collect the secondary data on male and female life expectancy, adult literacy rate,
enrolment ratio in primary, secondary and tertiary, male and female population.
Source: http://www.hss.iitb.ac.in/ties07/paper/ts3/psE/2.doc.

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