People as a Resource

The human capital refers to the country’s workforce based on their existing productive skills and capabilities. The ‘human resource’ is developed by education and health care facilities to add to the productive power of the country. This is called ‘human capital formation’.
Investment in human resource leads to high rates of return in future. Educated parents, unlike the disadvantaged ones, invest more in the education, food and health of their child as they realise the importance of education, nutrition and hygiene.

Economic activities by men and women

• Various activities are divided into three categories: primary, secondary and tertiary.
  • Primary: It includes agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, fishing, poultry farming, mining and quarrying.
  • Secondary: It mainly includes manufacturing.
  • Tertiary: It includes trade, transport, communication, banking, education, health, tourism, services, insurance, etc.
• Household work is not recognised in the National Income and women are not paid for it.
• Any individual in the market earns on the basis of education and skill.
• Women earn lower wages than men as they have meagre education and low skill formation.
• There is an absence of basic facilities like maternity leave, childcare and social security systems.
• Women with high education and skill formation are paid equal to men.

Quality of Population

• It depends on the literacy rate, health determined by life expectancy and skill acquired.

Education

• Education enhances natural income, cultural richness and increases efficiency of governance.
• Elementary education has been provided with universal access, retention and quality
• The policy lays special emphasis on girls.
• Literacy is a right and a need for citizens to perform their duties and enjoy their rights.
• However, the huge expansion was diluted by poor quality of schooling and high dropout rates.
• Mid-day meals were introduced for improving nutritional status, attendance and retention of children.
• The number of university and institutions of higher learning in specialised areas has increased significantly over the past 50 years.

Health

• The national policy aims at improving access to healthcare, family welfare and nutritional service, with emphasis on the unprivileged segment of the population.

Unemployment

• A person is said to be unemployed if he is willing to work at the going wages but cannot find jobs.
• Seasonal unemployment renders people unemployed during some months of the year.
• In disguised unemployment, people appear to be employed but are actually not employed.
• In the Urban areas, unemployed people are mostly educated.
• Manpower resource is wasted as people are unemployed.
• Unemployment increase economic overload and dependence on the working population.
• In the primary sector, people are self-employed.
• Surplus labour has moved from primary to secondary and tertiary sectors.