People as Resource

People as Resource is a way of referring to a country’s working people in terms of their existing productive skills and abilities. When the existing 'human resource' is further developed by becoming more educated and healthy, we call it 'human capital formation' that adds to the productive power of the country just like 'physical capital formation'.

Human capital is in one way superior to other resources like land and physical capital: human resource can make use of land and capital. Land and capital cannot become useful on its own.

In India, a large population has been considered a liability rather than an asset. But a large

population need not be a liability. It can be turned into a productive asset by investment in human capital.

Investment in human resource (via education and medical care) can give high rates of return in the future. This investment on people is the same as investment in land and capital.

Educated parents are found to invest more heavily on the education of their child. This is because they have realised the importance of education for themselves. They are also conscious of proper nutrition and hygiene. They accordingly look after their children’s needs for education at school and good health. A virtuous cycle is thus created in this case. In contrast, a vicious cycle may be created by disadvantaged parents who, themselves uneducated and lacking in hygiene, keep their children in a similarly disadvantaged state.

Countries like Japan did not have any natural resource. These countries are developed/rich countries. They import the natural resource needed in their country. They have invested on people especially in the field of education and health. These people have made efficient use of other resource like land and capital. Efficiency and the technology evolved by people have made these countries rich/developed.

Economic Activities by Men and Women

Economic activities have been classified into three main sectors i.e., primary, secondary and tertiary. Primary sector includes agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, fishing, poultry farming,

mining, and quarrying. Manufacturing is included in the secondary sector. Trade, transport, communication, banking, education, health, tourism, services, insurance etc. are included in the tertiary sector.

Economic activities have two parts — market activities and non-market activities.

Market activities involve remuneration to any one who performs i.e., activity performed for pay

or profit. These include production of goods or services including government service.

Non-market activities are the production for self-consumption. These can be consumption and processing of primary product and own account production of fixed assets.

Education

Education helps individual to make better use of the economic opportunities available before

him. Education opens new horizon, provides new aspiration and develops values of life. Education contributes towards the growth of society also. It enhances the national income, cultural richness and increases the efficiency of governance.

An establishment of pace setting of schools like Navodaya Vidyalaya in each district. Vocational streams have been developed to equip large number of high school students with occupations related to knowledge and skills.

The literacy rates have increased from 18% in 1951 to 74% in 2010-11.

Literacy among males is nearly 16.6% higher than females and it is about 16.1% higher in

urban areas as compared to the rural areas. In 2011 Literacy rates vary from 94% in Kerala to 62% in Bihar.

Policies initiated to increase literate Population

 “Sarva Siksha Abhiyan is a significant step towards providing elementary education to all

children in the age group of six to fourteen years by 2010

Bridge courses and back-to-school camps have been initiated to increase the enrollment in

elementary education.

Mid-day meal scheme has been implemented to encourage attendance and retention of children and improve their nutritional status.

The eleventh plan endeavored to increase the enrollment in higher education of the 18 to 23 years age group to 15% by 2011-12 and to 21% by twelfth plan. The strategy focuses on increasing  access, quality, adoption of states-specific curriculum modification,

vocationalisation and networking on the use of information technology. The plan also focuses on distant education, convergence of formal, non-formal, distant and IT education institutions.

Health

The health of a person helps him to realise his potential and the ability to fight illness. An unhealthy person becomes a liability for an organisation indeed; health is an indispensable basis

for realising one’s well being.

Our national policy, aims at improving the accessibility of health care, family welfare and nutritional service with a special focus on the under-privileged segment of population.

Measures adopted have increased the life expectancy to over 66 years in 2011. Infant mortality

rate (IMR) has come down from 147 in 1951 to and 42 in 2012. Crude birth rates have dropped to 22.1 and death rates to 7 within the same duration of time

Unemployment

Unemployment is said to exist when people who are willing to work at the going wages cannot find jobs.

In case of India we have unemployment in rural and urban areas. In case of rural areas, there is seasonal and disguised unemployment. Urban areas have mostly educated unemployment.

Seasonal unemployment happens when people are not able to find jobs during some months of the year. People dependant upon agriculture usually face such kind of problem.

In case of disguised unemployment people appear to be employed. This usually happens among family members engaged in agricultural activity. More people are working in an area, where less number of people are required, even if you remove extra workers the production doesn’t gets affected.

In case of urban areas educated unemployment has become a common phenomenon. Many youth with matriculation, graduation and post graduation degrees are not able to find job. A paradoxical manpower situation is witnessed as surplus of manpower in certain categories coexist with shortage of manpower in others. There is unemployment among technically qualified person on one hand, while there is a dearth of technical skills required for economic growth.

Unemployment tends to increase economic overload. The dependence of the unemployed on the working population increases. The quality of life of an individual as well as of society is adversely affected. Unemployment has detrimental impact on the overall growth of an economy. Increase in unemployment is an indicator of a depressed economy. It also wastes the resource, which could have been gainfully employed. If people cannot be used as a resource they naturally appear as a liability to the economy.

Agriculture, is the most labour absorbing sector of the economy. In recent years, there has been a decline in the dependence of population on agriculture, some of the surplus labour in agriculture has moved to either the secondary or the tertiary sector. In the secondary sector, small scale manufacturing is the most labour - absorbing. In case of the tertiary sector, various new services are now appearing like biotechnology, information technology and so on.