Economy Class 9: People as Resource

‘People as Resource’ is a method of referring to the individuals contributing in a positive manner in the growth of the economy. People become a resource (human capital) when an investment is made in education, training, and proper medical care. For example, despite not having any significant natural resources, countries like Japan are rich/developed as they have invested in human resources. 

Different Economic Activities of People

People as Resource and Human capital in a country undertakes various economic activities that have been classified into three main sectors, i.e., primary, secondary, and tertiary. 

• The primary areas include agriculture, cattle cultivation, fishing, poultry, mining, and quarrying
• The secondary area covers manufacturing activities of the produce coming out of the primary sector
• The tertiary sector includes all the supporting functions that contribute towards the success of the primary and secondary sector, such as transport, communication, banking, education, health and public administrations, etc

These activities add value to the national income and are termed as economic activities. There are mainly two types of economic activities: Market activities and non-market activities. 

• Market exercises include compensation to any individual who performs any action. This incorporate creation of merchandise or services, including government service
• Non-market activities are the production for self-consumption. These can be consumption and processing of primary products and own-account

Quality of Population (Human Capital)

The quality of population in any economy depends upon various factors like their literacy rate, life expectancy and acquired skills. Only literate and healthy people can contribute towards the economy’s success and can act as an asset for the nation.

Let’s discuss in more detail about these two important factors, i.e. education and health.

Education

Not only for the individual, but education also contributes positively towards economic growth. It enhances national income, cultural richness and increases the efficiency of governance.

Our Government has taken various steps to promote education:

• Provision for universal access, retention, and quality in elementary education emphasizes girls
• Establishment of pace-setting of schools like Navodaya Vidyalaya in each district
• Development of vocational streams to equip students with occupation-related skills
• Initiatives like Sarva Siksha Abhiyan, bridge courses, and back-to-school camps have been initiated
• The midday meal scheme has been implemented to encourage attendance and retention of children and improve their nutritional status

Impact of these Initiatives:

• The literacy rates had increased from 18% in 1951 to 85% in 2017

• The primary school system expanded to over 8.41 lakh in 2015–16
• The Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in the age group of 18 to 23 years is 26.3% in 2018–19
• Over the past 50 years, there has been significant growth in the number of universities and institutions of higher learning in specialized areas

Health 

Health of the population of any economy directly portrays its economic productivity. The government shall give utmost priority to the health of its people by providing better health care infrastructure and facilities, implication of various health care programmes and nutritional services. Our national policy, too, aims at improving the accessibility of healthcare, family welfare and nutritional service with a special focus on the underprivileged segment of the population. Government initiatives such as ICDS, Janani suraksha yojna, PM-JAY have wide coverage from villages to metropolitan cities. The major outcomes of these programmes are decrease in the maternal mortality rate, infant mortality rate, increase in the life expectancy etc. with the help of all these initiatives our infant mortality rate has come down from 147 in 1951 to 29.07 in 2020.

Unemployment 

Unemployment is a condition where the employable population is not able to get the jobs and earn wages for their livelihood. In India, mainly there are two types of unemployment, one that is seasonal and other is disguised. Seasonal unemployment is a condition when people are not able to find work for some part of the year, for example, in the agriculture field, people involved in agricultural activities stay unemployed during the off season and hence are not able to support their families.

Disguised unemployment is a condition where people seem to be employed but actually, they are unemployed, like in the case of the agricultural sector, where the actual requirement is ten people, but fifteen people are engaged in doing that job and most of them are family members, so they seem disguised as unemployed.  

Unemployment leads to wastage of manpower resources and the quality of life of an individual as well as of society is adversely affected. Increase in unemployment is a clear indicator of a depressed economy. It also wastes the resource, which otherwise could have been gainfully employed.

In cities there is also educated unemployment found due to lack of skills and opportunities. Hence, the government is focusing on the programmes for vocational education and skill development to eliminate unemployment. Many Government run institutions impart skill development to many graduates so that unemployment can be reduced. 

Conclusion

For the development of an economy, its main asset is its human resource; only if they are educated, skilled and healthy then only can we say that the economy is developing.  As a part of policy, our government runs many programmes to improve the health, education and employability of our people so they can contribute to economic progress.

Unemployment is an obstacle in the development of any nation, where the youth of a country is unable to find appropriate employment and it can only be reduced when the population is skilled to perform various economic activities.