Human Development in India

For a long time, a country's progress was judged only by how much it produced (its income). But money is not the whole story. Human development shifts the focus to people: whether they live long, healthy, educated and dignified lives. Understanding this idea, how it is measured, and how it varies across India is central to modern geography and economics.

Human development means enlarging people's choices and improving their well-being, not just raising income. The thinker Amartya Sen and others argued that real development should give people the freedom to live the lives they value.

It rests on a few essentials:

• a long and healthy life,
• access to knowledge (education), and
• a decent standard of living.

Income matters, but only as a means to these ends. A rich country with sick, illiterate people is not truly developed.

People seek a mix of goals, not income alone. A landless labourer, a rich farmer and a city worker each want different things from life. Development must therefore mean more than money. It includes:

• Equal treatment: freedom from discrimination of any kind.
• Freedom: a real say in the decisions that affect one's life.
• Security: of job and of person.
• Clean environment: healthy, pollution-free surroundings.

Non-material things matter as much as income. A regular job may bring lower pay but more security and respect than an insecure higher-paying one. Money cannot buy a peaceful environment, freedom from disease, or being treated as an equal. Development is the combination of goals that lets people lead the kind of life they value.

To compare the development of different countries, the most common measure is income. Since countries have different populations, we use the average income, or per capita income. This is the total income of the country divided by its population.

But averages have a serious weakness: they hide inequality. Two countries, or two villages, can have the same average income, yet one may be far more unequal, with a few very rich people and many poor. Per capita income is useful, but it does not tell the whole story. That gap is why broader measures were created.

To compare well-being across countries and states, the United Nations created the Human Development Index (HDI). It combines three dimensions into a single number between 0 and 1:

• health (measured by life expectancy at birth),
• education (years of schooling), and
• income (standard of living).

Each dimension is measured carefully. The income dimension is per capita GDP (now gross national income) measured at purchasing power parity (PPP), that is, at real purchasing power, not at US-dollar exchange rates. PPP adjusts for the fact that the same money buys more in some countries than in others. The education dimension was historically measured by literacy rates and school enrolment, and is now measured by years of schooling.

A higher HDI means better human development. The HDI lets us see beyond raw wealth: sometimes a place with modest income scores well because it invests in health and schools. The reverse also holds: a country can be quite rich yet rank lower on the HDI if its people are poorly educated or unhealthy.

India also measures human development at home. The Indian Human Development Report studies sample villages across the country. For each sample village it gives three indices:

• Infrastructure and Amenities Index: roads, electricity, water and other facilities.
• Education Related Index: schooling and literacy in the village.
• Health Related Index: health conditions and access to care.

It does not give any unemployment-related index for the villages.

Human development is very uneven across India. Some states do far better than others:

• Kerala consistently ranks highest, with excellent literacy, health and life expectancy, despite only moderate income, thanks to strong investment in education and healthcare, and
• several states lag behind on these measures.

States now track their own progress too. Madhya Pradesh was the first Indian state to prepare and publish its own state Human Development Report. The report was released in Delhi by Amartya Sen. Other states followed with reports of their own.

Regional disparities are not accidental. Three drivers explain why they persist and grow:

• Concentration of investment: investment flows over time to a few favoured locales, so developed areas pull further ahead.
• Agro-climatic disadvantage: some areas are agro-climatically less conducive to development, which limits their farm economy.
• Missed agrarian transformation: some areas saw little change in their agrarian structure, so social and economic opportunities never widened there.

Continuous political instability is not counted among these primary drivers.

These regional disparities show that good policy (investing in people, not just growth) makes a real difference. Reducing the gaps between regions, and between men and women, is one of India's biggest development goals.

A large population is often seen as a burden. But people can be a country's greatest resource, if they are healthy and educated. Human capital is the stock of skill, knowledge and good health embodied in a country's people. Just as money invested in machines creates physical capital, money invested in education, training and health creates human capital. An educated, healthy and skilled worker produces more and earns more than an untrained, sick one. Spending on people is therefore investment, not charity: it yields a return in higher production and income. Japan is poor in natural resources, yet it grew rich precisely by investing in its people.

Two things turn population into human capital.

• Education: raises a person's ability to work. It opens better jobs and higher incomes. It also brings wider social benefits: better health, smaller family size and a stronger democracy. India has expanded schooling and literacy, but quality and dropout rates remain challenges.
• Health: the foundation of all activity. A sick person cannot work or learn. Investment in clean water, sanitation, hospitals and nutrition improves health, and better health raises productivity. India's life expectancy and health indicators have improved greatly since independence, though gaps remain.

Together, education and health are the twin pillars of human-capital formation.

The work people do to earn a living is called economic activity. By the kind of work, activities fall into three sectors:

• Primary: using natural resources directly: farming, fishing, mining, forestry.
• Secondary: making goods by processing raw materials: manufacturing and industry.
• Tertiary: providing services: trade, transport, banking, teaching, health.

Activities also divide into market activities (done for pay or profit) and non-market activities (production for self-use, such as a farmer growing food only for the family, or unpaid domestic work). Non-market activities are often not counted in income, even though they have real value.

Because human development depends on health, education and living standards, the government runs a large family of schemes and missions targeting each dimension. India's effort began with the Community Development Programme of 1952, which sought to instil in millions of ordinary workers "a sense of partnership and of cooperative performance", making villagers partners in development rather than passive recipients. The year 2000 saw two major launches: the Antyodaya Anna Yojana, which gives highly subsidised foodgrains to the poorest households, and the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, which builds all-weather rural roads.

Key schemes in education, nutrition and innovation:

• National Nutrition Mission (POSHAN Abhiyaan): creates awareness about malnutrition among pregnant women and lactating mothers and works to reduce anaemia among children, adolescent girls and women. It does not promote specific foods such as millets or eggs.
• Vidyanjali Yojana: a school volunteer programme that draws on the community and the private sector to raise the quality of education in government schools.
• SWAYAM: an online platform offering free courses, so that affordable and quality education reaches all citizens.
• Unnat Bharat Abhiyan: connects institutions of higher education with local communities so they can solve rural development challenges through appropriate technologies.
• Atal Innovation Mission: the innovation and entrepreneurship mission set up under NITI Aayog, the government's policy think tank.
• National Innovation Foundation (NIF): an autonomous body under the Department of Science and Technology that documents and supports grassroots innovation, not advanced laboratory research.
• Stand Up India: promotes entrepreneurship among SC, ST and women entrepreneurs through bank loans, with refinance provided through SIDBI, the Small Industries Development Bank of India.

Several schemes target sanitation, water, insurance and vulnerable groups:

• Central Rural Sanitation Programme: launched in 1986 to improve the quality of rural life. Sanitation is a State subject under the Constitution, not a Concurrent subject. The India Sanitation Coalition is an industry-led platform, not a body funded by the government and the WHO.
• National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA): a research institute, a think tank on urban issues. It is not an apex body of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs charged with providing innovative solutions to urban India.
• National Water Mission: aims to recycle wastewater for urban needs and to use desalination technologies for coastal cities that lack alternative sources. It does not propose linking Himalayan and peninsular rivers or reimbursing farmers for bore-wells.
• Aam Admi Bima Yojana: life insurance for the head or an earning member of a rural landless household, with entry between 18 and 59 years, plus free scholarships for the insured person's children in classes 9 to 12.
• National Rehabilitation and Resettlement Policy, 2007: framed by the Ministry of Rural Development, it covers all involuntary displacement, not only displacement caused by land acquisition.
• Swadhar: supports women in difficult circumstances, such as survivors of disasters and released prisoners. It is implemented through Local Self Government bodies or reputed voluntary organisations. Swayam Siddha is the separate scheme for holistic empowerment of women through Self Help Groups, implemented through the ICDS (Integrated Child Development Services) units set up in the states.
• Nehru Rozgar Yojana: an urban poverty scheme made of three parts, urban micro enterprises, urban wage employment, and housing and shelter upgradation.

Work is the main route out of poverty, so employment programmes sit at the heart of human development policy. A basic concept here is disguised unemployment: more workers are engaged in an activity than it needs, so the marginal productivity of the extra workers is zero. Removing them would not reduce output. This is common in Indian agriculture: for example, eight people may farm a plot that four could manage. More broadly, unemployment exists when people who are able and willing to work cannot find jobs. It wastes human capital, keeps people poor and increases dependence. India faces other special forms of it:

• Seasonal unemployment: people find work only in certain seasons, such as sowing and harvest, and are idle the rest of the year. It too is common in farming.
• Educated unemployment: in towns, many educated young people cannot find jobs suited to their qualifications.

The landmark law is the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), 2005. It guarantees 100 days of wage employment in a year to any rural household whose adult members volunteer for unskilled manual work. Eligibility is universal: it is not restricted by caste, community or poverty status. The guarantee is a legal entitlement, not a fundamental right under the Constitution. Workers must be paid the statutory minimum wage fixed for agricultural workers in the state, and at least one-third of those employed must be women. Earlier wage programmes led up to it: the Employment Assurance Scheme guaranteed lean-season employment to at least one man and one woman in every rural family below the poverty line, and the Swarna Jayanti Shahari Rozgar Yojana (1997) merged the Nehru Rozgar Yojana, the Urban Basic Services Programme and the Prime Minister's Integrated Urban Poverty Eradication Programme into one urban employment scheme. The Prime Minister's Rozgar Yojana stayed separate. The Bharat Nirman plan for rural infrastructure counted rural drinking water among its six components.

Labour welfare measures protect workers in their jobs and after them:

• Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maan-dhan (PM-SYM): a pension scheme for unorganised workers, with entry between 18 and 40 years, age-specific contributions by the beneficiary, a minimum pension of Rs 3,000 per month from age 60, and family pension for the spouse only.
• Employees' State Insurance Scheme: social security cover that now extends to hotels and restaurants, motor transport undertakings, newspaper establishments and private medical institutions.
• Casual workers: entitled to regular working hours and overtime payment, but not automatically to Employees Provident Fund cover. The government can direct an establishment to pay wages only through bank accounts.
• Industrial Employment (Standing Orders) Amendment Rules, 2018: introduced fixed-term employment, which makes lay-offs easier, and provided that no notice of termination is needed for a temporary workman.
• National Renewal Fund: safeguards workers affected by technological upgradation of industry or the closure of sick units, through retraining and compensation.
• National Career Service: a job-matching initiative of the Ministry of Labour and Employment open to all job seekers, educated and uneducated alike.

India's young population is an asset only if it is skilled. The flagship programme is the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY), run by the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, not the labour ministry. Beyond trade skills, it imparts soft skills, entrepreneurship, and financial and digital literacy. It also aims to align the competencies of India's unregulated workforce with the National Skills Qualification Framework (NSQF), a national system that grades skills into competency levels. Under the NSQF a learner can earn certification through formal, non-formal or informal learning, and the framework promotes mobility between vocational and general education.

• Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL): a PMKVY component that certifies skills workers already possess from traditional or informal channels, for example construction workers.
• Swawlamban: provides training and skills to women in both traditional and non-traditional trades to improve their employability.
• Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development: the national youth development institute, located at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu.

Development must also last. Sustainable development means meeting the needs of the present without harming the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. This matters because many resources, such as groundwater, forests, fossil fuels and clean air, are being used faster than they can be replaced. Development that destroys the environment or exhausts resources is not real progress. It simply borrows from the future.