What are the main problems of human capital formation in India?
India is faced with many problems of human capital formation. These are as follows:
i. Rising Population: The rising population exerts pressure on the available limited resources. In other words, it reduces the per head availability of facilities like housing, sanitation, education, power supply, etc. So, the pressure on these facilities retards the quality of life and lowers the capacity to acquire specialised skills and knowledge.
ii. Brain Drain: People migrate from one place to another in search of better job opportunities and handsome salaries. This puts a serious threat to the process of human capital formation. It leads to the loss of quality people like doctors, engineers, etc. who have high caliber and are rare in a developing country. The cost of such loss of quality human capital is very high.
iii. Improper Man Power Planning: India lacks in proper man power planning. No major efforts have been taken to maintain the demand-supply balance of the rising labour force. So, it leads to the wastage and misallocation of human skills.
iv. Low Academic Standards: In order to spread education, various educational institutions are opening up regardless of deficiency in their standards. These institutions impart inferior quality of education and skills and that in turn causes deficiency in the productivity and efficiency. This is one of the important hindrances for the development of quality human capital formation.
Discuss the need for promoting women’s education in India.
Trace the relationship between human capital and economic growth.
Discuss the following as a source of human capital formation
(i) Health infrastructure
(ii) Expenditure on migration.
‘There is a downward trend in inequality world-wide with a rise in the average education levels’. Comment.
Education is considered to be an important input for the development of a nation. How?
How is human development a broader term as compared to human capital?
What factors contribute to human capital formation?
Argue in favour of the need for different forms of government intervention in education and health sectors.
How government organisations facilitate the functioning of schools and hospitals in India?
Explain how investment in education stimulates economic growth.
What was the focus of the economic policies pursued by the colonial government in India? What were the impacts of these policies?
What do you mean by rural development? Bring out the key issues in rural development.
Define a plan?
Who is a worker?
Explain the term ‘infrastructure’.
What is meant by environment?
Why are regional and economic groupings formed?
Why were reforms introduced in India?
Why calorie-based norm is not adequate to identify the poor?
Name some notable economists who estimated India’s per capita income during the colonial period?
Highlight any two serious adverse environmental consequences of development in India. India’s environmental problems pose a dichotomy — they are poverty induced and, at the same time, due to affluence in living standards — is this true?
Explain the term ‘infrastructure’.
Fill in the blanks
(a) First Five Year Plan of ________________ commenced in the year 1956. (Pakistan/China)
(b) Maternal mortality rate is high in _____________. (China/Pakistan)
(c) Proportion of people below poverty line is more in __________. (India/Pakistan)
(d) Reforms in ______________ were introduced in 1978. (China/Pakistan)
What do you mean by rural development? Bring out the key issues in rural development.
Highlight the salient features of India’s pre-independence occupational structure.
The newly emerging jobs are found mostly in the sector (service/manufacturing).
Account for the current environmental crisis.
What is the sectoral composition of an economy? Is it necessary that the service sector should contribute maximum to the GDP of an economy? Comment.
How can creation of income earning assets address the problem of poverty?
What objectives did the British intend to achieve through their policies of infrastructure development in India?