Chapter 2 People as Resource

Yes, many differences can be noticed between these two friends.

Difference between Sakal and Vilas

1. Yes, the literacy rates of the population have increased from 18% in 1951 to 74% in 2010-11. Literacy is not only a right, it is also needed if the citizens are to perform their duties and enjoy their rights properly. A vast difference is noticed across different sections of population. Literacy among males is higher than females and in urban areas higher then rural areas.

2. In 2001, India has the highest literacy rates; however, literacy rates vary from state to state.

3. Literacy rate is high among the males of India because of the comparative regularity in males’ education system. Women are not preferred to be given education in many places because of erred social and economic beliefs.

4. Women are less educated than men because their education is not in regular form and sometimes no education is provided them at all. Being a male dominated society, it is still considered in some areas that literacy is not that important for women and only men need it; especially in the rural areas.

5. In India literacy rate is calculated by dividing the number of literate persons with total population and multiplied by 100. Literacy rate refers that how many people in a country or state are there who are literate and remaining is total population which includes all whether the person is literate or not.

6. 80% in 2010 is India’s literacy rate according to my projection. If literacy rates will rise to 80% then it can be considered a vast change in the field of education. It will help people in many ways like in improving living standard, maintaining hygiene and other things.

1. Percentage increase in dispensaries and hospitals from 2010 to 2013 is

2. Percentage increase in doctors and nursing personnel from 2010 to 2013 is

3. No, the increase in the number of doctors and nurses are not adequate for India because the rate at which population has grown in the last half century easily outnumbers it. This number is important because a healthy ratio between the available medical facilities and the patients needs to be maintained. The numbers of medical professionals has failed to match the requirement because of the fact that education has not been able to be available to a major portion of the population.

4. Other facilities that I would like to provide in a hospital are as follows:

(I) X-ray machines (II) Ambulance (III) Advance equipments (IV) Mobile and health checkup van. (V) Ultrasound (VI) MRI (VII) Nutritive food (VIII) Awareness about family planning.

5. I have visited the government hospital nearby my residential area. Over there I found:

i. Long queues of patients because of the lack of doctors and shortage of nurses.

ii. Unavailability of requisite medicines for several basic ailments.

iii. Poor hygiene and improper disposal of medical waste.

iv. The power backup facility was not up to the mark.

1. No, the increase in number of colleges is not adequate to admit the increasing number of students, because the percentage in which the number of students have increased is far greater than the comparative increase in the number of colleges. Also, as the number of colleges is small, maintaining a healthy student-teacher ratio is a challenge.

2. Yes, we should have more number of universities to raise the level of higher education in India. The students who have attained education on the primary and secondary levels require to be trained in the vocational courses, which makes it essential to have an ample number of universities to accommodate the rising number of students.

3. The increase is noticed among the teachers in the year 1998-1999 is 3, 18,000(3, 42,000-24,000). This increase is important to note as the number of students rose to a great extent by 1998-99 and thus to manage a healthy student-teacher ratio is important beyond discussion.

4. The number of colleges and universities are required to increase both in quantity as well as quality standards. This means that while the new colleges must have new and advanced courses, the older institutes must also be updated in order to cater to the increasing number of students. The future colleges and universities must make it a point to recruit able and willing teaching as well as support staff to ensure that the quality of education keeps on enhancing.

It refers to the fact that the human beings are assets for an economy and they are the working capital having different productive skills and abilities. People as a resource contribute to the creation of the National Product. Growing population may be considered as the positive aspect and a factor of production if people work in an efficient manner so that they are able to contribute to the national growth and development. The population of a country becomes human capital when there is an investment made in the form of education, training and medical care.

Difference between human resource and other resources:

Education is the most significant element of human resource development. It makes people capable of reading, writing, speaking and understanding.

1. It improves the level of understanding of various important aspects of life.

2. It is helpful in opening new scopes for the people in different fields and provides encouragement.

3. It develops knowledge, skill and value of life.

4. It is helpful in improving human behaviour.

5. It is helpful in enhancing the total productivity of labour.

6. It promotes rational and scientific outlook for the solution of problems faced by the country.

Role of health in human capital formation:

Health plays a significant role the same as education. It doesn’t mean that you don’t have any disease but it also means that favourable condition of physical and mental well-being.

Good health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being. If a person is not healthy then he or she won’t be able to work properly whether the person is educated or not. Because the health of a person helps her/him to realize the potential and the ability to fight illness.

Workers, whose health is not good, fall sick quite often and they cannot do their jobs efficiently. So, for the growth of the economy, a person’s health is very important to be good.

Improvement in the health status of the population has been the priority of the country. National policy is also aimed at improving the accessibility of health care, family welfare and nutritional service with special focus on the underprivileged segment of the population.

Role of health in human's working life:
Health plays a significant role the same as education. Health doesn’t mean that you don’t have any disease but also it means that favorable condition of physical and mental well-being.

Good health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being. If a person is not healthy then s/he won’t be able to work properly whether the person is educated or not. Because the health of a person helps her/him to realize the potential and the ability to fight illness.

Workers, whose health is not good, fall sick quite often and they cannot do their jobs efficiently. So, for the growth of the economy a person’s health is very important to be good which plays a vital role in human capital formation.

Improvement in the health status of the population has been the priority of the country. National policy is also aimed at improving the accessibility of health care, family welfare and nutritional service with special focus on the underprivileged segment of the population.

Various activities undertaken may be classified under three sectors namely (i) Primary sector, (ii) Secondary sector and (iii) Tertiary sector.

1. Primary Sector: The primary sector involves agriculture, forestry, poultry, animal husbandry and mining. Here, lands are cultivated for producing grains and other food items, while animal husbandry refers to the science of breeding and caring of farm animals. This sector basically deals with agriculture. This sector deals with using the resources available in the natural form and converting them into some usable products of consumption.

2. Secondary Sector: The secondary sector involves construction of large building typically a large structure and manufacturing which refers to the process of converting raw materials, components, or parts into finished goods that meet a customer’s expectations or specifications. It commonly employs a man-machine setup with division of labor in a large scale production.

3. Tertiary Sector: The tertiary sector involves transport, communication, banking, health, education, insurance etc. This sector is predominantly governed by the educated section of the society. The activities of this sector require a certain level of vocational skill and knowledge. This sector is responsible for maintaining and increasing the efficiency of the activities in both the other sectors.

Economic activities:
1. The activities which are performed for money and results in economic income are called economic activities. These activities add value to the national income.
2. Generally carried out to satisfy human needs.
3. E.g activities that result in monetary gains like mining, forestry, etc.

Non-economic activities:
1. Those activities which are not performed for money and do not result in economic income are called non-economic activities.
2. Generally carried out for gaining social and psychological satisfaction.
3. E.g. social service activities like volunteering in an NGO, charity, etc.

Following reasons are responsible for the low paid employment of women:

1. Higher education is required for more pay but socially males are prioritized in education on regular basis on the other side females are educated on an irregular basis sometimes not that too.

2. There are a few places where men are put at top priority because of being a male-dominated world. Women are kept inside the house due to which training and skill can’t be gained by them which is the requirement for responsible and well-paid employment opportunities.

3. There are few works which need more physical strength but women are considered physically weak and thus are paid less even for the same number of hours worked.

4. Women are often burdened with the added responsibility for the household chores which makes them an uncertain resource. Due to this, the employers tend to pay them lesser than the males.

Unemployment: Unemployment is that situation when a person wants to work at given wages but due to different causes they are unable to get work. The working population includes people from 15 to 59 years. Boys and girls below the age of 15 years and men and women above the age of 59 are not categorised under working population.

The term employment is further explained with the help of two examples:

1. Willing to work at prevalent wage-rate: Under this, a person will be called unemployed only when he is willing to work at the given wage but cannot find jobs. The person having no will to work and does not get the job will not be termed as unemployed.

For example, Sakal’s mother Sheela looks after her domestic works and helps her husband in his agriculture. She has no will to work outside her house for any kind of payment, so in this case she won’t be called unemployed.

2. Age under 15 years to 59 years: Roma and Siya are 10 years and 14 years old and their grandfather is 62 years old, so they won’t be categorised under the age group of 15-59. In this way they won’t be called unemployed.

India faces many problems and one of those problems is the problem of educated unemployment. It has become a very common issue in urban areas, youth with matriculation, graduation and even post-graduation degrees are unable to get a job. This problem has become peculiar in following ways:

1. There has been national investment on training and skill building of the professionals and when they do not get jobs then they can’t contribute to national development. Thus, the investment yields no returns.

2. India is amongst the world leaders when it comes of the numbers of work worthy population. But this advantage transforms into a bane when this population is not able to get employment and becomes a liability on rest of the working population.

3. Surplus of employment is one of the major issues as the number of people who are under disguised unemployment is very high.

4. The increase in the number of educated unemployed population means that the economic activities too are slowed down as these activities would have been providing employment if they were in full pace.

In my opinion India can build the maximum employment opportunity in the manufacturing sector which is also known as secondary sector. Establishment of a single manufacturing unit has the ability to provide employment to multiple skilled workers. This is also important as it kick starts a cycle of events which culminate in the eventual improvement of lifestyle and standard of those working in and around the manufacturing unit.

Following are the measures which may be suggested with regard to education system to reduce the problem of educated unemployed:

1. Education system must be made job oriented and not just for academic purpose.

2. It must be made more practical than theoretical.

3. The student must be made aware and encouraged about self-employment and not being dependent on jobs only.

4. Various innovative methods like interactive course material, smart learning programs etc. can be very helpful in generating interest amongst the students.

Yes, it can be imagined that some villages which initially had no job opportunities but later on came up with many. One day my grandfather told me that he was born in very small village that had no job opportunities. He was to suffer a lot even for tiny products he had to go miles as there were hardly any shops in the vicinity. He used to go to the nearby town to sell the surplus grains and used to buy seeds, manure etc. from there. But with time many changes have taken place in his village. Following are a few of those changes:

1. Many primary schools have been opened in the village and now teachers teach there; earlier there was a lack of teachers. Now the villagers send their kids to the school, which was not there before especially for the girl child.

2. Some training centres and institutions have been set up on the villages. So that girls and boys can go over there and learn some vocational skills.

3. A rich farmer has started sugarcane crushing factory in the village and villagers have been employed in a factory to earn their livelihood.

4. A villager has established a computer centre and hired few teachers to train the students in the same way he got the training.

Among land, labour, physical capital and human capital, human capital will be considered the best capital because it is an active factor of production whereas all the other three are passive factors of production.

It is the human capital which produces the goods and services by combining the other three factors of production because these three factors will be useless without human capital. But at the same time, we can’t ignore these three factors as all factors are compliments of each other.

The quality of human capital can also be improved by investing in the value adding measures like education. The value off other resources generally depreciates with time but as through time human capital gains experience, thus its value and efficacy increase.

After visiting a nearby slum area, I found children playing in the street. I talked to one of them. His name was Jeet, and he was fourteen years old. Jeet belonged to a poor family and his father was addicted to alcohol. His father used to work as a whitewasher so his job was not on regular basis he worked occasionally. His mother used to do petty jobs in other houses like washing utensils and clothes, moping and dusting. Jeet was the eldest in his among his siblings; he had two sisters that used to go to school. Jeet never went to school. He had company of bad boys and smoked and sometime like his father he also drank. He was very careless, used to roam here and there doing nonsense stuffs whole day.

After asking my neighbors I came to know that they are indulged in different professions:

(i) Mr. Ramesh is a farmer.

(ii) Mr. Mohan Lal works in a bank.

(iii) Mr. Sumit works in a factory.

So all the three workers’ work can be categorised as Primary, Secondary and tertiary sector respectively.

After counting the number of boys and girls in my neighboring coeducation school, I interpreted that there are 500 boys and 450 girls in that school. This is total number of students including all age category. I requested the school administration to provide the data of boys and girls studying below 5 years and 10 years. There are 150 girls below five years and 145 boys below five years and there are 175 boys and 165 girls between 5 and 10 years. The difference that needs to be noted here is the retention statistics of the girl and boy students. The girl to boy ratio for the students below 5 years of age has shifted drastically for the students between 5 and 10 years. This means that while girls too started schooling with the boys, many of them dropped out after a certain level while the boys continued getting schooled.

I visited a medium sized private hospital located near my house.

(i) There are 30 beds in the hospital. All beds were well maintained and cleanliness is at the top; hygiene is maintained by the workers and different beds are made available for different kind of patients so that the disease of one patient can’t be communicated to others.

(ii) There are 20 doctors available in the hospital. All doctors come on time and they also ensure proper maintenance of their dress and hygiene. They are very polite. There are 5 doctors especially for children and various other specialists as well.

(iii) Around 30 nurses work over there. All of them dress themselves properly and ensure hygiene in the hospital. They assist doctors in their work and look after the patients in absence of the doctors.

(iv) There are two hospitals near my locality. One of them is a government hospital and other is privately owned. The government hospital is really big in size but one can easily see underutilization as well as wastage of resources. The doctors hardly come on time, there are apparent issues with hygiene and almost negligible accountability towards the patients. The prices for availing the facilities is though very low. The private hospital on the other hand is expensive. The facilities in the hospital are very well managed and a close vigil is maintained over the timings as well as the service quality.

(v) There are three small dispensaries in our locality. They are managed by well qualified doctors. One of the dispensaries holds specialisation in handling child and woman related medical issues, one is managed by a bone specialist doctor and the third one is a physician clinic.