Inclusive Growth with Useless Manpower

The challenges for Inclusive Growth which include careless and useless Manpower in Indian context

Inclusive Growth is economic growth that creates opportunity for all segments of the population and distributes the dividend of increased prosperity, both in monetary and non-monetary terms, fairly across society.

Forces of globalisation, revolution in information and communication technology, research and development in Agriculture and science and technology have provided people across the globe ample opportunities to break shackles of poverty and underdevelopment. However India has not kept the pace. It is still one of the poorest countries in the world, with a very skewed distribution of resources. One of the reasons responsible is quality of human capital.

Among Indian workforces, mean year of schooling is just 4 years compared to global average of 6.5 years. Only 2% of population have formal training, digital literacy is less than 10%. More tragically less than 50% of graduates are employable in modern market place.

Another trend observed in India is that the people are engaged in unproductive work(useless work). For example, involvement of more than required population in Agriculture and some small scale industries, which is causing disguised unemployment. People are also ignorant about their rights and duties, law of Land and significance of water, electricity and environment egg are examples of careless population.

It is not just careless and useless Manpower but also poor policy implementation in health and education sector that is acting as a obstacle to inclusive growth. Public expenditure on education is 3.5% of GDP whereas requirement is 6.5% and in health sector, public expenditure is meagre 1%. These sectors are mostly dominated by private sector which make quality health and education service is inaccessibke to poor.

Poor quality of human capital has led to several kissed opportunities and acting as a hurdle on the path to inclusive growth. To overcome this hurdle the state has topmost responsibility.

Following are the measures that can be taken to face these challenges

• The government must invest in social infrastructure like education, health and skill development.
• In past the focus in education sector was more on infrastructure development, now it should shift to improving learning outcome. Teachers should be held accountable for performance of students.
• It has adequately proved that poor health leads to poor intellectual development. Hence government should invest in upgrading and building health infracture which is really very inefficient and weak.
• Skill education should not be considered as a taboo(I.e. it is meant for those with low grades), it should be made integral part of the school curriculum.
• Digital literacy should be increased to tap full opportunities provided by information and communication technology.
• Many government programmes like Digital India, Skill India, Right to Education, Universal Healthcare Scheme, etc seems to be steps in right direction for improving quality of human capital.