Sustainopreneurship: A New World Order

People (Human Resource): The Missing Element In Development Planning Of Nations

In the economic theory, human capital is considered as the important player in determining the growth of national income among all other factors used for the production of goods and services in any economy. Although human resources are the focus of all economic activities for a longer period of time, this factor has never received any attention. In order to strive for a better standard of living and expansion of economic activities countries are required to realize the importance of the human factor in their economies which are being run by human beings. The economic development of a nation is the consequence of its human resource efforts; therefore the quality of these resources must match with desired economic objectives.

While discussing the causes of economic development economists have highlighted various factors i.e. savings and formation of capital, organization of market, legal and political institutions, entrepreneurship, the level of scientific and technological knowledge, distribution of income, physical resources, population growth rate and their skill and ability. Keeping in view the importance of human resource in the economic development of nations, one group of experts from United Nations Organization have suggested that underdeveloped countries are required to design such educational programs that will help in reducing the manpower bottleneck. There is a universal agreement on the fact that the lack of well-trained human resource will vanish all the developmental efforts of the country. A successful and rapid economic development can only be possible with the real power of a quality human resource (Yang, 1967)

According to (Ul Haq, 1995), only 30 years ago, there was a strong belief among people that development means an increase in national income. Economists while discussing the sources of development were only focused towards the financial capital where physical capital was at the focal point and all other factors of production were ignored. No considerations were given to the human capital nor did any qualitative or quantitative measurements performed for this capital. It has never got the required importance anywhere. There are many nations who were unable to develop in spite of abundant financial resources because human resources, human development institutions and skills were absent among them without which economic gains cannot be translated into real development. Countries with the typeof natural resources differ in their development due to differences in their human capabilities. Human resources were just considered as residual elements in the development planning of almost all societies (Ul Haq, 1995).