The crucial aspect of development process has been the inadequate attention paid to Human Resource Development in India. Suggest measures that can address this adequacy.

The inadequacy

• Public spending on education has stayed below the National Education Policy, 2020, target of 6 per cent of GDP, and many State schools still lack teachers and grade-level learning.
• The Annual Status of Education Report has repeatedly shown that enrolment is not the same as literacy and numeracy.
• Skill programmes have certified large numbers, yet employers still report a gap between certificates and shop-floor ability.
• Health is part of human capital: the National Health Mission improved rural facilities, but specialist posts, nutrition, and mental health remain thin.
• Women’s labour-force participation and early childhood care have not been treated as core infrastructure, so half the talent pool is under-used.

Measures

• Implement the National Education Policy, 2020, with Foundational Literacy and Numeracy, the National Curriculum Framework, and the multiple-exit higher-education structure, backed by actual 6 per cent of GDP, not only a target line.
• Tie the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana and the Skill India Mission to apprenticeship under the Apprentices Act, 1961, as amended, and to industry-led Sector Skill Councils, so assessment is by placement and wage, not by number of short certificates.
• Use Samagra Shiksha and the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, to finish the unfinished elementary cycle, including neighbourhood schools and pupil–teacher norms.
• Expand the National Health Mission and related human-resource for health cadres, and treat school nutrition and the Integrated Child Development Services as human-capital programmes, not residual welfare.
• Raise female participation through childcare at worksites, safe transport, and skilling that matches local employers, because HRD that ignores women is incomplete.
• Align labour codes’ skilling and portable social security with the e-Shram database so informal workers can re-enter training without losing identity.

Recommendations

• Publish an annual human-resource scorecard: learning outcomes, apprenticeship uptake, female LFPR, and district health-worker density, and attach Finance Commission incentives to improvement.
• Merge overlapping skill missions at district level under one employment exchange and one industry committee, so education, skill, and placement are one pipeline.