Quality of Population

Population quality is influenced by literacy rate, health, life expectancy, and skill formation, which ultimately determines a country’s growth rate, making a literate and healthy population an asset.

Education

Education has been a crucial input for Sakal’s growth, providing new opportunities, aspirations, and developing values of life. Education contributes to the growth of society by enhancing national income, cultural richness, and governance efficiency. The plan outlay for education has increased from Rs 151 crore in the first plan to Rs 99,300 crore in 2020-21. Literacy rates have increased from 18% in 1951 to 85% in 2018, but there is a significant difference across different sections of the population. The primary school system has expanded to over 7,78,842, lakh in 2019-20, but poor quality of schooling and high dropout rates have diluted this expansion. The Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in higher education is 27% in 2019-20, in line with the world average. Strategies focus on increasing access, quality, adoption of state-specific curriculum modifications, vocationalization, and networking on the use of information technology. Over the past 60 years, there has been significant growth in the number of colleges, universities, enrolment of students, and teacher recruitment.

Health

Firms should prioritize improving health and ensuring the well-being of their workforce to maximize profit. Health is crucial for a person’s potential and ability to fight illness. India has built a vast healthcare infrastructure and developed manpower in the government and private sectors over the last five decades, focusing on the underprivileged segment.

Unemployment

Sakal’s family, including his mother Sheela, brother Jeetu, and sister Seetu, are not considered unemployed due to their lack of interest in working outside their domestic domain. Unemployment in India is present in both rural and urban areas, with seasonal and disguised unemployment occurring in rural areas and mostly educated unemployment in urban areas.

Seasonal unemployment occurs when people cannot find jobs during certain months of the year, such as during sowing, harvesting, weeding, and threshing. In disguised unemployment, people appear to be employed by having an agricultural plot where they contribute to the work. In urban areas, educated unemployment has become a common phenomenon, with many graduates and post-graduates struggling to find jobs.

Unemployment leads to wastage of manpower resources, increasing economic overload and dependence on the working population. This negatively impacts the quality of life for individuals and society, leading to a decline in health status and withdrawal from school systems.

In India, the unemployment rate is low, with a large number of people with low income and productivity being counted as employed. The employment structure is characterized by self-employment in the primary sector, but the entire family shares what has been produced. This reduces hardship in the rural sector but does not reduce poverty.

Agriculture is the most labor-absorbing sector of the economy, but there has been a decline in population dependence on it due to disguised unemployment. Some surplus labor in agriculture has moved to the secondary or tertiary sectors, such as small scale manufacturing and biotechnology.

The chapter ‘People as Resource‘ is an effort to explain the population as an asset for the economy rather than a liability. The chapter highlights the importance of human capital, which includes people’s skills, knowledge, and abilities, in driving economic growth and development. Human capital is the stock of knowledge, skills, and abilities embodied in the population. It is a key factor in economic growth, as it determines the productivity of labor.