Chapter 4

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

FACTS THAT MATTER

Growth and Development

•The term Human Development suggests all developmental activities centred around people. The term development' is different from the term 'growth' Development is always accompanied with positive qualitative change in the life of people bee it economical, social, political, physical or spiritual. It indicates betterment of an individual's life with a wide range of choices to choose from as per his desires and wishes. True development will only take place when all the policies of the government are for the people, of the people and by the people and where people are empowered to make their own decisions to lead a meaningful and satisfying life - where people will not only survive but will live their purposeful lives.

•Growth, on the other hand, is value neutral and can be both positive and negative. Development takes place only with positive growth in the quality of living of the people. Mere increase in number does not indicate development it should be coupled with an enhanced quality of life.

•Prior to the development of the concept of HDI, it was believed that there was a close link between a country's economic growth and expansion of individual choices. The origins of the HDI were devised and launched by Pakistani economist Dr. Mahbub Ul Haq in 1990 and had the sole purpose "to shift the focus of development economics from national income to people centred policies.

•The work of Prof. Amartya Sen aims at enlarging people's choices and improving human capabilities and freedoms so they can live a long and healthy life, with access to education and a good standard of living.

•In order to achieve these, it is essential to work on building capabilities for human development that is sustainable over time. Leading a long healthy life being able to gain knowledge and having enough means to be able to live a decent life are the most important aspects of human development.

•Denying access to any of these areas would limit their choices. For example, an illiterate person cannot choose a career in the field of education due to his inability to gain knowledge or a person's limitation to consult a specialist in case of a life threatening disease due to lack of resources.

•Human development is development of the people, development for the people, and development by the people. A meaningful life must be a life with some purpose. This means that people must be able to develop talents, participate in society and be free to achieve their goals.

The Four Pillars of Human Development

There are four basic pillars of human development: equity, sustainability, productivity and empowerment which support the concept of human development.

1. Equity

Equal opportunities for all. Equity is the idea of fairness for every person, between men and women and different social groups. e.g. each one has equal right to education and health care.

2. Sustainability

Meeting the needs of today without compromising the ability of satisfying the needs of the future generations. Sustainability explains that we all have the right to earn a living that can sustain our lives and have access to a more even distribution of goods.

3. Productivity

Full participation of people in the process of income generation and gainful employment.This also means that the government needs more efficient social programs for its people to enhance their productivity.

4. Empowerment

Empowerment is the freedom of the people to influence development and decisions that affect their lives, To empower people government need to take and implement people centric policies. To fulfill these aspects, countries or regions should adopt developmental strategies towards the creation of an economic, social, political and cultural environment which will enhance individual and social capabilities. Economists and political leaders have long emphasized human well-being as the main purpose of development.

Measuring Human Development Index

HDI is a measure to assess long-term progress in three basic aspects of life: health - to lead a long and healthy life, education provision to gain knowledge and access to resources -to have a decent standard of living. It introduced a new way of measuring development by combining indicators of life expectancy, educational attainment and income into a composite human development index - the HDI. It ranks the countries based on their performances in these key areas of both social and economic development. These rankings are based on a score between 0-1. Each of these three dimensions has 1/3 weightage. The HDI is the sum total of weigtages of all the dimensions.

•The education component of the HDI is measured by the adult literacy rate and the combined primary, secondary and tertiary gross enrollment ratio. These parameters indicate the status of availability of educational facilities in a country.

•The health component is measured by taking into account life expectancy at birth.A longer life expectancy suggests that the country is providing the basic infrastructure for a healthy life with assured food supply and medical facilities.

•Access to resources is measured in terms of purchasing power (in US dollars).

Human Poverty Index

•The closer a score is to one, the greater is the level of human development. Therefore, a score of 0.983 would be considered very high while 0.268 would mean a very low level of human development.

•The human development index measures attainments in human development. lt reflects what has been achieved in the key areas of human development. Yet it is not the most reliable measure. This is because it does not say anything about the distribution. The human poverty index is related to the human development index.This index measures the shortfall in human development.

We hope CBSE/MP Board Class 12th "Geography" Chapter 4 "HUMAN DEVELOPMENT" will help you.

Written By - HIMANSHU SHARMA