Bridging the HRD gap in reforms

Former IAS officer Sanjay Kaul's book sheds light on the crucial missing link in India's reform agenda and the challenge of achieving inclusive growth and gender equity

AN ALTERNATIVE DEVELOPMENT AGENDA FOR INDIA

Author: Sanjay Kaul

Publisher: Routledge

Pages: 224

Price: Rs 1,295

This book has not come a day too soon. It covers the most vital missing link in India’s reforms agenda: Human resource development. Excessive focus on physical infrastructure, capital market institutions, digitisation, taxation, and so on will not yield optimal returns without the simultaneous development of human resources. This is where Bangladesh, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia and the Philippines have forged ahead of India in many human development indices and their overall economies.

This is the gap that the former IAS officer of nearly three decades, topped up with private sector work, has sought to bridge. His stints at the ground level, at the Prime Minister’s Office, at ministries and as head of several committees set up by the government have left their imprint on his pithy essays in a 200-page work.

The choice of subjects covering human resources is comprehensive — from gender issues to childcare and natal care, sanitation to food security, education to jobs. That India needs a composite system of healthcare — sanitation, insurance, access to safe drinking water, health education, training of healthcare workers, optimal engagement with the private sector — is well brought out.

Having seen at first hand the fault lines in actual government programmes, the author highlights the inability of top-down approach to accommodate these in single-size catch-all designs. As he rightly observes, “Public policies and programmes must have built-in flexibility to accommodate the requirements of a diverse nation.” It is, therefore, essential to delegate to lower levels with only the broad directions and budgets coming from the top; for instance, it has been suggested that ASHA health workers should report to the village panchayats (at least where they are functional). 

Chapter 2 focuses on universalising healthcare. The author illustrates the yawning gap in public healthcare and anaemic budgets compared to other countries similar to India’s stage of development. The returns to simple remedies such as immunisation, oral rehydration, chlorine bleach of water have been illustrated together with the need for proper education, decentralisation and some redesign of insurance schemes.

Chapter 3 on malnutrition and food security claims that the annual loss due to malnutrition in low income economies is a whopping 12 per cent of gross domestic product or GDP. If that is indeed the case, no other public programme is capable of higher social return to investment than one that focuses on improving this metric. On top of this, to see so much wastage in existing efforts is disheartening. Amongst the author’s various suggestions are revisiting some key mistaken assumptions such as: (i) the availability of cheap rice and wheat amounts to food and nutritional security, (ii) availability equals consumption, (iii) the primacy of public sector in distribution and (iv) grains equal nutrition. The goal of a “balanced diet with adequate nutrition” is often forgotten. 

Children’s health and education and capacity-building take centre stage in chapters 4 and 5. The general public is mostly aware of the observations and course corrections here but the question is how to make it happen. India has come a long way in literacy from the abysmal 12 per cent and 40 per cent school enrolment in 1947 to an enrolment of 97 per cent by 2020. But the success is largely in numbers, not quality. Added to this is the divide in outcomes based on gender, geography, income, private schooling versus public, English-knowing versus local language, and between reported numbers versus measured outcomes. 

It is encouraging that the author has looked at job creation in a holistic manner rather than just pinning hopes on the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. This requires credit interventions through micro credit, employment of women, rejuvenation of handicraft industries, tackling problems of migrant labour and so on. The author is right to remind the government that it cannot wash its hands of these issues.   

Gender disparities, its ill effects as well as the solutions are all well known. Instead of restating the obvious, the author could have given some case studies of successes. It would have induced hope and lessons. Gender issues get more acute the lower the income and the more rural or traditional the area. But our solutions such as board seats for women, 26 week’s maternity leave, and prevention of sexual harassment are too corporatised and out of context.    

Discussion about issues in urban planning are well-captured. India’s urban planning (or lack of it as author claims) involves several dimensions, including waste disposal, housing for the poor, mobility needs and solutions, sanitation provision ensuring rights of everyone from street vendors and pedestrians. Again, the problems are discussed in detail but solutions appear sketchy, though appropriate.  

A must-read for those focused on the social or human resource side of development, the book is rich in data to back the author’s arguments triangulated at several places from experience, anecdotes, and case studies. The author rightly observes at several places that the demand side is an equal problem. Just budget allocation and supply are incapable of righting all wrongs. It is good that the author has offered a feasible budget for all his recommended interventions. 

The title, however, suggests a wider canvas of all economic development spheres, but the content is mostly about human resource development and human resource infrastructure with a lone chapter on urbanisation. In some places, the author’s solutions appear to be in the nature of commandments with insufficient analysis of the underlying dynamics. Given that each section contains so many points lumped together, subheadings would have been of practical help.

The reviewer is author of Making Growth Happen in India, Sage