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1177/1523422304266075
Advances in Developing Human Resources
Rao / HRD IN INDIA

August 2004

Human Resource Development

as National Policy in India
T. V. Rao
The problem and the solution. Although India took the lead
in the Asia Pacific region, setting up a full Ministry of Human
R e sou rce Deve l op m e n t , t h e Nat i on al h u m an re sou rce
development concept in India has largely been limited to education and culture. The complexity of the country perhaps makes
it difficult to have integrated HRD systems at the national level.
Networking and learning from each other among various ministries and institutions and from the corporate sector will, however, go a long way in effectively evolving and implementing
NHRD policies.
Keywords:

education; HRD policy; India

Any national human resource development (NHRD) policy must be based

on the countrys population. Hence, it is necessary to understand the structure of the nation, its demographics, and its other characteristics.
With a population of 1.027 billion people, India is the largest democracy
in the world and the second largest country in terms of population. These
people are distributed among 34 geographic units, with 28 states and 6 union
territories. They live in more than 550,000 villages and 200 towns and cities.
Literacy rates in 2001 were 65% (female literacy, 54.16%; male literacy,
75.85%). The gender ratio was 933 females per 1,000 males. Infant mortality in 2001 was 70 per 1,000 births, and life expectancy at birth was 62.3
years. Almost 40% of Indians are younger than 15 years old, and about 6%
are older than 60. Over thousands of years of its history, India had rulers
from the Iranian plateau, Central Asia, Arabia, Afghanistan, and the West.
Indian people and culture have absorbed and changed these influences to
produce a remarkable racial and cultural synthesis.
Religion, caste, and language are major determinants of social and political organization in India today. The government recognizes 18 official languages with Hindi as the most widely spoken. Although 83% of the people
are Hindu, India also is the home of more than 120 million Muslimsone of
the worlds largest Muslim populations. The population also includes ChrisAdvances in Developing Human Resources Vol. 6, No. 3 August 2004 288-296
DOI: 10.1177/1523422304266075
Copyright 2004 Sage Publications

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tians, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, and Parsis. The caste system reflects Indian
occupational and religiously defined hierarchies. Despite economic modernization and laws countering discrimination against the lower end of the
class structure, the caste system remains an important source of social identification for most Hindus and a potent factor in the political life of the country. The caste system, superimposed with religious, socioeconomic, and linguistic differences, leads to issues of classification and conflict. It creates
divisiveness and poses the biggest human resource development (HRD)
challenge.

Challenges for HRD

India entered the 21st century with global recognition that it is an economic power, having recorded sustained growth between 5% and 6%. India
achieved self-sufficiency in food within the first three decades of its independence. Despite reasonable growth over the past two decades, India cannot boast about its poverty alleviation or HRD. Thus, effectively deploying
its resources to alleviate poverty and ensuring social development in terms
of universal literacy, health facilities for all, safe drinking water, rural roads,
and marketing infrastructure remain the challenges (Government of India,
2003). Agriculture remains the bedrock of the Indian economy. Seventy
percent of the population depends on rural income and agriculture. Developing the competencies of people to enhance their longevity, ensure health,
improve food and nutrition, and provide a decent quality of life are the main
focal points of HRD. In this context, the approaches offered by the United
Nations Development Programs (UNDP) human development reports through
the Commonwealth Secretariats working group on HRD become more relevant and provide appropriate frameworks for examining the HRD policies
of India (Commonwealth Secretariat, 1993; see Rao, 1996, for a discussion
of UNDP reports and approaches).
Given the size and nature of the population, education, which is the chief
provider of literacy and the skill base for millions of people, becomes the
focal point of NHRD policies. It is for this reason that India became the first
country in the Asia-Pacific region to reconstitute its Ministry of Education
as the Ministry of Human Resource Development in 1985.

National Education Policy

India has 259 universities (including 146 general, 18 science and technology, 5 for women, 8 open, 30 agricultural, and 17 medical). There are
11,089 colleges. Of these, there are 550 engineering colleges, 600 management colleges, and 170 medical colleges, with an enrollment of about 7.5
million students. About 74,000 are enrolled for research, and every year
about 10,000 are awarded Ph.D.s.

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The Ministry of HRD announced in January 1985 that a new education

policy would be formulated for the country. A comprehensive appraisal of
the existing educational scene was made, followed by a countrywide debate.
The views and suggestions received from different quarters were carefully
studied (Ministry of HRD, Government of India, 1992). The perspective
developed in the policy is similar to what other countries like Korea have
developed for formulating their NHRD policy (see Cho & McLean, 2002).
The need for a literate population and the provision of elementary education was envisaged as a crucial input for nation building in the National Education Policy of 1986 and the Program of Action of 1992. Both of these policies were envisaged to provide education of satisfactory quality to all
children up to 14 years of age. As a result, enrollments in primary education
have gone up to 95% by 2000. The number of schools increased to 839,000,
and the number of teachers rose to 3,217,000 by the end of 2000. The 83rd
constitutional amendment bill, introduced in 1997, made the right to education for children from 6 to 14 years old a fundamental right. The target of
universalizing elementary education has been divided into three broad
parameters: universal access, universal retention, and universal achievement. As a result, 94% of the rural population has been provided with primary schools within 1 kilometer and 84% with upper primary schools
within 3 kilometers (see Govinda, 2002, for a detailed discussion).
At present, there are 292,000 nonformal education centers running in the
country for those who cannot go to school, and they educate 7.3 million children. Of these, 58,788 centers are run by voluntary agencies. By 1998, there
were 110,000 secondary schools preparing children for entry into higher
education with an enrollment of 27.8 million students (of them, 10.1 million
are girls), with 1.5 million teachers.
The education policy addressed the basic needs of HRD and is the only
comprehensive NHRD policy available to date. It dealt with the structure,
systems, internal processes, implementation issues, and envisaged internal
review mechanisms. It aimed at children, youth, illiterate adults, out-ofschool youth, women, teachers, educational administrators, the handicapped, and all categories needing education and skills development. It also
focused on institutions at various levels, content of education, management
of education, implementation issues, monitoring of education, and so on. It
took cognizance of the existing strategic institutions doing research and
promoting the tools of HRD.

HRD in the Corporate Sector

Since the first dedicated department of HRD was established in 1975 in
Larsen & Toubro (L&T), an engineering company, many corporations have

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established HRD departments to promote employee development, organization development, and culture building. Human resource development was
viewed in an integrated way, and it was defined as a set of systems and processes to promote the development of individuals as persons, individuals in
relation to their roles, dyadic relationships, teamwork and productivity,
organizational culture, and capabilities (Rao, 1985)
By the mid-1980s, HRD had become an accepted role, and most organizations had changed their personnel, training, and other related functions to
HRD. Human resource development has come to mean new expectations, a
new body of knowledge, and a new function. The establishment of the Centre for HRD at XLRI, a premier Management School in the eastern part of
India; the formation of the National HRD Network in 1985; the initiation of
the Indian Academy of HRD in 1990; the inauguration of a doctoral program in HRD by AHRD India and XLRI; and so on are highlights of HRD in
India (for a detailed discussion of these, see Rao, 2003).
The public sector in India, which has been the largest employer of people,
also had success stories in its HRD policies and implementation. Corporations like Hindustan Machine Tools, Bharat Heavy Electricals, Hindustan
Aeronautics, State Bank of India and other public sector banks, Steel
Authority of India, and Coal India had extensive experiences with HRD policies and experimented with innovative HRD and OD practices.
Thus, HRD in the corporate sector may be viewed as a success story in
terms of new conceptualizations, networking, and learning from each other.
As a result of the National HRD Network and other professional bodies,
such as the Indian Society for Training and Development and the National
Institute of Personnel Management, the knowledge base of HRD has spread,
and many corporations have learned from each other (see Rao, 2003, for a
detailed discussion of the accomplishments of Indian HRD).
The benefits of the lessons of HRD did not, however, flow from the corporate sector to the National HRD Ministries, through either their ministries
or the thousands of educational institutions that are managed in similar
ways to the corporate sector. Perhaps one of the reasons for this failure is
that various departments in government operate as independent entities, and
there is reluctance to learn from each other. For example, based on a review
of the work of the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration a few years ago, I conclude that the educational administrators in the
ministry have mostly felt that the principles that govern the management of
industry are different from those of education. Added to the complexity of
the country, absence of a single policy-making body to look at NHRD policy
and reluctance of the educational policy makers to learn from within or from
outside have resulted in India not getting the best out of its own human
resources.

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HRD in Other Sectors

Although the Ministry of HRD takes care of the HRD of the population at
large, in a country like India, the development of those who develop others
also plays a critical role. The teachers, curriculum builders, educational
administrators, and educational leaders are developed by the respective
teacher training colleges, the National Council of Educational Research and
Training (NCERT), and the National Institute of Educational Planning and
Administration (NIEPA). The HRD of other agents and agencies is taken
care of by the respective ministries. The Ministry of Personnel takes care of
the HRD of all civil service agents and formulates the recruitment policies,
training interventions, and train-the-trainer programs. Each ministry has its
own respective training facilities. Each state also has its own training setups
for its civil service staff (often called Officers Training Centres). For example, the MCR Institute of Human Resource Development in the State of
Andhra Pradesh is known for its innovative work on leadership development and improving excellence in government through training and inputs
to policy formulation. Each of the town administration setups also has its
own HRD departments, usually called HR departments. Some still carry
their old identities as personnel departments and establishment sections.
The hospitals, medical centers, agriculture departments, railways, revenue
departments, and so on all have their own departments of training and
policy-making bodies. In all of these sectors, however, HRD remained
largely limited to continuing education and training. There is very little indication of the impact of the HRD success stories from the corporate sector.
There is also no uniform NHRD policy that influences all of these institutions. The various agencies and agents that serve the public and provide staff
for various public services have benefited little from the developments in
HRD in the corporate sector. Knowledge dissemination is poor, and a large
part of it is due to the complexity of the country and the absence of
mechanisms that facilitate learning and networking.

Role of HRD Ministry and HRD Institutions

In establishing the new Ministry of HRD, the young prime minister,
Rajiv Gandhi, at that time had a vision for the country, and he saw HRD as an
essential tool for achieving that vision for the country. A senior minister in
his cabinet was assigned to this new ministry with the hope that he would
provide leadership to it. P. V. Narasimha Rao, who later became the prime
minister of India, was put in charge of the Ministry of HRD. The HRD Ministry consisted of the Departments of Education, Youth, Culture and Sports;
Womens Development; Integrated Child Development; and others. It was
during this period that the New Education Policy (NEP) was formulated in
1986 (Ministry of HRD, Government of India, 1992). It is not referred to as

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NHRD policy, but essentially it is the only policy available to guide the
development of a large part of the human resources in the country; it covers
children, youth, and adults in terms of various forms of development (literacy, numeracy, skills, technical development, and functional development).
The process followed in formulating the policy is noteworthy. The entire
country spent about a year debating and discussing the various issues in education. An analysis was done by various groups of people, experts, communities, schools and colleges, and various bodies throughout the country to
diagnose what was wrong with education, what was needed, and what
should be done. Expert committees were appointed, a series of seminars and
conferences were held throughout the country, many issues were raised, and
suggestions were made, debated, and discussed.
The Department of Education included nonformal education (meant for
out-of-school youth who had not had the opportunity to complete their education or school dropouts), adult education (to provide literacy, numeracy,
and other functional aspects of literacy), primary education, secondary education, higher education, technical education, medical education, agricultural education, and education in other specialized subjects, although the
respective ministries also participated in enhancing the standards. All of
these institutions involved in the development of education and educational
policy were also part of the Ministry of HRD.
Subsequent to this, however, the Ministry of HRD did not perform much
of an integrating role. Perhaps, given the countrys size, diversity, and complexity, such integration was not easy. Very understandably, therefore,
NHRD policies were limited to the public at large and normally covered
adult education, preprimary and primary education, secondary education,
and higher education. The concerns of NHRD policies centered on integration of the country into one nation in spite of its diversity. Common syllabi
or curricula; common values; common cultures; learning about the country,
its heritage, and its leaders; learning the dominant official language, which
is necessary to integrate the country; and learning to be tolerant of each
other due to many castes and religions have all been the focal points of
NHRD policy.
The education policy also had to occupy itself substantially with the
administration of such a large system of education. Therefore, the concerns
focused on maintaining standards of education. Thus, new bodies that
ensure standards of education were brought in. Fund-giving bodies were
also brought in to promote research and development. The NCERT focused
on the development of curricula and on providing educational support services through its research, experiments, dissemination, and programs. The
Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) was the body to set standards at the school level, the University Grants Commission at the university level, and the All-Indian Council for Technical Education (AICTE) at

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the technical education and management education programs level. The

open universities provided continuing education for the masses.

Gaps in the NHRD Policy

To understand the gaps in NHRD policy, it is essential to understand the
structure of the government, which is the main and perhaps the only committed and obligated agency for NHRD in the country. The labor force in the
country was 406 million in 2000. Of these, 19.41 million worked in the public sector and 8.70 million worked in the private sector. The distribution of
this complete workforce throughout sectors was 64% in agriculture, 16% in
industry, and 20% in services. Total employment in the organized sector was
28 million. A large number of people work as daily wage labor in agriculture
and other sectors to earn their living. They are classified under the unorganized sector, which means that a large number of the labor force in India do
not work in organizations or in the organized sector, which is both private
and public sector, but outside it. Twenty-six percent of the people live below
the poverty line (Government of India, 2003). These statistics reveal that
any NHRD policy that does not focus on the labor force of 406 million and
their quality of life is lopsided. The 20 million who work in the public sector
(railways; posts and telegraphs; electricity boards; government departments
like health, agriculture, revenue, and police; and the like) are the chief
agents of change. Developing their capabilities will have multiplier effects
on the system. The NHRD policy is sensitive to the teachers and institutions
catering to the education sector but not to the other sectors. The Ministry of
Personnel is a separate ministry that caters to the development of various
categories of personnel employed in the government. It designs performance appraisal systems, organizes training, and determines career planning. There is a separate education and training setup for each of the ministries. For example, the agriculture staff is trained by separate training
institutions (like the Agriculture Extension Education Centres, Agricultural
Institutions, and National Institute of Rural Development). The same is true
for many other staffs.
The renaming of the Education Ministry as the HRD Ministry in 1985
provided a great opportunity to bring all of its HRD efforts for these institutions under one umbrella. Synergizing the efforts of all agencies by treating
the entire nation under one roof for formulating NHRD policies and emphasizing the need to develop agents that promote the development of people
are perhaps the main gaps that were left in the Education Policy of India.
This could have made it a comprehensive NHRD policy. Perhaps India, as
such a big country, is too complex to be subject to such a national policy.
Another gap is in terms of the lessons to be learned from the corporate
sector. The NHRD policy benefited very little from the experiences of the

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corporate sector. In fact, the people associated with industry were rarely
involved in NHRD policy formulation. It is only in recent years that efforts
have been made to involve industry.

Future Directions
In the past decade, after structural adjustments and economic reforms
undertaken by the country, India has begun to feel global pressure and also
the advantages of access to global knowledge. Although the Indian corporate sector is benefiting from global HRD and other management practices,
there is little knowledge and experience flowing to NHRD policies or their
implementation in India. Because Indias problems and issues are unique,
and there is practically no parallel country that can offer lessons that can
benefit India in totality, India has to seek solutions from its own experience
and experimentation. There is no other democracy as large and complex as
India that is committed to people and their participation in governance.
There is no other country as multidimensional and as divided as India and
therefore as complex as India. Hence, no uniform solutions are likely to be
applicable.
India could, however, learn a lot from small experiments and encourage
experimentation within itself. The issues are complex, but some internal
networking, learning from each other, and managing such learning will pave
a way for the future. Perhaps the Commonwealth Secretariat guidelines
(Commonwealth Secretariat, 1993), the Human Development Index, and
experiences drawn by the UNDP for developing countries will help in such a
path (United Nations Development Program, 2003).

References
Cho, E. S., & McLean, G. N. (2002). National human resource development: Korean
case. In U. Pareek, A. M. Osman-Gani, S. Ramnaravan, & T. V. Rao (Eds.), Human
resource development in Asia: Trends and challenges (pp. 253-260). New Delhi,
India: Oxford & IBH.
Commonwealth Secretariat. (1993). Foundation for the future: Human resource development. London: Author.
Government of India. (2003). Economic survey 2002-2003. New Delhi, India: Ministry
of Finance and Company Affairs, Economic Division.
Govinda, R. (Ed.). (2002). India education report: A profile of basic education. New
Delhi, India: Oxford University Press.
Ministry of HRD, Government of India. (1992). National educational policy with modifications. Retrieved September 9, 2003, from http://www.education.nic.in/html.web/
natpol/htm

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Rao, T. V. (1985). Integrated human resources development systems. In L. D. Goodstein

& J. W. Pfeiffer (Eds.), The 1985 annual: Developing human resources (pp. 227-237).
San Diego, CA: University Associates.
Rao, T. V. (1996). Human resource development: Experiences, interventions and strategies. New Delhi, India: Sage.
Rao, T. V. (2003). Future of HRD. New Delhi, India: Macmillan
United Nations Development Program. (2003). Human development report 2003. New
Delhi, India: Oxford University Press.
T. V. Rao, chairman, TVRLS, was professor at the Indian Institute of Management,
Ahmedabad. He is founder and first president of the National HRD Network, India,
and the founder director of the Indian Academy of Human Resources Development.
He has authored more than 30 books in HRD, education, entrepreneurship, health,
population, and management training. Dr. Rao worked as a consultant to the Commonwealth Secretariat, London; UNIDO; UNESCO; USAID Indonesia; and various other international bodies as a consultant.
Rao, T. V. (2004). Human resource development as national policy in India. Advances in
Developing Human Resources, 6(3), 288-296.

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