Human development approach affirms that education and health-care growth are more important than economic growth. Discuss this issue in the light of post-liberalized Indian society.

Breaking down the question

The question contains a strong claim — that under the human development approach, growth in education and health care matters more than economic growth — and asks the candidate to discuss it against the evidence of post-liberalised Indian society. The word "discuss" invites a balanced verdict, not simple assent.

Two moves are required. First, explain what the human development approach actually asserts, so that the claim is stated precisely rather than as a slogan. Second, test it against India after 1991, where rapid economic growth has coexisted with lagging social indicators — the empirical heart of the answer.

The note on education and social change in India provides supporting material.

How to approach it

Begin with the theoretical foundation — Amartya Sen and Mahbub ul Haq, the capability approach and the Human Development Index — to establish why the approach privileges health and education. Then bring in post-liberalisation India: high GDP growth, jobless growth, uneven human development, the contrast between the Kerala model and the growth-first states. Reach a qualified conclusion: economic growth is necessary but not sufficient, and social investment is what converts growth into wellbeing.

Model answer

The human development approach, pioneered by Mahbub ul Haq and given its philosophical depth by Amartya Sen, reoriented the very idea of progress. Development, on this view, is not the growth of national income but the expansion of people's capabilities — the real freedoms they enjoy to lead lives they have reason to value. Income is only a means; health, education, longevity and agency are the ends. The Human Development Index, combining income with life expectancy and education, was designed precisely to dethrone GDP as the sole measure of a nation's success.

Why education and health come first. Within this framework health and education are doubly important. Intrinsically, a long and healthy life and an educated mind are constituents of wellbeing in themselves. Instrumentally, they are what allow people to participate in and benefit from economic growth at all — an illiterate, unhealthy population cannot convert rising output into flourishing lives. Sen therefore argues that growth is a means whose value depends on how it is used; a society may grow rich while its people remain deprived.

The Indian test after 1991. Post-liberalisation India is a striking laboratory for this claim. Since the reforms of 1991 the economy has grown at historically high rates and a large middle class has emerged. Yet human development has lagged conspicuously. Growth has been substantially jobless, generating output without commensurate employment; malnutrition, poor public health and weak schooling have persisted even in prosperous states. Sen and Jean Dreze, in An Uncertain Glory, argue that India's failure to invest adequately in health and school education has left it trailing not only East Asia but several poorer South Asian neighbours on basic social indicators, despite its faster growth.

The internal contrast. The point is sharpened by comparison within India. Kerala, with modest per-capita income, achieved life expectancy and literacy approaching those of far richer societies through sustained public investment in health and education — the celebrated Kerala model. Some high-growth states, by contrast, combined booming output with stubbornly poor human-development outcomes. The lesson the human development approach draws is that social achievement is not an automatic by-product of growth; it must be deliberately provided through public action.

A balanced verdict. Does this vindicate the claim that education and health-care growth are more important than economic growth? The stronger and more defensible position is that the two are not rivals but complements arranged in a particular order of priority. Economic growth remains necessary — it generates the public resources that fund schools and hospitals, and without it social spending is unsustainable. But growth is not sufficient, and it is instrumentally subordinate: its worth lies in being converted, through investment in human capabilities, into actual wellbeing. Post-liberalisation India shows what happens when the conversion is neglected — impressive aggregate figures alongside widespread deprivation and rising inequality.

Conclusion. The human development approach is largely borne out by the Indian experience. Education and health are not luxuries to be afforded after growth, but the very substance of development and the condition of its being shared. The wise policy is not to choose between growth and human development but to treat the second as the purpose that the first exists to serve.

Examiner's perspective

The examiner is testing whether the candidate can move between theory and evidence. A script that only defines the capability approach, or only recites GDP figures, misses the pivot. The strongest answers ground Sen and Haq's framework in the concrete record of post-1991 India — jobless growth, weak social indicators, the Kerala contrast.

Credit is given for a balanced conclusion. Asserting flatly that health and education matter more than growth is weaker than showing that growth is necessary but insufficient, and that its value lies in being converted into capabilities. Naming Dreze and Sen's diagnosis and using the intra-India comparison secure the higher band.