Human Resource and Economic Development: Where Does North-East India Stand?

The relationship between human resource and economic development has been widely recognised at all level. Human resource development is conceived to be an integral part of the process of economic development of any region. Thus development in the quality of human being especially of the working population expedites the development activities. An educated, healthy and wealthy individual has better prospect for invention, innovation and entrepreneurship than another individual without those attributes. Improvement in all those attributes also raises the capability to better manage and utilise the available resources and thus enhance the utility of those resources. North-East India, despite having plenty of natural resources fails to accelerate the economic growth of the region. Sometimes, poor infrastructure and human resources are held responsible for this. However, a few states of North-East (Mizoram, Manipur) have performed reasonably well in improving human development but failed to progress much economically compared to the major other Indian states. States like Meghalaya and Assam despite having many natural resources could not develop industries and also the economy. Also they are the backward states in terms of human resource development. These states could transfer only a section of workers from the primary to the tertiary sector. This paper tries to throw some light on the nature of human development and economic development of North-East India vis-à-vis other region of the country.