The Importance Of Social Development In India

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The term „Social sector‟ refers to the factors, which contribute to human capital formation and human development. Social development is recognized not only as a means to economic development, but also an end in itself, in terms of expanded individual opportunities, capabilities and freedom. Improvements in the social sector pave the way for equity and in turn for economic development. In fact, effective human development and economic development itself depend on the development of social infrastructure. Thus importance of social infrastructure hardly needs any elaboration. India is on the brink of a demographic revolution with the proportion of the working-age population between 15 and 59 likely to increase from approximately 58% in 2001 …show more content…

India’s new economic policy has been quite successful in creating a favourable environment for rapid economic growth, but adequate attention has not been paid to basic health care and education. The education and health status of a vast majority of the population continues to remain poor even after a decade of reforms (Joshi 2006). India has made noticeable improvements in key social indicators on education and health since the 1980s, but even so the country lies at the bottom of the ladder of human development with a HDI rank of 136 of 187 countries (UNDP 2013) at 0.554, which is below the South Asian average of 0.0558. Though the HDI value is improving for India, the rank remains more or less stagnant, and neighbouring countries like China and Sri Lanka do far better. The role of education in overall social and economic progress is widely recognized. The right to education has been enshrined as a fundamental right in the Constitution of India, which states that: “the State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children aged six to fourteen years in such a manner as the state may, by law, determine.” The literacy rate in India has been constantly rising, improving from 64.8% in the 2001 census to 74.04% in the 2011 census. Both the central and the state governments have been paying increased attention to the need to provide “education for

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