Country X has many students, farmers and nurses. It wants to turn these human resources into human capital such as engineers and doctors. What does it need before anything else?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 2
The correct answer is Option (2) → Competent people who are already educated and trained as professors and other professionals
To turn human resources into human capital, a society first needs good human capital of its own: competent, trained professors and other professionals who can educate the rest. So investment in human capital is needed to produce more of it.
Machines and factories are physical capital; imports can build them, but they do not turn students into doctors. Migration of students abroad sends the human resources out of the country.
NCERT (2026-27): “4.2 What Is Human Capital? Just as a country can turn physical resources like land into physical capital like factories, similarly, it can also turn human resources like nurses, farmers, teachers, students into human capital like engineers and doctors. Societies need sufficient human capital in the first place —in the form of competent people who have themselves been educated and trained as professors and other professionals. In other words, we need good human capital to produce other human capital (say, nurses, farmers, teachers, doctors, engineers…). This means that we need investment in human capital to produce more human capital out of human resources.” |