The Four Pillars of Human Development

The idea of human development rests on four supporting concepts, just as a building rests on pillars. These four pillars are equity, sustainability, productivity, and empowerment. Each one addresses a different condition that must be met for people to live long, healthy, and creative lives.

Equity

Equity means making equal access to opportunities available to everybody. The opportunities a person gets must not depend on their gender, race, income, or — in the Indian context — their caste. In reality, this is very often not the case, and unequal access happens in almost every society.

A useful way to spot inequity is to ask which group most of the school dropouts belong to. In India, a large number of women and persons from socially and economically backward groups drop out of school. This shows how the choices of these groups get severely limited simply because they do not have access to knowledge. The core idea is that everyone must start from a level playing field.

Sustainability

Sustainability means continuity in the availability of opportunities. For human development to be sustainable, each generation must have the same opportunities as the one before it. All resources — environmental, financial, and human — must be used with the future in mind. Misusing any of these resources will reduce the opportunities available to future generations.

A clear example is the importance of sending girls to school. If a community does not stress this, many opportunities are lost to those young women when they grow up. Their career choices become severely curtailed, and this affects other aspects of their lives. So each generation must consciously ensure that choices and opportunities remain available for its future generations.

Productivity

Productivity here refers to human labour productivity — the output of human work. Such productivity must be constantly enriched by building capabilities in people. Ultimately, it is people who are the real wealth of nations. Therefore, efforts to increase their knowledge or provide better health facilities lead directly to better work efficiency. A healthier, more educated person is a more productive worker.

Empowerment …