Given its highly dynamic nature, human resource development is a field that constantly needs both academic and applied research to make timely relevant policies.
Background
Nepal is all set to implement the 16th five-year plan starting from the next July for fiscal years 2024-29. During the last seven decades of the planned development history of Nepal, ten five-year and five three-year plans have been implemented. Right from the beginning of the periodic plan, the need for human resource development in various fields of national development, at least in theory, was recognized. However, projections of needs for the long, medium or short terms based on data and scientific research were never undertaken systematically. The importance policy of correlating these need projections with national development objectives so far has never been reflected in any major policy or plan of the country.
In the strict sense of democratizing the development process, centralized planning through national, or for that matter provincial, planning commissions in many developmental areas and priorities is certainly a highly contested issue. However, human resources development as the policy planning for the entire nation is one such area that can perhaps be best carried out only by the central planning process. But Nepal has failed in that count too despite deep-rooted obsession and practice of centralized planning; still continued in spite of the adoption of essentially a federal polity.
According to industrial classification, the Nepal Labor Force Survey 2017 found that 65 percent of the workforce above 10 years of age are in the primary sector of the economy that covers agriculture, forestry, and fisheries, 8 percent in wholesale and retail trade or the secondary sector, 7 percent in industry or the tertiary sector, 6 percent in construction, and 3.5 percent in education, housing and food services. It shows that 2.5 percent are in transportation and storage, 1.1 percent in the health sector, and about 6 percent of the unclassified labor force are involved in some form of employment. As institutional employees, 25 percent of Nepal’s total labor force is employed in the government sector, 65.5 percent in the private sector, 2.5 percent in the non-government sector, and 7 percent in other.
Similarly, only in 2018, a cursory study on human resources projection was carried out for the next five, 10, and 20 years, mainly in the fields of agriculture, industries, and service sectors. The projections were only extrapolative indications, to say the least, and lacked substantive research encompassing demographic trends, the pace of internal and external migration, emerging trends in the labor markets particularly in the face of rapid and disruptive technological transformation, and their cumulative impact on demand-supply dynamics of labor and skills in the economy.
Every possible aspect of human resource development in Nepal including planning, management, and forecasting is in its infancy. Broadly, there are chronic issues to be addressed surrounding the policy framework, institutional arrangement, market dynamics, understanding the ecosystem of human resource development and practice, research and evidence-based policy-making, scoping and strategizing, and defining and linking the human resource development with the national development objectives, among several others.
Policy Framework
Nepal’s main policy mainstay for human resource development, like in planning and development policies for all other sectors of the country, has historically been the periodic plans. But these policies too failed to successively take up a consistent approach with regard to human resource development for different time horizons say five, 10, or 20 years. The skill development and promotion of vocational education seem to have been a primary focus throughout the planning history, albeit, with limited success. Higher education institutions produce graduates with academic degrees without matching levels of skills–human and technical. Different plans only had sporadic mention of only partial aspects of human resources development.
The sixth five-year (1980-85) plan categorized the available human resources on the basis of their skills such as scientists and technicians, engineers, forest experts, health experts, agricultural experts, etc. The seventh plan created three levels – high level, medium level, and basic level experts. The twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth plans adopted a policy of maintaining a balance between supply and demand of manpower by developing skilled human resources capable of competing in the national and international job markets. The fifteenth periodic plan has adopted a policy of productive utilization of the labor force in the major sectors such as agriculture and forestry, mining and manufacturing industries, hydropower construction, tourism, transportation, information technology, education, and health for the acceleration of the economic growth of the country. The sixteen plan is now being developed in consultation with multiple stakeholders the government deemed appropriate.
For better management of the human resource in the public sector, several administration reform commissions and committees formed at different times have submitted reports regarding the development and mobilization of human resources, several relevant recommendations by them are certainly worth considering as the reference policy basis. However, the government policies barely seemed to have adopted a holistic policy that reflected the need and strategy of a national scope integrating the private and international demand of skills and manpower, for both present and future requirements.
As the overarching policy direction, the Constitution of Nepal 2015 in its Directive Principles under Article 51 has provided a broader framework to formulate laws and policies related to human resource development and management.
Article 51(h) as part of policies regarding the basic needs of citizens has stated:
- Making education scientific, technical, professional, skill-oriented, and employment and people-oriented in order to prepare the human resources to be competent, competitive, moral, and committed to the national interest.
- Increasing the investment of the State in the educational sector, and regulating and managing the investment of the private sector in it to make education service oriented.
- Making higher education easily available, of high quality, and accessible, and gradually making it free.
- Establishing and promoting information centers and libraries for the personality development of citizens.
Similarly under Clause (i) (1) of the same Article, policies regarding labor and employment have provisioned that the State shall work towards ‘creating a condition to ensure employment for all and employment opportunities in the country itself by making the labor power, which is the main social and economic force, competent and professional.’
Other related laws like the Labor Act and Social Security Act also have provisions to optimize the output of Nepali labor and secure the rights of the workers. Several other laws related to education, information technology, and foreign employment, squarely if not directly, incorporate the components of human resource management issues ranging from skill development, higher education, employment, and growth.
Evidently, all these examples bring to the fore a persistent and extreme level of policy fragmentation and lack of coherence pointing to the fact that comprehensive policy and implementation regimes in the area as envisaged by the Directive Principles of the Constitution are still far behind from realization. Nevertheless, the Ministry of Education has just recently come out with a ‘draft for discussion’ of a fresh ‘National Human Resources Policy 2023’ with an aim ‘to develop specialized and professionally competitive, technology-friendly, employment-oriented and productive human capital required for specific sectors of the economy.’
The specific objectives of the proposed policies are outlined as follows:
- To project human resource needs of different sectors and classification of professional skills necessary for the development of the nation.
- To prepare national standards based on the basic scope for human resources development plans at federal, provincial, and local levels.
- To build competitive and competent human resources in terms of sectors and professions that can contribute to socioeconomic transformation through coordination and cooperation between federal, provincial, and local levels, and labor, capital, and market-related bodies.
- To prepare the necessary legal and institutional basis for national human resource development.
- To study the diversification and specialization of the latest knowledge, skills, and technologies developed in the global skills market.
The proposed policy initiative is certainly a benign endeavor not because it is already ideal in structure and content, but because it is imperative that was historically overdue. At least, with this at least a policy draft in whatever shape is in circulation. The scope of its timely improvement can always be undertaken on a continuous basis. Of course, its final shape and efficacy of enforcement, however, remain critical.
Institutional Arrangement
As evidenced by the policy fragmentation, authority in developing and mobilizing human resources is also equally fragmented among the existing institutions. Actually, a dedicated institution for the purpose of human development does not exist in the state system. The Ministry of Education Science and Technology for all practical purposes functions only as the entity looking after high school education. The Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Security appears preoccupied with dealing with the issues of foreign employment of the unskilled migrant workforce. The National Planning Commission too has failed to uphold the principle of formulating the plans on the basis of research, data, and evidence. The Ministry of Industry Commerce and Supplies and other commissions/boards are focused more on providing a largely transient type of employment to a limited number of people rather than developing the human capital as per the national needs and priorities.
A government-formed task force in 2015 had proposed for the establishment of a Ministry of Human Resources at the federal level. It also recommended forming the National Human Resource Council. But, the institutional arrangements of specialized kind are yet to see the light of the day.
Examples from neighboring India have shown that an integrated institutional authority and approach like the Ministry of Human Resource Development not only would have politically symbolic significance as an integrated entity, it indeed could facilitate policy coordination and enable the vertical linkages between the different levels of academic architecture from primary to tertiary education as well as strengthening horizontal linkages between the generic and vocational education ecosystem. Resource mobilization and industry interface of the skills would get a single platform to optimize the employment opportunities, employability, and demand-supply (mis)match of skills in varied markets.
The coordination among the policymakers, institutions providing higher, technical, and vocational education, and the industry that demands defined skill sets for employability is apparently lacking the absence of such, ideally, an apex public institution with the mandate to coordinate and administer every affair of the country’s human resource. The new policy should be able to first fill this institutional gap.
The Ecosystem Approach
The overall vision for national development, or a defined development model so to speak, is the first basis to chart out the long and short-term demands for the human resources of varied skills for all disaggregated sectors and administrative jurisdictions. For example, if a country plans to export 10,000 megawatts of power in the next five years, it would need a specific number of engineers, managers, and semi-skilled support manpower to develop and sustain the business. It applies to sectors like agriculture, tourism, industries, or any other we may name. As such, defining and linking human resource development with national development objectives is unequivocally critical. This is exactly where Nepal has miserably failed.
Policy and planning authorities must duly communicate to educational institutions of various natures and specializations about the need for skills for the future job market. The state should empower them so as to produce the required human resources, accordingly. In the case of Nepal, the semi-skilled workforce in large numbers for many technical areas like healthcare, public works, agriculture, tourism, etc. are needed than highly educated professionals who barely have been willing to contribute to national development being stationed in remote locations in the cost of their luxurious life. For example, producing health assistants willing to work at the local level is always better than investing to produce a doctor never willing to leave the big city. A local overseer compared to a highly educated engineer or a junior technical assistant compared to an agricultural scientist restless to out-migrate than to serve in the locality is undoubtedly preferable for the balanced development of the country.
Qualified school teachers are constantly in short supply. This itself is a human resource crisis. More than that the resultant adverse effect of which is reflected in the Board level examinations results of the high school education. The rate of failure in subjects like English and Mathematics is having a snowball effect on the country’s inability to produce adequate and adequately skilled human resources.
Similarly, only a well-informed ecosystem approach can determine the number and kind of universities required in the country. The same can be argued for vocational and technical training institutions and entities. Their locations and specializations should also be accordingly determined.
The mass exodus of the working-age population has been the most excruciating problem in contemporary Nepal. Those who are migrating to work without the required set of skills and without matching skills according to their academic degrees are forced to compromise their earnings. If sending our youths to work abroad remains our national priority in the foreseeable future, our human resource policy must not shy away from training them according to the international market demands.
Conclusion
The need for a comprehensive national vision and data-enabled projection on human resources development, mobilization, and management is undoubtedly a national imperative beyond question. A national policy that also guides provincial and local governments and functional institutional arrangements are inevitable components of such national vision on human resources development and management. Evidence-based policymaking is often talked about but barely put into practice. However, in human resource policy formulation and planning, such miss is bound to be costly as it requires scoping and strategizing across the time horizon with specific feasible numeric projections and estimations.
The proposed National Human Resource Policy 2023 is indeed a welcome endeavor. To complement it, the equally efficient and dedicated institutional mechanism is indispensable. More important would be to look into the benefits from the coordinated prospects between the private sector which is the main provider of employment with about 70 percent share as compared to 25 percent of the public sector, and the academic and technical/vocational training institutions that produce the human resource according to the demanded skills in the market. Given its highly dynamic nature, human resource development is a field that constantly needs both academic and applied research to make timely relevant policies. Universities and other higher educational institutes must be encouraged and equipped for this in the larger interest of the nation. The ecosystem approach, national policy framework, and appropriate institutional arrangements remain inescapably cardinal.
Prof. Wagle is an economist and is the Registrar of Kathmandu University. Views expressed in the article are his personal.
