Jere R. Behrman. Human Resource Development? Review of Issues andEvidence. New Delhi: ILO-ARTEP, 1990. lOSpp.

In the recent literature on development economics, the adjective ‘human’ is encountered with increasing frequency. On the one hand, the ‘human resource-led development (HRLD) strategies’ of the kind that were presumably adopted by the Newly Industrialized Countries of Asia are being increasingly cast as the leading means of achieving rapid economic growth. And on the other hand, in a manner that is reminiscent of the ‘growth versus distribution’ debate of the early 1970s, we are being urged to set our goals more in terms of broad ‘human development’of the society rather than merely its ‘economic growth’. These new trends in the economic development literature are evident from the contents of the recent academic journals as well as from the activities of the various international organizations. The World Bank’s choice of ‘Poverty’ as the theme for its 1990 World Development Report, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission’s April 1988 pronouncement of the ‘Jakarta Plan of Action’ regarding human resource development in the Escape region, the United Nations Development Program’s recent Human Development Report, and the Asian Development Bank’s analysis of the role of human resources in economic growth in its 1990 Asian Economic Outlook are cases in point.