Concept of Human resource:

Human resources are the people who make up the workforce of an organization, business sector, or economy. But only healthy, educated and skilled manpower is known as well as human resource.
According to Todaro and Smith, "Human resource is the quantity and quality of a nation's labor force." 

Human resource is one of the mobile resources of the four factors of production, and it improves with age and experience, which no other resource can do. It is therefore regarded as the scarcest and most crucial productive resource that creates the largest and longest lasting advantage for an economy. Human resource contributes to productivity, equality, and justice.

Role of human resource in Economic Development:

1. Utilization of natural resources :

The natural resources like mineral, water, soil, and forest are utilized by the human resource. The utilization of natural resources increases the national income, per capita income and living standards of the people. The shortage of proper human resource is one of the causes of non-utilization of natural resources in the world.

2. Compensate for the deficiency of natural resources: 

The utilization of human resource compensates the deficiency of natural resources. Many countries poor in natural resources have been able to achieve high economic and human development on the basis of human resources like Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Germany, etc.

3. Utilization of physical capital :

The more existence of physical capital is no guarantee of development. They should be properly utilized by human resource. Human resources are essential to operate machinery and equipment and to run factories and industries.

4. Increase production :

The skilled, educated and healthy human resources increase productivity and production. The production may be done even by the use of unskilled and semi-skilled manpower. But the production of quality goods and variety of goods need skilled manpower.

5. Reform in tradition cultural and attitude :

The traditional culture, values, institutions, and attitude have been harmful to the development of developing countries including Nepal. The educated manpower reforms the traditional cultures and attitude and helps to accelerate the pace of development.

6. Increase in managerial capacity and entrepreneurship:

Human resources increase managerial capacity and entrepreneurship. It leads to innovation. The new production technique, new market, and new technology are developed. This increases production and national income.

7. Development of agriculture and industry :

The modern and superior technologies should be used for the modernization of agriculture and rapid industrialization. This is made possible only by human resource. Theodore Schultz observes "It is simply not possible to have the fruits of modern agriculture and the abundance of the modern industry without making a large investment in human beings."

8. Remove economic backwardness:

The human resource helps directly to remove the economic backwardness. It increases labor efficiency and specialization. It increases labor mobility from which the existing resources can be made more productive. The development of human resource increases the knowledge of natural resources, new production technique, market, and opportunities for economic activities.