India is the second most populated country of the world. Recent estimates of World Development Indicators of the World Bank put India’s population at 1,139,964,932 persons in 2008. Though this huge population poses various challenges to take care of, it also creates opportunity to become largest pool of talented and skilled workforce. This is particularly true if we see the demographic characteristics of Indian population. Almost 40% of Indians are younger than 15 years of age. India is likely to add 150 million people in the age group 20-59 in the next 15 years. Thus, there is a tremendous opportunity for India to become intellectual super power of the world. The conversion of this opportunity into strength requires proper development of its most important resource, ‘human capital’. The liberalization of Indian economy and consequent growth poses new challenges for development and management of this human capital. It also creates opportunities for active corporate involvement and industry-academia collaboration to equip new generation with modern knowledge, skills and techniques.

Human resource development is concerned with providing opportunities to realize one’s potential to the fullest. Typical understanding of human resource development is from a job and corporate perspective. However, this article takes an integrated and comprehensive approach to such development and is of the opinion that intellectual development process start at the early stage of a child. Therefore, adequate human resource development requires institutional intervention at the very beginning of formal education and may become a continuous process.