This is election manifestowriting time. The Indian voter wants many things and most political parties offer a wide assortment of promises in their election manifestos. If there is one achievable promise that can — and should — be made by all, it is to make the entire country 100% literate by 2022, the year Independent India turns 75.Literacy, as officially defined — ‘a person aged seven and above who can both read and write with understanding in any language’ — is admittedly an inadequate measure of human capability in a modern economy. Based on this minimal definition, India’s literacy rate according to the 2011 Census was 72%, well below the global average of 86%.By now, this number may well have gone up. Taking it to 100% is a doable objective. Launching a nationwide initiative, involving high-school and college students, voluntary organisations and local communities in ensuring total literacy can also help mobilise society around a positive agenda.Going beyond literacy, India requires at this stage of development massive investment in education — general and technical. Several studies have in recent months established beyond doubt the strong and positive relationship between investment in education and skills — what economists call ‘human capital formation’ —and the overall level of economic development. That link is through labour productivity.Indeed, what sharply distinguishes China’s growth experience after 1980 from India’s has been the former’s investment in education, at all levels — from primary to higher education — and its contribution to human capital formation and labour productivity. The literature on China’s impressive growth performance has increasingly come to recognise the foundational role played by her investment in human capability at the base of the social pyramid.India has done as well at the apex, with specialised institutions and private investment, however, the wider foundation is weak. The more recent trend of private investment-funded education is not going to bridge the gap. What is urgently needed is publicly funded education and research.The differential economic performance of various Indian states can also be partly explained by differing levels of human capital formation. The Hindi-speaking states have remained laggards on the literacy and educational fronts. It is here that a concerted campaign for educational empowerment is urgently needed if the country’s overall rate of growth has to be sustained in a regionally balanced manner.Needless to add, as educational attainment improves, employment opportunities must expand. Otherwise, one faces the situation that many of the eastern and northeastern states face, namely, an educated youth in search of gainful employment. None of the above is new thinking.It is just that the national political leadership across political parties has to be reminded as to what its priorities ought to be.In our recently published book, The Bombay Plan : Blueprint for Economic Resurgence, my co-editor Meghnad Desai and I, and some of our fellow contributors like Ajay Chhibber, draw attention to the fact that investment in human capital formation was one of the missing elements of Indian planning in the first quarter-century after Independence.Neither Jawaharlal Nehru nor P C Mahalanobis paid much attention to it, while the authors of the so-called ‘Bombay Plan’ did. Published in 1944 as ‘A Plan of Economic Development for India’, and jointly authored by J R D Tata, G D Birla, Lala Shriram, Purshottamdas Thakurdas, Kasturbhai Lalbhai, Ardeshir Dalal, A D Shroff and John Mathai, this historic document made all the arguments in favour of public investment in education and human capability building that have more recently been heard from economists like Amartya Sen.Observing that “extreme forms of poverty will prevail… as long as the overwhelming majority of the Indian people are able neither to read or write”, the so-called ‘Bombay Plan’ proposed public investment in literacy, including adult literacy, and school and college education, including ‘scientific education and research’.Contrary to the more recent political slogan of public provisioning of ‘roti, kapda aur makaan’ (food, clothing and shelter), the Bombay Plan demanded public investment in health and education too — a good half-century before Amartya Sen and Jean Drèze published their study on the importance of investment in human capability, An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions (1993).It is a shame that three quarters of a century after Independence, we have not yet adequately provided publicly funded access to healthcare and education to all. The modestly begun effort in Delhi, where the Aam Aadmi Party ( AAP ) government has sought to fund and improve the functioning of government schools and public health facilities, should inspire similar efforts across the country. This should be a manifesto commitment of all national parties.