In his book "Nepal: Dimensions of Development", Harka Gurung, one of Nepal's most renown geographers, introduces the chapter on education by quoting a Chinese proverb: "If you are planning for a year - sow rice; for ten years - plant trees; for a hundred years - educate people".
The ancient wisdom of the importance of "human capital" has been increasingly acknowledged in recent years, as for instance in UNDP's exercise of compiling a Human Development Index from 1990 onwards, based on the idea that "people are the real wealth of a nation" and that "the basic objective of development is to create an enabling environment for people to enjoy long, healthy, and creative lives. They continue to argue that one of the three essential choices is to acquire knowledge, along with leading along and healthy life and to have access to resources needed for a decent standard of living, as stated in their introduction to the first Human Development Report in 1990. UNDP bases the measurement of knowledge on literacy figures because they reflect "a person's first step in learning and knowledge-building" although it is only "a crude reflection of access to education".
