The purpose of this paper is two-fold: the first part is to understand the "virtuous circles" of economic growth and human development; the second part is to review the development literature related to this discussion. For this, the evolving development strategies of Sri Lanka and South Korea and the seemingly convergent two schools of thinking are briefly outlined in Section II. Section III surveys the pace of economic and human progress to give a broad background of the debate. Section IV analyzes the economic growth and human development in selected Industrialized Countries, Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs), Emerging NICs, and Aspiring South Asian neighbors of Sri Lanka...In the second part of the paper, a discussion of economic development literature and the experience of NICs are reviewed to learn from their policies and strategies in Section V.