Is India’s young population a time-bomb waiting to explode?

7 DECEMBER 2010 225 VIEWS 7 COMMENTS

One of the strongest theme in the narrative about India’s potential as a “superpower” is its youthful demographics (almost half of the population under the age of 25). Like many of us, I too have been guilty of publicly trumpeting this factor – and mentioning this as one of the reasons why this century can be an “Indian century“.

But last week I stumbled on Prof Kartik Hosanagar’s article on this topic…and that gave me cause to re-think. Here is Prof Hosanagar – in his own words (emphasis mine):

This (India’s demographic dividend) sounds great in theory. And in fact, there is ample evidence that in the past, several countries have witnessed periods of increased productivity and savings during periods in which they have enjoyed a demographic dividend. But all this assumes that this young and upcoming workforce can be trained and meaningfully employed. In India, that is a big if.

Here is why:

India still has the world’s largest number of illiterates at over 250 million. Although more and more jobs are being created thanks to the economic boom, the gap between the haves and have-nots seems to be increasing. I shudder to think what might happen if we have a sudden influx of large numbers of unemployed and disgruntled youth.

…Not only does India need to train and employ many orders of magnitude more people but it has also to start from a worse initial position in terms of existing educational infrastructure. We will need a massive infrastructure of universities and vocational training institutes spanning the country, including its rural interiors.

…
The conversation with Mr. Sibal reminded me of the obvious challenges ahead. But it was Mr. Vijay Mahajan, the founder of the microfinance company BASIX, who perhaps best drove home the significance of the issue. He worries that all the recent growth, while very welcome, has unfortunately not been inclusive. He believes that people increasingly have high aspirations, driven by the influence of media, but limited potential to achieve those aspirations. With limited access to quality education and employment, most of the youth will enter the labor force at the lowest levels. The frustration feeds into movements like Naxalism and even manifests itself in the form of violence based on religion or regionalism.



Now, Prof Hosanagar is not a Doomsday Pundit…

I do not wish to sound like the grim reaper. My point is not that India faces doom. Rather, I agree that a rosy future awaits India. But this future cannot be taken for granted…

As I mentioned before, I have been as guilty as many others of highlighting the demographic advantage…but I will repeat the caveat I usually put in at the end, which is:

A youthful population is an asset only if it is healthy – and it is educated (read skilled). Otherwise it can be a massive force of social disruption…

Dis-satisfied young populations – as many of you know – can be easily swayed be rhetoric and can be emotionally aroused without much effort. They can also be “primed” relatively easily to create extreme social unrest – and potentially even trigger civil wars…

So next time someone says “Demographic Dividend”, let us just pause for a moment and think how we can ensure that the demographic dividend does not turn out to be a liability..and let us try to make sure we are not sitting on a demographic time-bomb. Comments and thoughts welcome, as always.

Additional Reading: Population Age Structure and Its Relation to Civil Conflict: A Graphic Metric from which this brief, somewhat worrying excerpt:

About 86 percent of all countries that experienced a new outbreak of civil conflict had age structures with 60 percent or more of the population younger than 30 years of age.

Somewhat related post: This weekend, worrying about Assam

Map of Global Median Age, courtesy CIA Factbook via Wikipedia



7 Comments »
1. bhuvan said:
Thanks for sharing a valuable article Shantanu. Replying in jiffy will revert later. Just a quick observation and I always feel (which is not a great feeling at all), we are moving towards a CIVIL WAR/REVOLUTION SITUATION SLOWLY BUT SURELY.

7 December 2010
2. Sanjeev Sabhlok said:
Dear Shantanu

It is not population structure but policy that makes nations. There is no direct causality. Some random correlations may exist, but they prove nothing. The Russian Revolution, for instance, cannot be explained by population structure but by Lenin. And US was a very young nation after World War II (baby boom) but did not face social unrest – instead, it boomed economically.

Let’s not worry about irrelevant policy variables like population structure and focus on the need to resolve India’s problems through good governance. Revolution will occur from governance failures, not population structure issues.

Regards
Sanjeev

8 December 2010
3. girish said:
Agree totally that demographic dividend cannot be obtained without a healthy and educated indian population.One can see so much of unrest among youth who have formed various groups to fight out various different issues being faced by them. A totally irresponsible government and a lethargic judiciary will certainly fuel the civilians towards a civil war.

8 December 2010
4. Ranganaathan said:
Good post, it is highly critical to train the youth & guide them into professions. The divide of haves n have nots have grown to extreme level, as Prof.Hosnagar points out this would stem frustration in youth. We are already experiencing this in few pockets, where youth are taking to fundamentalism/Naxalism as a solution for their aspirations. There huge population under employed youth, whose grudge towards the nation & its governance might be a danger. Aspirations & expectation have grown manifolds in the last decade with IT, service, financial sector booms & with consumerism centric business models they find it very difficult to balance their lively hood. The need of the hour is to counsel, educate, train youths on various vocations & to guide them towards empowering others in their realm. Jai Hind..Vande Mataram

8 December 2010
5. Ram Lanka said:
Thought provoking post. I fully agree with the professors apprehension. Way out is inclusive growth based on indegenous ideology & technology. Growth that we are witnessing is based on BPO’s, Medical transcriptionists, software servicing and ancillary industries like travel & hospitality. These are associated spiralling incidence of alcoholism, high degree of personal indulgence, divorces etc apart from leaving out the vast majority of the country from the benefits of this pseudo growth. Another pernicious aspect of this so called growth is rapid increase of real estate business leading to vast areas of agriculture land being applied for commercial purposes & crops. This is leading to unacceptable increase in basic essentials of life like food. Add to this the all pervasive corruption. If one dispassionately looks at it, one cannot but agree with the learned professor.

I am calling this growth as psuedo & pernicious because this has no strategic direction or sense and is bereft of the wisdom that amde this land & civilization the richest in the world till the British plundered us. I am afraid, we are falling prey to the colonial players once again.

8 December 2010
6. Prakash said:
It is good to see a discussion on this issue.

How do we gainfully employ the huge Indian working age population? With modern farming and manufacturing techniques, those sectors will only employ a small fraction. Ditto government jobs. IT services for West is a candle that will soon burn out. IT sector employs a very small fraction anyway. Still, the money earned by our quality IT service companies has got the economy moving. The momentum must be maintained by improving domestic services.

To improve legal employment opportunities, India should legalise gambling. It should also undertake a massive exercise of identifying national and regional historical locations and monuments and create tourism infrastructure. Thousands of students should be trained in history and geography, arts and culture, and Indian languages. We must enforce 3-language formula. There are many possibilities, however, there are many obstacles, too. History is corrupted by political interests. Gambling is anathema to ivory tower moralists. Culture is a no-no for religious zealots from West who have money and power to stop developments in that area…

It isn’t easy.

10 December 2010
7. Anupam said:
Very thought provoking. I think there is huge opportunity for private sector to play a role in this sector.

Anupam