DAMOGRAPHIC DIVIDEND

SEMINAR ON DEMOGRAPHIC DIVIDEND IN SYNETIC BUSINESS SCHOOL : FRIDAY – JULY 29, 2016 : SPEAKER – DR. PROF. PANKAJ BEDI : FEW EXCERPTS FROM HIS SPEECH ;

Sanjeev Sanyal explains this in his book The Indian Renaissance-India’s Rise After a Thousand Years of Decline, where he defines three stages: “In the first stage, there is an increase in the proportion of the young in the population as birth rates stay high but infant mortality declines.”

In the second stage, the birth rates come down and the number of old people in the population increases at a modest pace. In this stage, the workforce of the country increases dramatically. This is the demographic dividend. In the third and final stage, the working population falls and the number of old people goes up.

India is currently in the second stage. “The UN’s projections suggest that India’s working age population will rise from 691 million in 2005 to 829 million in 2015 and 942 million in 2025 before stabilizing at around 1050 million in the late 2030s…By this time, India will have the single largest pool of workers in the world, by passing an aging China. This means that we have entered a phase where the labour supply will be growing at a very rapid pace for a prolonged period of time.”

What this means is that India needs to create jobs and that too at a very rapid rate for the huge number of people that is entering the workforce every year. And that does not seem to be happening. As the latest Economic Survey points out: “The power of growth to lift all boats will depend critically on its employment creation potential.