Evolving strategies to channel India’s ‘demographic dividend’

THE PAST YEARS have seen a spurt in the levels of activism on streets, in social media and public forums. A feature of these mobilisations is how many young faces are at the centre of the action. It is as though the sensibilities captured in Rang de Basanti (2006)—in a sanitised fashion—have begun to find their earthier manifestation in the civic (and not-so-civic) youth activism. This is only to be expected in a country negotiating the challenges of managing its ‘demographic dividend’; the fact that a large proportion of India’s population is young. This ‘dividend’ is described either as a boon (when India is contrasted with China or western economies) or as a ticking time bomb—the sobering characterisation of the issue in a recent edition of Tehelka. Whichever way we look at it, the fact that India has a large and capricious population of young people has far-reaching implications for India’s future. As an acknowledgment, the Department of Economic Affairs (Ministry of Finance) has devoted a chapter to the issue in this year’s Economic Survey. No previous edition of this survey that shapes the government’s policy-making and planning processes, has accorded this sort of centrality to the issue. Entitled Seizing the Demographic Dividend, the chapter is an analysis of how best the country needs to manage its young workforce. Framed around economic matters, it recognises that more than half of India’s population is in rural areas and a part of the ‘informal’ sector. Because productive jobs are vital for growth, the central question facing us is: where will good jobs come from? The study points out that while industry is creating jobs, “too many such jobs are low-productivity, non-contractual jobs in the unorganised sector, offering low incomes, little protection, and no benefits. Service jobs are high productivity, but employment growth in services has been slow in recent years”. On the reasonable premise that “a good job is the best form of inclusion”, the study concludes: “India’s challenge is to create the conditions for faster growth of productive jobs outside of agriculture, especially in organised manufacturing and in services, even while improving productivity in agriculture.” The economic implications of India’s youth bulge are self-evident. Studies by the World Bank and the IMF have been analysing the issue for years now and all see advantages in the coming years. The fact remains, as the Economic Survey notes, that historically, India’s institutional apparatus has not always been adept at channeling the energies of her volatile population. To complicate matters further, in 2009 the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS) concluded that over 85 per cent of the Indian workforce is informal and even after excluding the agricultural sector, the share of the workforce in the informal sector remains at 70 per cent. A large proportion of this group is the young, outside the welfare state’s safety net. Understandably, this has opened-up avenues for businesses in the educational sector, because entrepreneurs realise that the young workforce is also a lucrative market. Further, how the young choose to seek creative outlets will have far-reaching implications. Perceptive political parties and activists have begun to evolve methods of connecting with the young. Two questions lie at the centre of this churn: firstly, do the governmental institutions and private sector appreciate the challenges associated with harnessing the energies being unleashed—within a society in which power structures are dominated by the elderly but the entrepreneurial forces sustaining a growing India ipso facto cut across generational thinking? Second, given India’s cultural orientation (entrenched notions of respect for the elderly), how exactly do we expect institutions to understand and manage the energies of its youth? Put bluntly, how well do the elderly (who inhabit positions of authority) and the youth actually communicate? These questions have no easy answers. The first step towards finding them is to understand what the young think, want, and are inspired by; towards what end, for whom, and most fundamentally— how and why. Answers to these are being generated in forums, but they remain dispersed often drowned out by the celebratory jingoism about the dividend. An organisation, Pravah, set-up in 1993, has attempted some answers. In The Ocean in Drop: Inside-Out Youth Leadership, the NGO founders show how the young have contributed significantly to society in the past. They suggest ways in which they can take centre-stage again. The book argues that traditionally society has legitimised four ‘spaces’ for young people: family, friends, education or careers, and leisure. It goes on to state the need for the creation of a Fifth Space which focuses on three aspects of youth development: understanding the ‘self’, building meaningful relationships and impacting society. Because existing notions of volunteerism (manifest in facile forms of social service) and active citizenship (co-opted by top-heavy political organisations) have limitations, the book argues that constructive forms of youth engagement emerge when young people connect with society through an energised self of the kind that Mahatma Gandhi might have imagined when talking of swaraj. Once this happens, such self-awareness can be juxtaposed with the development of skills, values and attitudes that are necessary to positively impact the world around them. The fact is that India’s youth are already carving out spaces of autonomy for themselves. How these energies are channeled will depend on the quality of the inter-generational understanding that emerges ahead. In this conversation, the stakes are significant, and if conducted properly, so are the rewards.