DEMOGRAPHIC DIVIDEND- How much India getting the advantage

           Demographic dividend is a subject of population of a country and its effect is a complex socio-economic issue. The developmental planning of the country must consider the population growth rate to garner the positive effects in all possible means. According to the economic theory where the market is strong the currency of that country stands harder. But peculiarly the geographical region covering China, India and Pakistan which contribute to one-third of the world population and have strong captive market and the global business community making bee-line to establish their presence are suffering the impact of Euro-debt crisis which has resulted in continuous nose dive of the Indian currency since  a year or more. The sultans in the Government are only promising green to its citizens and passing the buck to the Reserve Bank of India to take some fire fighting measures. This raises question, whether there is any policy or only politics in the Government

                   The present trend of one or two child concept in Indian families has resulted in social, cultural and economic changes in the society , which must be utilized to get the best out of that. There has been increase in the number of smaller families. In many families there have been more earning members. The dependency ratio in families is decreasing and the youth dependency rate drastically reduced. According to the I.L.O concept the children up to 15 years of age and the persons who have completed 64 years of age are considered dependant to a family while the persons in the age group of 16 to 64 are considered earning and self dependant members in a family. Therefore the Total Dependency Ratio (TDR) can be mathematically derived as:

             Children up to 15 years of age+ Persons above 64 years of age

 TDR = ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- X 100

                   Persons in between the age group of 16 and 64 years

Higher the TDR value higher will be the economic pressure on the net earning of the family and vice versa. In the Indian context there is un-employment problem But the equation remain true. According to the Indian census data taking 1961 as the base year, by 2001 the percentage change in various age group are:

Year of            Population change rate within the age group of

Census             under 14 years          15 to 34 years        16 to59 years     above 60 years

1961                     41.0                            34.43                       53.30                    1.80

2001                     35,3                            31.79                        56.90                   7..4

 

  This shows there has been increase in the earning group and the ageing group where there has been a diminishing trend in the child population (0 to 14 years) and in the reproductive group (15 to 34 years.) Hence there has been a diminishing TDR .This indicates:

-       more earning members in the family means entry of more persons in the labour force,

-       more family income means better nutrition, better education to the children, better

health care and better living condition are available to the families and there is more saving to the family purse.

-       Cultural change in the family institution resulting in smaller families ,increase in one

person family ,postponement marriage, rise in divorce rate among the newly weds, decline in fertility rate among women.

-       More and more women folk join employment to feel at par with the other earning

members in the family.

   

  More earning member indicates inflow of more labour force to the market. This will require proper planning for the use of this intellectual property which should cover planning to give them proper education and training suit themselves to the market requirements so also generation of suitable employment for them inside the country, else they will be encouraged to leave the country in search of suitable employment.

  

    More family income beside its positive aspects of comfortable living conditions enhances more savings, means increase in the number of small investors to the capital market and country’s domestic savings and increase in the purchasing capacity of the individuals. Better nutrition and better health care will lead to decrease in mortality rate. This will affect population ageing; means there will be more elderly persons in the families.

Postponement of marriage, combined with decline in fertility rate among women folk indicate availability of healthier women in the families and also in the service sector which has its special impact on the society as a whole. In Japan, Europe and North America each family having fewer children or no child at all has shown a disproportionate number of older people in the families. Soon East Asia will suffer this syndrome. This negative effect will increase pressure on the state exchequer for the payment of pension to the senior citizen In China the one child policy over the past several decades has resulted in increased population ageing. At present 38% of the population in China comprises of children below 15 years and ageing persons above 64 years of age. The U.N report on population in India also predicted that the present trend of decreasing youth population (15 to 34 years of age) will further taper off by 2030.

     According to an Indian labour report about 30 million youth will enter into the labour force by 2030 only India. It will then be a gigantic task for the country to handle that huge human intellectual capital. A two day long “One Globe-2012” conference was recently organized in New Delhi to brain-storm on this issue where in many speakers stressed on how to prepare those youths with necessary professional training and education such that the nation could churn out best of them to garner the fruit of demographic dividend. The union minister in charge of HR and CIT Mr.Kapil Sibal who spoke in that conference stressed on private participation in such skill development programs since the government alone will be unable to handle the huge task. He also suggested for widening the credit based education system through which both the regular and working class people could be benefited He informed that a National Knowledge Network (NKN) has started in our Country which is at work to link about 31000 educational institutions around the world and to offer 1100 open courses for need based skill development. It is also a fact that literacy and skill development of the country’s working class plays a vital roll in productivity.

      Whether India is prepared to garner the fruits of this demographic dividend? After 64 years of getting independence India is at the 67^th position at the poverty index, that is much below some poverty stricken South African countries. The national literacy rate is hovering around 63%. Many government managed schools are of poor quality, lack infrastructure, even with no sitting arrangement for the students. Many schools in rural India run with less or no teacher out of whom many are not even fit for their job. There  are reports that many school premises  due to their continuous non-use has turned into camps of the security personals or naxal teaching seminaries. The schools in cities are also not in good shape as seen from the results they have been showing. There are some counted highly regarded state owned institutions like the IITs, IIMs, IRMA, IIFM, AIIMS, and IISc. which are producing counted number of graduates, majority of whom are opting to leave this country in the pursuit of higher education or better employment after passing out Some high-tech organizations have set up their own academies to prepare their selected personnel while many meritorious youth are a strayed due to non- availability of required opportunities.

      Another lacuna with Indian government is, there exists more politics than policies .India’s much hyped protective discrimination policy that reserves close to half of the openings in the professional fields for the members of the indigenous tribes, dis-advantageous castes and other minority and unprivileged groups which has resulted in shortage of top quality teaching staffs in the premiere institutions in this country.

           On quantitative aspects in India only 10 percent of the youths get higher education. A growing number of students are now entering into the mushrooming low quality colleges which are no better than teaching shops and degree mills. According to a NASSCOM release only one in every four engineering graduates have employability in private sectors. As per the government report only 3.6% of the national GDP was spent in education sector in the 2007-08 financial years. This shows the poor state of affairs in our policy planning. While delivering a lecture on this issue Professor Philip.G.Altbatch, Director of CIIE Boston

and Professor N.Jairam of Tata Institute of Social Science they commented that the promise of demographic dividend may not last long if India would not reap its advantages within a couple of decades .Commenting on the infrastructural lacunae in the education system in India a Swiss Professor Carl Gustove said “the wines of youth is not clear and it grows turbid”. Some critics even says that the: demographic dividend that has come to fore has its origin in the catastrophic policy error of the Government In Prime Minister Indera Gandhi’s ministry where the cultural revolution pushed the population control through the programs of forcible sterilization of women in rural India.

     The 2008 global financial melt down scenario had also pushed back the Indian economy due its faulty economic system. The presence of less policy and more politics syndrome in government has caused to see smart and educated youths at the streets and voicing their anger against corruption. It is no astonishing if more Anna Hazares or Ramdevs would emerge to sympathize with the frustrations of the youths.