India's demographic dilemma

29 Oct, 2008, 0311 hrs IST,Janmejaya Sinha,
We talk these days about India's favourable demographics. We are one of the few countries in the world where the dependency ratio will improve in the coming years. There are 570 million people in India under the age of 25. When most of the developed world is beset with the problem of ageing, we have a uniquely young population.
However, whether this is an advantage or not depends on our ability to have a productive population. If we have a large group of young uneducated people without the ability to participate in the workforce, what we will have is a demographic disaster. We will have an army of young people not ready for the 21st century, left behind and increasingly frustrated with their lot. Their frustration can find an outlet in violence and rage that may challenge the very fabric of our society.
India's workforce today has 484 million people. Of these 273 million are working in rural areas primarily in agriculture (many of them clearly underemployed), there are another 61 million working in manufacturing and about 150 million in services. Shockingly, 40% of the current workforce is illiterate and another 40% is below 12 class pass. That means 200 million of our workers cannot even sign their name!
Let me ply you with some unfortunate statistics. Currently about 23 million children are eligible for entry into the school system yet only six million finish the 12 standard and only about 2.3 million graduate. Thus 17 million do not even finish school. It gets worse than that - the quality of education on offer is abysmal. On any day 25% of the teachers are absent and 50% of children in class V cannot read a story and 21% of them cannot recognise numbers. Little wonder that parents dependent on government schools do not see the relevance of sending their children to school.

Gov. school in Vrindavan, UP.