Cloudy prospects for India's youth

The country's demographic dividend is dissipating, with seriously adverse consequences for young India

India’s population is still young, with about 55 per cent below 30 and over a quarter below 15. Its billion-strong working age population embodies an enormous potential for jobs and economic growth. About 19 years ago, I had warned that this demographic dividend could be squandered in the absence of right policies (Business Standard, November 25, 2003, “Can India grow without Bharat?”). Since then, successive governments have persisted with wrong or weak policies and programmes, including a poor public education and skilling system, an extremely complex and anti-job-creating maze of labour laws and regulations, foreign trade and exchange rate policies