Rising Population of India: Asset or Liability?

 

Rising Population of India: Asset or Liability?

Rising Population of India: Asset or Liability?

The ever-growing population of India has been a grave cause of great concern in the past few years.

 With a population of 1.2 billion people, India boasts of having a formidable 17% of the world population. This makes India the second most populated country after the People’s republic of China.

Some people estimate that if the population of the country continues to grow at the same pace, India might surpass the population of China in a very short time.

 

Population of India: Some key figures and facts

In the beginning of the 20^th century, India had a population of just 23 crores. The post-independence census, done 50 years later, didn’t bear any surprising increase. The population in 1951 was just 36 crores.

The major change came after independence when India’s population shot up by more than 3 times in the 50 years since, coming up to about 1.02 billion in 2001.

The population increase hasn’t, in any part, been due to annexation of any nearby territories. On the contrary, after the partition in 1947 and the Indo-China war in 1962, India lost a substantial part of its territory.

Logically, the growing population ate up whatever meagre economic growth happened and as a result, any tangible and long-lasting progress was slow.

 

Any discussion in India revolving around crucial issues of environment, health, employment and so on is futile and incomplete if the issue of rising population isn’t identified at the crux of it.

While the population continued to grow indiscriminately, the contribution of unskilled population remained more than the skilled population for a major portion of the developmental years of the nation and this position has turned around only in the past couple of decades.  

Presently, the skilled workforce in India is only about 2% of the total population, showing that the proportion of unskilled population has increased and grown at a faster pace than the skilled population.

At present, there is a need for about 150 million skilled people in the non-farm sectors to catch up with the developed nations. Accordingly, if the unskilled population is trained and utilized in a proper manner, it could prove to be a valuable asset rather than a liability.

 

Why is the growing population an asset?

India has a favourable demographic dividend, with a healthy number of young citizens, which needs to be exploited.

As per the findings of the ‘State of the Urban Youth, India 2012: Employment, Livelihoods, Skills’, a report published by the IRIS Knowledge Foundation in collaboration with UN-HABITAT, every third person in an Indian city today is a youth, and in about seven years, the median individual age in India will be 29 years, making India a very young country indeed.

The rapidly growing youth segment of India is expected to continue growing for the next 30 years. This is the bright side of the troubles that the rising population poses. This demographic dividend has the potential to inject new dynamism and vitality into the country’s flagging economy, provided the state acts quickly on vital issues of health, education and employment.

With more than 50% of the population being under 25, there is an extreme potential to tap socio-economic growth, taking advantage of young, innovative minds.

Blessed with the largest young manpower, India has the resources and the human skill set to turn around the face of its economy.

The huge population not only represents a skilled and unskilled pool of human resources from the producer’s point of view, but also represents an active, ever-growing consumer market.

In the past decade or so, India has emerged as a major back-office to the world’s major global firms, serving as an attractive outsourcing destination with its cheap, education and young English-speaking workforce.

India produces around 2.5 million engineering, life sciences and IT graduates per year, besides about 650,000 post-graduates in the fields of science and IT. The IT sector employs about 850,000 graduates and professionals while the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors are absorbing a formidable number of graduates too.

About 402 million Indians are aged between 15 and 59, forming a part of the working age group, and this number was expected to grow to 820 million by last year.

 

What is holding progress back?

The other side of the coin is visible in both rural and urban areas, when we look at the lack of employment opportunities in spite of an increase in the workforce willing to work. The population will grow to be asset when the country manages to feed all the people, provide them with clothing and shelter, good education, health care and productive jobs.

Hurdles in the form of poverty, illiteracy and corruption further add to the obstacles to economic growth.

Proper and responsible implementation of government schemes like National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in the rural areas at a massive scale; literacy campaigns, updating of the curriculum at rural schools; and building up of health infrastructure.

The public schemes targeting the poor need to be implemented honestly to bring this marginalised community into the mainstream and expose them to the benefits of digitization and globalisation. Job schemes in regions of low resource richness could also reduce the gap in progress.

 

The silver lining

No capital in the world can substitute the human capital, and as a country lucky enough to have a large base of talented individuals, India has a lot of opportunity and potential waiting to be utilized to the fullest.

A huge population means a huge potential demand for any product and this is indicative of good economic growth. The need is to provide the right share of developmental opportunities in a corruption free environment.

When every individual is free to choose the profession of their liking, without being bound by their economic or social circumstances, they will be able to contribute to the progress of this nation.

Vast resources of the country mixed with a talented, hard-working population is an undeniably good recipe for growth and prosperity.