Dr. Devendra Kothari
Population and
Development Analyst
Forum for
Population Action
Many Indians including policy
makers now see demographics as a critical advantage in competition with the
nation it regards as its chief rival –
China. They argue that China will get old before it gets rich, and India will
reach middle income status while it is still young. Entrepreneur-turned-technocrat
Nandan Nilekani[1]
has portrayed a bright future for the Indian youth in his book - Imagining
India: Ideas for the New Century (2008). And policy makers like him believe that
India has an
inevitable advantage in its young “human capital”. Nilekani noted that: “Looking around, I think
that if people are the engine of India’s growth, our economy has only just
begun to rev up”. He questioned the issue of fast
growing population faced by
the country: “But in the last two
decades, this depressing vision of India’s population as an ‘overwhelming burden’
has been turned on its head. With growth, our human capital has emerged as a
vibrant source of workers” (page 39). With around 70% of the population under 35, India can afford to dream to
become economic power in the world before the middle of this century.
The median age
is a single index that summarizes the age distribution of a population. It
divides a population into two numerically equal groups; that is, half the
people are younger than this age and half are older. The median age of population in India was 25 years in 2010, as against 35
in China, 37 in USA, 44 in Germany and 45 in Japan. The corresponding figures would
be 37, 49, 40, 49 and 52, respectively in 2050. It appears that the dreams are
taking concrete shape; it’s what the world calls a “demographic dividend”. The phrase was
coined by demographer David Bloom in the early nineties. He proposes that when
young working-age adults comprise a disproportionate percentage of a country’s
population, the national economy is affected in positive ways. It
was first applied to the favorable circumstances faced by such countries as
Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea in the second half of the last
century when these "tiger economies" grew at record levels of 10 to
12% for more than twenty years, catapulting their respective economies to First
World status in just one generation
Here, a population
"bulge" in the working-age groups (15-59) is seen as an inevitable
advantage. India’s working-age
population, as of now, largely consists of youth (15-34 years), and as a result
its economy has the potential to grow more quickly than that of many other
countries, including China. It is because China will soon begin ageing due to
its one child policy and as a result will become less competitive. The promise of demographic dividend will not
last long. Can India take advantage of this demographic window in the next few
years and benefit from it? The post aims in this direction.
Demographic dividend or disaster:
According to the UN
Population Division, while the proportion of population in the less than 15 age
group declined from 41% in 1971 to 31% in 2010, the proportion of population in
the age group 15-59 increased from 53% to 62% during the same period. The
proportion of those above 60 years of age also increased from 5% to 10%. In
terms of absolute numbers, the increase in the working age-group population is
even more dramatic: from 296 million in 1970 to 757 million in 2010. This
segment of the population is projected to peak at 1048 million in 2050, while a
reverse trend will be observed in China, as shown below:
Table 1 India and China: Trends working
population (15-59 years)
Year
|
India
|
China
|
|||
Working Population
(in
million)
|
Per cent of total population
|
Working Population
(in
million)
|
Per cent of total population
|
||
1970
|
296
|
53
|
438
|
54
|
|
2010
|
757
|
62
|
915
|
68
|
|
2020
|
875
|
63
|
914
|
66
|
|
2050
|
1948
|
62
|
682
|
53
|
|
Source: UN
Population Division, United Nations
|
|||||
The conventional view is that
India will be able to put all these people to work because of its relative
strong education system, entrepreneurial zeal, and strong links to the global
economic mainly due to the proficiency in
English. “All that is real, but
India is already showing some of the warning signs of feared growth stories,
including early on set of over confidence”, noted by Ruchir Sharma,
Head of global emerging markets equity team at Morgan Stanley Investment
Management Inc., who
authored the highly acclaimed book: Breakout Nations:
In Search of The Next Economic Miracles (2012).
He writes further:
“Yes, a
growing pool of young workers can be huge advantage, but only if a nation works
hard to set them up for productive career” (page 56). No doubt, when
conditions are right, large numbers of young workers can drive a nation’s
growth to remarkable levels. Now question arises whether India is geared enough
to garner
its demographic gift?
We are frequently reminded of our demographic dividend - the fact that
a majority of our population
(slightly less than 70%) is under 35
years of age. But what sort of these people are. Based on the National Family Health Survey-3[2],
it is estimated that about 30 per cent
or around 218 million people in this young age group was the product of
unwanted childbearing. The level of unwanted fertility in this age group has
increased from 23 per cent in 1992-93 to 30 percent in 2005-06, as shown in
Table 2. It is mainly due to the poor population stabilization policies carried
out by India (For details, see my post: Unmet need for family planning and
persisting unintended fertility: Evidence from India, dated May 31, 2012 at
link: kotharionindia.blogspot.com).
Table 2 India: Level of unplanned /unwanted fertility in age
group 0-35, 1992-2006
National Family
Heath Survey
|
Total population aged 0-35
(in million)
|
Total population aged 0-35 result of
unwanted fertility (in million)
|
Per cent of total unwanted population
in age group 0-35
|
1992-93 (NFHS-1)
|
635
|
140
|
22.1
|
1998-99 (NFHS-2)
|
698
|
178
|
25.5
|
2005-06 (NFHS-3)
|
736
|
218
|
29.6
|
Computed by the
author by using data obtained from National Family Health Survey 1, 2 & 3
and Registrar General of India. For
details, see: Devendra
Kothari, “Implications of Emerging Demographic Scenario: Based on the
Provisional Results of Census of India 2011”,
A Brief, a publication of
Management Institute of Population and Development – A Unit of Parivar Seva
Sanstha, New Delhi, 2011
|
|||
The consequences of unwanted fertility are serious, slowing
down the process of socio-economic development. It is because unwanted childbearing
results in poor physical growth, reduced school performance, diminished concentration in daily tasks thus impacting
work capacity and work output resulting in diminished earning capacity; and it
is reflected in widespread hunger/malnutrition, poverty, unemployment as well
as increasing scarcity of basic resources like food, water and space in several
parts of India despite concerted developmental efforts since 1991.
Various reports,
released recently, reveal that things are not improving in India at all. In
fact, things are going from bad to worse. India’s rank in the latest UN’s Human
Development Report has fallen from 119 in 2010 to 134 out of 187 countries and
territories in 2011. In addition, the 2011
Global Hunger Index Report places
India amongst the three countries where the GHI between 1996 and 2011 went up
from 22.9 to 23.7, while 78 out of the 81 developing countries studied
succeeded in improving hunger condition[3]. The HUNGaMA
(Hunger and Malnutrition) survey carried in 2011 and released by the Prime
Minister of India on January 10, 2012 reconfirms that malnutrition among
children in India has taken ominous proportions, and the situation in many
districts of the country has worsened when compared to what it was about a
decade back. The report reveals that over 40% of children are
underweight and almost 60% are stunted[4]. India is simply not doing enough for its
women either. The country has fallen from 112 out of 134 countries in 2010 to
113 out of 135 countries in 2011 according to the Gender
Gap Index 2011 released by the World Economic Forum. Their
participation in the gainful employment has not shown an improvement.
In addition, three
recent studies paint a grim picture of school education in India - OECD’s Programme for International Students
Assessment (PISA) study ranked Indian higher secondary students only better
than those from Kyrgyzstan, which ranked last among 74 participating countries; NGO
Pratham`s Annual Status of Education
Report (ASER), 2011, assessing schools in rural India, found sharp declining
reading and mathematical abilities of children in the six to 14 years age
category; and lastly Wipro’s EL Quality
Education Study 2011 of India’s elite
schools, shows that learning levels are not on par with international
standards. 
Taken
together, these three reports make it amply clear that despite a welcome high
enrolment rate - around 97% - at the primary and upper primary levels, the
quality of school learning is simply not up to the mark. Though India’s
children are attending schools, but a large number are not learning even
basics, since teaching standards are poor, with high teacher absenteeism. It is
little wonder then that only 48% of class V students surveyed under ASER were
able to read class II-level texts, among other depressing statistics. It is
because the
largest part of India's schools is of poor quality. Teachers are inadequately
prepared, weakly motivated, poorly paid, and frequently absent.
Taken
together, these three reports make it amply clear that despite a welcome high
enrolment rate - around 97% - at the primary and upper primary levels, the
quality of school learning is simply not up to the mark. Though India’s
children are attending schools, but a large number are not learning even
basics, since teaching standards are poor, with high teacher absenteeism. It is
little wonder then that only 48% of class V students surveyed under ASER were
able to read class II-level texts, among other depressing statistics. It is
because the
largest part of India's schools is of poor quality. Teachers are inadequately
prepared, weakly motivated, poorly paid, and frequently absent.
Also, the higher
education scenario is at crossroads. The universities are suffering from
resource crunch, quality and employable placement of the students. According to
Prof. Philip
Alibach, Director of the Center for International
Higher Education at Boston College, USA and Dr. N. Jayaram of
Tata Institute of Social Science, Mumbai that: “The overall quality of
the higher education system is well below global standards and it has shown no
significant sign of improving. High-tech employers complain that a large
majority of engineering and other graduates are inadequately trained and must
be‘re-educated, at considerable expense, by their employers or not hired at all”[5]. On
the quantitative side too, there are problems. India now educates only 10 per
cent of the age group in higher education. “A growing number now attends often
low-quality colleges and other institutions that are not funded by the
government — some of which are little more than teaching shops and degree
mills”. Clearly, India is frittering
away the opportunity of capitalizing on the 'demographic dividend'.
It is because India
has a serious “infrastructure problem” in education as it does with roads,
ports, public transportation, water and electricity supply, and so on.
Long-term inadequate spending on infrastructure and poor planning will catch up
with India's booming economy at some point, and in fact it is happening
currently. While delivering the Eighth JRD
Tata Memorial Oration, Dr. Manmohan Singh said, “Human population is an
important constituent of the sustainable development agenda. However, a fast
growing population is leading to a significant diversion of national investable
resources to consumption which could otherwise be used for increasing
investment and productivity and for improving the quality of public social
services such as education, health, sanitation, provision of safe drinking
water and for control of environmental degradation”[6]. And that is happening in India due to stalled demographic transition[7].
Use of “demographic opportunity”
or “demographic window” is all about systematic planning and implementation and
there is no magic wand which can be switched on and off at will. It is time to
reorder priorities and ensure that the nation’s interest always comes
first. The most important and positive steps are still largely
unrecognized by policymakers as well as by the bilateral and philanthropic
organizations. More than four in ten pregnancies are unintended by the women
who experience them, and half or more of these pregnancies result in births
that spur continued population growth. Despite
improved availability and access to contraceptive services, a substantial
proportion of pregnancies (21% of all pregnancies that result in live births)
are mistimed or unplanned as per NFHS-3. Around 26 million children are
born in India every year and out of this about 5.5 million births have been
classified as unplanned/unintended. India
must revamp its population stabilization program to avoid unwanted child
bearing. (For details, see my post: India:
Policy action for achieving the Millennium Development Goals, dated
April 30, 2012 at kotharionindia.blogspot.com, Dated April 30, 2012.)
Another issue which needs equal attention is quality of
education. Unless education is rescued from quagmire of mediocrity, all talk
about developing a skilled human resource pool and realizing the country`s
demographic dividend will be without substance; and the country would be
inching closer to demographic disaster. As such, investment in education has to
be increased to improve the quality of education especially at the government
schools and colleges where most of the students are from poor and rural
families.
I will like to conclude in the words of N.R. Narayana Murthy, who
was ranked among the ten most-admired
global business leaders in 2005 by The Economist, and author of highly acclaimed book: A Better India: A Better World, (2009): “Economic growth and
prosperity require not just growing population, but also what economists call
‘good human capital’ – a population equipped with the skills and resources to
participate in the economic. With limited progress in human development,
India’s large population can become a liability rather than an advantage. A
failure to stabilize India’s population will have significant implications for
the future of India’s economy” Thus the demographic predictions are loud and clear: that
the promise of demographic dividend will not last long, in any case beyond
2050. Can India take advantage of this demographic window in the next couple of
decades and garner its benefits? One cannot be too optimistic about this trend considering
above facts. Hope policy makers are listening!
[1]
He currently serves as the
Chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), after a successful
career at Infosys Technologies.
[3] For details, see: 2011 Global Hunger Index
Report, International Food Policy Research Institute.
[5] For details, see: Can India garner the demographic dividend? by Philip
Alibach and N. Jayaram, The Hindu,
December 1, 2010.
[6] Dr. Manmohan Singh
delivered the Eighth JRD Tata
Memorial Oration on February 3, 2003 at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. At
that time, Dr. Singh was the Leader of the Opposition, Rajya Sabha. For
details, see: Focus: Population Environment Development, A
Bulletin of Population Foundation of India, New Delhi, Vol. XVIII, No. 1, 2003,
pp.1-2.
[7] Devendra Kothari, “Implications of Emerging Demographic Scenario: Based on the Provisional Results of Census of India 2011”, A Brief, a publication of Management Institute of Population and Development – A Unit of Parivar Seva Sanstha, New Delhi, 2011
[7] Devendra Kothari, “Implications of Emerging Demographic Scenario: Based on the Provisional Results of Census of India 2011”, A Brief, a publication of Management Institute of Population and Development – A Unit of Parivar Seva Sanstha, New Delhi, 2011
