Model Question and Answers for APSC | While we found India’s demographic dividend, we ignore the dropping rates of employability. What are we missing while doing so? Where will the jobs that India desperately needs come from? Explain.

Ans: Demographic Dividend meaning – It is the potential for economic gains when the share of the working-age population (15 years – 64 years) is higher than the non-working age group. Demographic dividend occurs when the proportion of working people in the total population is high because this indicates that more people have the potential to be productive and contribute to growth of the economy.

Due to the dividend between young and old, many argue that there is great potential for economic gains, which has been termed the “demographic gift”. Young population is expected to drive the next level growth of the Indian economy but there are major issues that act as impediments. The largest and most serious among them is unemployment.

Challenges of India’s demographic dividend:

• While education levels in the population have increased, skills have not. Educational standards focus on theoretical knowledge more and graduates are devoid of skills after they complete education. It is necessary that job oriented skills are inculcated.

• A huge majority of the workforce is employed in the unorganised sector which is riddled with low wages and the absence of social security.

• Fall in female labour force participation in India, as per reports from International Labour Organisation (ILO) and World Bank. Growing female literacy is not translating into relevant and marketable skills. Lack of flexible entry and exit policies for women into virtual classrooms, and into modules for open digital training, and vocational education limits access to contemporary vocations.

• While entrepreneur skills are desired and promoted, there is widespread deficiency of required infrastructure to support new ventures. The need for licence, permissions, and time consuming efforts discourage new ventures. New privatisation reforms have helped upto certain extent but a lot is still desired. Ex: Tax issues, labour issues, electricity and water issues etc.

• Disguised unemployment in agriculture.

• Low labour productivity in cottage industry and MSMEs

Jobs prospects for future:

• IT driven service sector has been the largest addition to job development in recent times. These include food delivery, product delivery, service delivery etc. They act as a bridge between customers and service providers, for increasing their customer base.

• Agriculture sector promotes the largest number of people especially in rural areas. The productivity and contribution of agriculture in recent times has suffered.

• Turning primary agriculture into food processing plants can drive the next generation of development in rural areas. Technological support for agriculture will be an additional boost. Ex: Food parks for processing potatoes.

• Technology driven jobs can support the next generation of individuals. The expertise with technology allows them to learn skills faster. These will rapidly expand into a full scale employment sector in future. Ex: YouTube content developer, drone manufacturer, robotics, freelance software developer.

• Large scale manufacturing in India is currently restricted to unorganised and underutilised jobs where productivity is very low. High manufacturing jobs such as electronics, defence equipment, precision products can drive demand and growth for jobs. Ex: Mobile parts manufacturing, assault rifle production.