India’s Population - ‘Bulging at its Seams?’: A Learning Perspective

The merits and demerits of India’s burgeoning population have created more than a flutter in the lives of many an economist, yet interest never seems to peter out. By the end of 2020, ‘the average age of an Indian will be 29 years, compared to 37 for China and 48 for Japan’. According to the UNFPA, the window of demographic dividend opportunity in India is expected to be available for five decades from 2005-06 to 2055-56 - longer than any other country in the world. So in 2020, India seems to have entered into the 16 year period under the Demographic Dividend. While the brains of the country burn the midnight oil and grapple with the menacing pandemic – COVID-19, fact of the matter remains that, India’s bulging population is indeed a blessing in disguise! So what if half of the sub-continent is still struggling to come to terms with a two children per mother norm, and that too well into 2020? To conclude, there’s still enough light to be seen at the end of the tunnel. Ranked pretty high in GDP (especially in terms of Purchasing Power Parity) – thereby qualifying to be counted as one of the world’s biggest economies, India, deals with extremes that range from delightful to excruciating. A country juxtaposed with mysteries spread over centuries, demographic dividend offers a formidable contradiction, indeed.