Taking Advantage of the Indian Demographic Dividend – Challenges Ahead

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Social Entrepreneurship is expected to be the next big thing to influence India as the country struggles to redress the inequalities of a skewed GDP growth, working to the detriment of inclusive growth, and meet challenges in areas ranging from education, health care and energy efficiency to infrastructural development and climate change.

Out of the 380 million people who live on less than Rs. 32 / day, a majority of them are young, below thirty years of age. Engaging this potential workforce into production and thereby providing them sustainable income is the key to solving the socio-economic problems of the country. Since the last decade, each year India registered a growing number of entrepreneurial initiatives that create sustainable solutions for the people living below the poverty line. However, the main problem remains the ability of these initiatives to scale and replicate. For entrepreneurs working at the bottom of the economic pyramid, HR has always been a major challenge. Recruiting and retaining talent can be a nightmare and has major implications for how fast (or slow) a social business can scale.

How critical are Human Resources strategies for social business to scale? What are the HR tools and strategies that can increase the speed of scalability? How can social businesses become more attractive for the young talent of India? There is an urgent need to answer these crucial questions.



Turning the pyramid upside down: Advantage of the Indian Demographic Dividend

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India is entering the demographic dividend phase at a time when countries like China are exiting it. Throughout the 1970s we as a nation were worried above the explosive population growth rate. Though that has come down from 4%in 1960s to a stable 1.7%, allocating resources in a manner that benefits every section of the society has always been a concern. But maybe it’s time we stop thinking on those lines and concentrate more on issues like imparting quality education to everybody, providing adequate healthcare facilities to all. With a huge bracket of the population under the age group of thirty, a greater proportion of people are working, which cuts spending on dependants, aiding economic growth. But there is a huge skill set- job mismatch and the gap needs to be closed.

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Probably the first step towards this goal is to provide quality primary education to every child hence giving a common platform to everybody. The low coverage and low quality of school education in India extracts a heavy price in the pattern of our economic development and its time we go beyond just allocating a percentage of our budget to these sectors. Somewhere we know that the key to success to India’s success is to try and reap the benefit of the booming population. But the question is how do we achieve it?