Author: Radhicka Kapoor, ICRIER

India has just lately turn out to be the world’s most populous nation, with 68 per cent of its inhabitants working age people between the ages of 15 and 64. This demographic construction — sometimes called a demographic dividend — has the potential to generate very excessive financial progress if India can create productive employment alternatives for its massive working age inhabitants.

But data from labour force surveys signifies that this can be a huge problem for the economic system at current. Some 45 per cent of the workforce continues to toil on farms within the agricultural sector, whereas within the non-agricultural sector, 74 per cent of employees are employed in low-paying casual work in microenterprises. Indeed, amongst younger individuals aged between 15 and 29 years, roughly 28 per cent are engaged as ‘unpaid helpers in household enterprises’. And right here too, the agriculture sector stays the principal supply of employment, accounting for 36 per cent of employed youth.

India will want a radical reorientation of its progress technique whether it is to handle the problem of productive job creation and harness its demographic dividend, making the expansion course of extra employment-intensive. The Indian expertise reveals that progress alone can’t be the principal instrument of job creation, as it’s the sectoral composition of  progress that determines the amount and nature of employment alternatives created. India’s idiosyncratic structural transformation from agriculture to companies — leapfrogging the section of producing progress — has generated restricted alternatives for well-paid employment for these on the decrease finish of the training and expertise ladder.

This contrasts with China’s expertise, with its speedy decline within the employment share of low-productivity agriculture and increase in labour-intensive manufacturing for export. Between 1978 and 2010, the share of employment in Chinese agriculture declined from 70.5 per cent to 36.7 per cent. In India, the corresponding shares declined at a slower tempo from 71.1 per cent to 51.3 per cent throughout the identical interval.

The sluggish tempo of structural change continues to pose a problem for the Indian economic system. While excessive end-services, particularly IT and finance, will stay an essential supply of employment for the extremely expert and educated, producing productive employment for the comparatively low-skilled would require making industrialisation, particularly labour-intensive manufacturing, a central focus of a national growth strategy.

Such a method won’t solely generate employment, but additionally improve the earnings of these on the backside of the earnings distribution who’ve a excessive marginal propensity to eat. A lift in home demand can create a virtuous circle of consumption of producing items and industrial growth, accelerating the expansion of output and employment within the manufacturing and companies sector.

India should embrace a two-pronged method to attain labour-using industrialisation — 1), encouraging the entry of extra formal corporations into labour-intensive sectors and a couple of), elevating the competitiveness and productiveness of the various small and medium enterprises that dominate labour-intensive industries. The former deserves particular consideration as worldwide corporations look to the Indian market as a strategy to diversify their companies and investments past China.

Apart from addressing infrastructural bottlenecks, regulatory impediments and India’s advanced tariff construction, attracting international investments requires strengthening fundamentals of the economic system, particularly human capital. Despite improvements over the years, India’s literacy price remains to be solely about 74 per cent for the inhabitants aged above 15 years, in contrast with nearly 97 and 95 per cent for China and Indonesia respectively. Data from the Annual Survey of Education Report carried out over the previous 15 years present that studying outcomes go away a lot to be desired, usually impeding the flexibility of younger job seekers to realize the roles they want. These challenges are exacerbated by technological developments which reshape labour markets not solely by making some jobs out of date and creating new ones, but additionally retooling current jobs that require new ability mixtures.

Against this backdrop, policymakers have to adapt training and skilling methods to make sure that Indian labour can meet the advanced and evolving expertise demanded by an ever-changing world of labor.

Over and above all these elements, India will be unable to grasp its demographic dividend except it is ready to convey extra girls into the labour drive and into productive employment. At current, India’s female labour force participation rate stands at 37 per cent, with 64 per cent of all employed females within the agriculture sector. Bringing extra girls into gainful employment not solely requires addressing regressive social and cultural norms, but additionally funding in childcare service provision, well being, training and expertise and infrastructure companies that enable extra time for market work.

While it is very important convey extra girls into the labour drive, it’s equally essential to enhance their entry to respectable, productive and well-paying employment alternatives. India should undertake a macro-policy framework that helps gender-equitable inclusive progress and extra jobs for girls.

Harnessing India’s demographic dividend requires correcting the imbalances within the nation’s structural transformation, particularly the failure of the labour intensive manufacturing sector to turn out to be an engine of job progress. Labour ought to be recognised as greater than a mere issue of manufacturing whose value must be pushed down, however as human capital that have to be nurtured to grasp the potential of India’s demographic candy spot.

Radhicka Kapoor is Professor on the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER).