Harnessing India’s Demographic Dividend through Skilling: Challenges and Way Forward

The ‘demographic dividend’ provides India with strong advantages for achieving high rates of growth powered by an enlarging working age population. This represents a huge opportunity for the country to increase productivity by investing in the skills of the working age population. A vast majority of who have limited access to education and training; are either inactive or engaged in low-skilled work in the informal economy. India’s demography therefore, presents a potential danger also; if the labour market is not made more inclusive through a balanced approach to human capital development, the consequences of demographic failure could be grave. To capitalize on the demographic bulge, the Government has undertaken a number of policy initiatives, programmatic and systemic interventions. Efforts are being made to equip youth with the skills required by today’s industries and address the demand & supply gaps, but this is turning out to be a daunting task. In this context, the present article analyses the current state of education, skills development and employment for Indian youth and discusses some major challenges India faces while implementing different initiatives and strategies for developing a robust skilling ecosystem. The article also highlights certain emerging issues which merit immediate policy attention if skill development is to be a means for achieving inclusive development