GS Mains Model Question & Answer: Prime Minister Modi focuses on 3Ds – Democracy, Demand and Demographic Dividend . How can India use its demographic dividend for its development and also examine the challenges involved.

Q. Prime Minister Modi focuses on 3Ds – Democracy, Demand and Demographic Dividend . How can India use its demographic dividend for its development and also examine the challenges involved. (12.5 Marks)

(General Studies Mains Paper III – Economy : Indian Economy and issues relating to planning, mobilization of resources, growth, development and employment.)

Model Answer :

Prime Minister Narendra Modi reiterated that the ‘Make in India’ programme would be a success because of the 3Ds namely, ‘demographic dividend, democracy and demand’. The Prime Minister highlighted the strength of country’s massive youth, which would be instrumental in making the programme a success.

Demographics: Dividend or bomb?

According to a recent study, only 34 per cent of India's 5 million graduates are employable in any industry. This is a shocking state of affairs, and makes one wonder if demography will be a dividend or a bomb.

The challenge is to provide vocational training to almost 500 million people by 2022. However, the truth is that the current plans are just not sufficient to fill the gap.

India can train only 1.4 million of 8.5 million people who need vocational training. And if we continue with the conventional means of scaling up - setting up training institutes, hiring teachers - there is little hope that we will even come close to meeting the goal.

Skills development : Need of the hour

To bring focus to this, the Prime Minister has announced Shramev Jayate and set up a Ministry of Skill Development. There are also private-public organisations like National Skill Development Corporation, besides private training institutes. With all due respect to the capabilities of the government, I believe till someone in the private sector does not figure out a profitable business model to scale this up, we will not meet the goals.

To cover the skills gap, we need a similar private sector-led model that is profitable, and leverages technology that can upend our conventional mindsets of costs and time to scale. We need a disruptive business model that can step-change the reach, price and access to quality skill development programmes.

That being said, any programme will need to be mindful of three issues that a youth faces when making the choice to get trained.

(1) This implies that the courses, accreditation and company partnerships, are all geared towards getting a job immediately after finishing the course.
(2) It has to be part-time. The training has to be available to them when they want, without disrupting their jobs.
(3) The training would need to be widely accessible, especially in the rural and small towns.