NITI Aayog CEO bets big on India's demographic dividend

New Delhi, April 18 (IANS) NITI Aayog CEO B. V. R. Subrahmanyam sees India emerging as the world's education hub and a stable supplier of working-age people across the globe, as population has begun to shrink in advanced countries.

Addressing an event here, he pointed out that Subrahmanyam pointed out that this is the first time that the world is seeing a situation where the population is shrinking.

The NITI Aayog CEO highlighted that Japan is hiring 15,000 Indian nurses, while Germany is taking 20,000 healthcare workers as they do not have people, and the family systems in these countries have broken down.

Subrahmanyam further said India can become an education hub for the world, as the single biggest advantage it has, keeping all other things aside, is its democracy.

He said that Indian companies, including law firms and accounting companies, should aspire to become world leaders.

"India will be a stable supplier of working-age people across the world, which is going to be our single biggest strength," Subrahmanyam remarked.

The NITI Aayog CEO pointed out that the problems faced by middle-income countries are very different from those in low-income countries.

The NITI Aayog CEO also said that currently, the Indian economy is the fifth largest in the world, but will surpass Germany and Japan in three years to become the third largest economy. By 2047, India could be the second-largest economy at $30 trillion, he added.

Subrahmanyam sees a huge potential for India's demographic dividend. India has a relatively young population, with a median age of 28.4 years.

Approximately 26 per cent of the population is below 14 years and 67 per cent is between the ages of 15 to 64 years, and 7 per cent is above the age of 65. In contrast, the population over 65 years in the US is 17 per cent, and in Europe, it is over 21 per cent, according to official figures.

According to an EY report, in absolute numbers, India will have 1.04 billion working-age persons by 2030.

Correspondingly, India's dependency ratio would be the lowest in its history by 2030 at 31.2 per cent. India's young dependency ratio - the number of children below 15 years of age relative to the total population - is expected to overtake the old dependency ratio (ratio of population aged above 65 years relative to the total population).

About 24.3 per cent of the incremental global workforce over the next decade will come from India. This is significant considering the rapidly ageing population in the developed world, creating potential challenges to labour supply in various sectors of the global economy, the report said.

--IANS

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