On 16th October 2024, The Economic Times published an article on demographic dividend where it stated that India is poised to see enormous growth by 2046 due to majority of its population falling within the age bracket of 30 – 54 years who would spend towards their marriage, house, car, children’s education, international vacation, and their children’s marriage all leading to significant growth in consumption and GDP of India. This is a great opportunity for India to become Vikasit Bharath @ 2047 as envisioned by our Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi ji leading India to Amritkaal in terms of development, and global leadership.
While this definitely is a great opportunity for India to become Vikasit Bharat @ 2047, in order for India to actually enter Amritkaal, it has to progress on a lot of fronts, without which, the author feels that the demographic dividend that India is enjoying could actually become demographic penalty for India. While some changes could be on policies of the government, most of it could be the changes in our society and our mindset.
Some of the policy directions that the government should focus could be on increasing the participation of women in labour force, providing equal wages for equal work, and providing a robust safety net to citizens in case of accidents and other incidents of personal injury. The Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) report released by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) on 23rd September 2024 indicates that 22.3% of urban women are employed, as against 35.5% of rural women. This becomes even more striking when we compare the education of such women candidates. The PLFS report indicates that 29.8% of urban women have graduate education as against 31.5% of rural women. This data contrasts the fact that despite being educated and capable of getting employed, women in urban areas are unable to become integrated with the labour force for reasons like childbirth, harassment at workplace, commuting and lack of career roles for qualified women for certain jobs.
While the government has enacted legislation to curb sexual harassment at workplace, women face many other types of harassment (other than sexual) and abuse, thereby creating hostile work environment for women. Such instances of harassment can be classified as workplace discrimination against women, which is supposed to be prohibited under the Constitution of India. However, given the lack of any clear policy by the government against workplace discrimination, women are harassed at workplace, which puts significant mental stress on women, pushing them ultimately to quit the workforce of India, thereby causing social harm at multiple levels: the education seat becomes waste, the effort they put to secure the education and the job goes waste, the nation gets deprived of productivity that could have led to the national development, the consumption levels come down because there is lesser earnings for the family, all of which could affect the GDP growth in India. The government is also not mandating the crèche facility at workplace, which is also preventing a lot of working women from dropping from the workforce after childbirth. The public transportation quality, frequency, affordability, and accessibility is still a distant mirage in many part of India including in cities like Mumbai, and given the difficulty involved in commuting to workplace, many women decide to either quit from the workforce or they prefer to carry out activities that are much inferior / lesser to their education, capabilities, and competence, thereby depriving India of a very valuable resource that could help India become Vikasit Bharat sooner than 2047.
The PLFS report indicates that employment rate of men vs. women is 58.2% and 31.7% respectively. While this could be due to the traditional role entitlements / assignments for men, the job descriptions (JD) (especially given the torturous working hours demanded by companies these days) are designed specifically to men, keeping women out of such jobs. While companies have flexibility in deciding the JD of the jobs, not keeping JD gender neutral and not keeping it open to everyone making jobs equally accessible to women, deprives women of valuable opportunities for learning, development, safety, security, and career growth, which in turn could affect the consumption and growth opportunities of India. Despite various policies and legislations governing equal pay for equal work, women being paid equal wages and salaries for the same kind of work still remains a pipe dream in most parts of India. Government should consider implementing these policies, not only in the public sector, but also in the private sector, which would then motivate a lot of women to join the workforce.
The other major factor that could affect participation of women in the workforce could be the safety net provided to its citizens in case of any emergency or accidents. The healthcare services have a lot of potential for improvement, while the public insurance schemes like Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana are now being implemented, which could help overcome this problem. Organizations could also implement a lot of processes and practices that could train its employees not to discriminate against women, not to harass them, and not to create hostile environment for women at workplace. Also, organizations should also ensure that they neither erect glass ceiling for women, not implement tokenism policies favoring women. Such organizational policies not only hurt the reputation of the organization, but also create disillusionment in the minds of women, which might be forced to quit the workforce. Even today, in many parts of India, the patriarchal society is not allowing women to achieve their full potential by becoming part of the formal workforce and depriving valuable growth opportunity for the country. This could be ensured through appropriate policy measures by the government, which could help achieve the vision of Vikasit Bharat much sooner than 2047.
While India has the capability and the potential to become Vikasit Bharat @2047, if the government tweaks certain policies protecting women workforce, attaining that objective could be achieved much sooner than 2047.
Author:
Dr. Nithyananda KV, is a faculty member in the General Management Area at the Indian Institute of Management Tiruchirappalli, Tamilnadu, India. He specializes in the area of Intellectual Property and its management.
