Harnessing the power of its vast population through education, skill development, and inclusive growth can propel India towards unprecedented socio-economic progress
India is a large nation with a huge population. In terms of population, India is next only to China, which is the most populated nation in the world. However, considering the rate at which India’s population is growing, the day is not far off when India will overtake China. Many social scientists blame India’s overgrown population for the country’s socio-economic backwardness. Their view is that India’s huge population is squarely responsible for the country’s poverty and the manifold suffering its people endure. It is true, to a great extent, that a nation’s large and growing population can hamper its progress and development. But again, a huge population can prove to be a nation’s biggest asset as well.
For the all-round progress of a large nation like India, it is essential that all its people contribute significantly in diverse areas and sectors of the economy—agriculture, industries, construction, and other sectors.
The talented and hardworking people of a nation can emerge as a highly competitive national resource. A country marches ahead largely on the strength of its talented, educated, and enterprising human power. Many nations, like Japan and Israel, have proved time and again that nations poor in natural and energy resources (such as minerals, metals, water, natural gas, and crude oil) have shown that the general populace could be turned into valuable human resources of a nation.
As if taking a cue from some of the world’s small but advanced nations, India, too, has been making the most productive use of its large population. It is quite heartening to note that India is harnessing its huge population most effectively, emerging as a world-class and economically superior nation. The present GDP growth rate of India is impressive by any standards. Further, the huge population of hardworking and enterprising young people has made India a nation that finds respect worldwide, often evoking the envy of other nations, which are underpopulated and lack the valuable human resources necessary for taking a nation forward. A few million young people graduate every year in India; a sizeable section of them in professional disciplines. Very few nations of the world can boast of such a feat.
We, however, have to excel in many fields, making the most imaginative use of our large human resource. It is distressing to note that even after more than five decades of gaining independence from the British yoke, India is not self-sufficient in food production. Apart from the lack of technical expertise in agriculture and paucity of funds needed for the promotion of agriculture using scientific methods on a large scale, our people residing in villages and engaged in the agricultural profession are also to be blamed. Their overall inefficiency and inability to put to good use the available modern methods and techniques have led to poor agricultural yield time and again. The situation is more or less similar in some other fields as well. If this huge rural population were suitably educated, trained, and equipped in agricultural know-how, the nation would achieve excellence in agriculture of an unforeseen kind. When the technical fitness and hard work of a small section of the population has earned India the status of a software giant, imagine what it can achieve if its entire population is turned into a valuable human resource.
For this to happen, first of all, primary education would have to be given the kind of importance that, in the fitness of things, it deserves, as in India a good percentage of the people are still uneducated. Secondly, greater efforts must be made to end discrimination on the basis of religion, sex, caste, and community, as it makes the discriminated lot of society unable to perform quality productive work. Last but not least, the government must realise that people are the biggest assets of a nation and provide suitable opportunities to them before turning them into valuable assets. Even though lately some efforts are being made in this direction, a lot more still needs to be done. For starters, by emphasising more on vocational and technical education, India could turn its educated people into a more productive human resource.
The effort in general requires identification of areas and developing strategies and skills to put the vast human resource we possess to effective use. This way, the burden on the economy will ease, and the nation will progress by leaps and bounds as all its people will have a significant role to play in the nation-building process.
The writer is a civil service aspirant
Aadil Gulzar
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