India on threshold of reaping benefits of demographic dividend : Purohit

Chennai, Jan 9 (UNI) Tamil Nadu Governor Banwarilal Purohit on Wednesday
said India was on the threshold of realizing the full benefits of the Demographic
dividend.
The average age of the population of about 125 crores was 29 years and
more than half the population was below the age of 25 years. This augurs
well for both short term and long term growth, he said while inaugurating
an international conference on ‘Innovative metamorphosis-an elixir for
organisational excellence’, here.
He said demographic dividend, as defined by the United Nations Fund For
Population Activities (UNFPA) means, the boost in economic productivity
that occurs when there were growing numbers of people in the workforce
relative to the number of dependents.
He said UNFPA further said “a country with both increasing numbers of
young people and declining fertility rates has the potential to reap the
demographic dividend.”
Stating that this was the comfortable position in which India was placed
at present, Mr Purohit said at least ten million Indian youth enter the
country’s workforce each year.
”The benefits of the demographic dividend will be realised fully when
this large workforce is fully skill trained for gainful employment”, he added.
He said entrepreneurship has to be encouraged by the government through
a number of measures.
The ‘Start up’ India launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on January
one, 2016 revolves around the three concepts of handholding, founding
support with incentives and industry academic partnership with incubation
for promoting entrepreneurship.
The rate of growth in the number of start-ups that were added doubled to
15 per cent in 2018 when compared to 2017, he said.
”Start-ups besides attracting funding of 4.2 billion dollars have already
generated 50,000 to 60,000 new jobs in the past year and the trend is
expected to continue to three lakhs by 2020”, he added.