Decade is what India has: SBI

Mumbai: India has only one decade to change its status into a developed country and will need to focus on education, failing which the much-hailed ‘demographic dividend’ will turn into a disadvantage, a report said on Wednesday.

If India is not able to get its act together, it will will never be able to go into the developed group of nations, SBI Research’s  report warned.

“India has perhaps now only a limited window of a decade to get into the developed country tag, or stay perpetually in emerging group of economies. Policymakers, wake up and smell the coffee!” the report said.

The report said the government and policymakers will have to focus on the young people to ensure they become good citizens and invest in education in order to achieve the objective and realise the demographic dividend. “India’s strength of demographic dividend could actually turn into India’s disadvantage by 2030,” it warned.

The population growth trend indicates that incremental population growth has been stagnant in the last two decades at approximately 18 crores, and fertility rates are quite diverse across states, it added.

The report said Karnataka, which has seen a decline in birth rate over the last few decades that has led to the share of those over 60 years increasing to 9.5 per cent in 2011, from 6.1 per cent in 1971, is best representative of the need to focus on education.