Random Weekend Bytes: Under 700 words

By Philip Mudartha
Bellevision Media Network

30 Apr 2023:

Fallacy about Demographic dividend:

According to the UN data, India surpassed China as the world’s most populous nation on Wednesday, the 26th April 2023. By the end of this month, India’s population is projected to cross 142 crore. China’s population had peaked at 142 crore in 2022 and has been declining since then.

 

This is not really good news. This is not a medal that we should be wearing with pride. For several years, Modi-led BJP government has been boasting about the demographic dividend of young and large population.

 

Stop looking at demographic dividend for comfort.

 

More population provides more labour. More labour produces more goods and services. More labour population, therefore, raises growth. This is the theory of demographic dividend.

 

More labour produced more goods in the agricultural age. In the industrial age, more machines produced more goods. We are in the digital age now: more intelligent machines enabled by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics produce more goods and services.

 

In India, the reality is that labour has already become surplus. Unemployment is rampant. Our biggest policy challenge is to find employment for the existing labour. The talk of the demographic dividend of a young India is fallacy of false comfort.

 

The Chinese reaction to the development is not sour grapes. Size may matter but not in the digital age. It is not quantity but quality that will drive a nation’s economic growth. Our rulers dismissed the statement as bluster, but did not come up with any policy responses to grow our economy faster to catch up with China.

 

Indian egos were also hurt as German Magazine Der Spiegel published the below given cartoon:

 

 

Inequality in India

 

Last week, upper class urban Indians celebrated the opening of a megastore of Apple in Mumbai. However, let us not rejoice because a majority of Indians do not afford the ‘real’ apple. They survive on roti, dal and sabzi.  It is still roti, kapda and makaan in Modi’s “New India”.

 

India is one of the most unequal countries. It is particularly worrying that inequality is being added to a society which is already fractured along by caste, religion, region and gender.

 

I reproduce below the well-known statistics:

1. The top 10% of Indian population holds 80% of national wealth.  73% of the wealth generated in 2017 went to the richest 1%. 700 million Indians who comprise bottom 50% among the poor saw only 1% increase in their wealth.

2. There were 119 billionaires in India in 2022. There were 9 in 2000 and 101 in 2017. India is producing 70 new millionaires every day. 

3. Billionaire’s fortunes increased by 10 times in the past nine years. Their total wealth in 2018-19 was higher than the entire Union Budget which was Rs 24422 billion.

4. Many Indians are not able to access the health care they need. 63 million of them pushed into poverty because of health care costs every year. 

5. It would take 941 years for a minimum wage worker to earn what a top executive earns in a typical profit-making company.

 

 

Mann Ki Baat: Modi hits a century!

 

PM Modi’s monthly radio program ‘Mann Ki Baat’ is hit the century on today, Sunday, 2023 April 30. He addressed the 100th episode of his radio talk at 11 am. The show will be broadcast live at the UN headquarters in New York, India’s mission. BJP-ruled states have made elaborate arrangements to celebrate the 100th episode of PM Modi’s Mann Ki Baat radio show.

 

 

The program highlights government and citizen action in these priority areas and in turn, encourages listeners to establish or participate in "change-making" initiatives in their own communities with the aim to have a lasting and sustainable impact on the lives of people and for the country. Seventy-five percent of the respondents polled by a media house felt that ’Mann Ki Baat’ has emerged as a platform, which introduces grassroots innovators working selflessly to ensure a significant difference in the lives of people living in remote areas of India.