Homeland Security

Demographic drivers of India's national security
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Issue Vol 23.3 Jul-Sep 2008 | Date : 22 Dec , 2010

The scientific process of Net Assessment is characterised by a study of trends and triggers. Evolutionary change in the geo-strategic environment can be described in the form of trends. Trends refer to extrapolation of a particular phenomena based on its previous performance. A trigger on the other hand, denotes abrupt changes in trends.

An interplay of associated trends and triggers, which will shape the nature of the future environment, is termed a driver. Some of the key drivers of change that will shape our National Security environment are :-

  • Demographic Change.
  • Resource Availability Drivers.
    • Energy Security.
    • Food Security.
    • Water Security.
  • Environmental Changes/Climate Change.

Each driver is characterised by the degree of its impact, and, the certainty of its occurrence. It is in these terms that the demographic driver of change is fast acquiring the contours of a key scenario driving driver that will have a major impact on our national security. Unfortunately, in security circles, this remains one of the least studied and analysed phenomenon. Demography is deemed too esoteric a subject that should engage the attention of our economists, rather, our military strategists and security analysts.

Also read: Demographic invasion of India from the North East

This paper will endeavour to shed some light on this abstruse subject, and highlight the fact, that the demographics of our population are fast becoming – not just a cause for security concern but serious alarm. They are already beginning to make serious impact on our internal security scenario via the phenomenon of tribal Left Wing Extremism. So serious is the impact of these looming changes that they need a response on an emergent basis and a national scale. The response has to be paradigmatic in its sweep and change, and could lead us to question some basic premises of our growth paths and developmental strategies. A failure to change direction in time could generate internal security stresses and challenges on a scale that could be cause for serious alarm and introspection.

Indian Demographic Trends

Though India occupies only 2.4 per cent of the worlds land area, it supports over 16 per cent of the world’s population. Currently it is the world’s second most populous country after China.1 However, in less than 40 years it will replace China as the world’s most populous country. 2  The very size of the Indian population generates serious pressures on key resources availability. However, it is not merely the size of this massive population base that generates Malthusian scenarios of doom in an era of peak oil, fossil fuel drain out and scenarios of water stress and food crises.

Population_growthWhat is becoming a more immediate cause for internal security concern, is the age structure of this population. India will remain for some time the youngest country in the world. A third of India’s population (writes Jayati Ghosh) was below 15 years of age in 2000.3 The following chart traces this rising “youth bulge” in India’s population structure. 4

The youth bulge in the Indian age structure forms a sharp contrast with the graying of the population that is likely to occur in the other countries.

Thus, in the year 2020, the average age of a citizen in the following countries will be as under:- 5

Population_average_ageThis youth bulge in the Indian population’s age structure is being touted by some economists as a demographic dividend that has already put India on a new growth trajectory of a 9 per cent per annum from its former ‘Hindu rate of growth’ (3.5 per cent). The population bulge in the working age groups is seen as an inevitable advantage – or the much-touted demographic dividend.6 Countries with the bulk of their citizens in the pensioners’ age group have to cater for massive unproductive pension and health care bills. The smaller productive work force has to cater for the huge non productive graying segments.

Dependency Ratio.

Economists tell us that a nation’s population can be divided into: those in the labour force (15-64 years) and those out side it. The ratio of those in the work force to those outside is called the dependency ratio.7 This ratio effects surplus availability for investment. Shifting age structure can have significant implications for economic growth. The periods characterised by low dependency ratio would have higher growth.8 Die hard optimists point to our quantum jump into the 9 per cent GDP growth path as an outcome of the youth bulge and lower dependency ratios making available huge surpluses/savings for investments and hence dramatic growth.

The Naxalities and Maoists are all in the 15-30 age group. If the Indian state fails to provide large scale employment to its burgeoning youth population, it will have to prepare to deal with the consequences of unrest and violent movements amongst large bands of the rural unemployed.

This optimistic view however, is highly misleading. A key factor that must be considered is not just the ratio of the population in the labour force and those outside, but equally those in the actual workforce and those available for work but out side the workforce as the unemployed.9 Jayati Ghosh and CP Chandrashekhar write “The window of opportunity available when the population bulge enters the working age group….can translate into acceleration of the process of development only if the quality of those entering the workforce is of the desired level and these workers find employment opportunites.”10

This is where the need for alarm has arisen. The 1990s turned to be an era of jobless growth for India. Organised employment stagnated. Urban employment decelerated. Aggregate rural employment experienced the lowest growth since the fifties.11

  • Thus in 1987-1994 the rate of growth in employment in 15-30 age group was at 2.4 per cent.12
  • Between 1994-2004 decade this had fallen to:-
  • 0.7 per cent for rural males.
  • 0.3 per cent for urban males.13

Inspired by the demographically graying west, we went on a manpower cutting spree. Downsizing was the all pervasive mantra. Job cutting was considered the key to institutional efficiency. What we needed was an emergency programme to skill our population and equip them for large scale employment. The exact opposite was happening. Jayati Ghosh writes, “The key results of the National Sample surveys 55th round (over 1999-2000) reveal a sharp and even startling decrease in the rate of employment generation across both rural and urban areas. Indeed so dramatic is the slow down in the rate of employment growth that it calls into serious question the pattern of growth over this decade.14

The much touted IT sectors ability to absorb manpower so far has been marginal and largely illusory. In 1999-2000, employment in the Indian IT sector amounted to just 0.21per cent of the non-agricultural workforce.

Unique Character of India’s Economy

The growth of the Indian economy presents a unique case study. The established models of growth (as enunciated by Steiglitz and others) see an economy transit from an agriculture predominant stage to one in which the industrial sector becomes the prime engine of growth and finally gives way to a massive services sector. India, however, is growing from the other end.

The services sector accounted for more than half of its economy in 2006, with agriculture and industry accounting for roughly equal shares of what remained. This resembles an economy at the middle income stage of development (much as Greece or Portugal should look).15 However, unlike Greece or Portugal, India has a vast army of 470 million labourers in the hinterland. Providing employment on a massive scale is India’s central conundrum. If this does not happen, we could encounter serious socio-political repercussions in the decades ahead.16

Capital Intensive Growth

India has witnessed a fantastic phase of economic growth since the liberalisation of its economy in 1991. However, what needs to be noted is that this growth has largely been capital intensive so far. India has been liberated from the mediocrity and inefficiencies of the public sector and the license – quota Raj. The private sector is now booming and has become globally competitive. Unfortunately, this has not translated into an increase in jobs/large scale employment generation. The growth has been capital intensive.17 To illustrate, let us take the example of the Tatas, one of India’s leading industrial houses.

  • In 1991, its steel plant at Jamshedpur was producing one million tonnes of steel and it employed a huge workforce of some 85,000 people.
  • In 2005, this plant was producing five million tonnes of steel but its work force had shrunk to just 44,000 people.
  • Tata Steel’s turnover has risen from US $ 800 million in 1991 to over US $ 4 billion in 2005. Its top executives estimate that they could hike up production to 10 millions tonnes and yet cut down the workforce to just 20,000.18
  • Tata has therefore transformed itself from a labour intensive company which supplied low cost steel to the domestic market, to a capital intensive company supplying world class automobile steel to ‘top of the line’ car manufacturers in Japan and elsewhere. Yet, instead of generating greater employment, it has drastically scaled down the company’s work force as the development has been capital intensive.19

China’s growth in contrast, has been labour intensive and thereby serves to employ many more people. Less than 7 per cent of India’s dauntingly large work force is employed in the formal economy (called the organised sector). This means that only 35 million people out of 470 million people have job security in any meaningful sense.20 The rest are in the unorganised sector and make up India’s seasonal army of mobile, casual farm workers, running small shops or street-side stalls, making incense sticks and bidis, driving rickshaws, working as watchmen, gardeners, maids or mechanics in small town garages. The organised work sector in China, in contrast, employs a 100 million people.21 Of the 35 million people in India’s organised sector, 21 million are direct employees of the government. Only 14 million are in the private sector and out of these only 0.25 per cent, or one million are employed in the lucrative IT sector.22

Demographic Dividend or Demographic Bomb  

When we analyse the emerging socio-economic fractures or fault lines in the Indian polity, we are struck by the enormity of the challenges that are now crystallising, and could have a serious bearing on our internal security and stability in the decades ahead. India’s population in 2006 was stated to be 1.1 billion, 62.9 per cent of this was in the working age group. While the population growth curve itself is likely to flatten, India is experiencing what demographers have called a youth bulge. This means that the proportion of the population in the 15-64 years working age group will increase steadily for another 35 years till 2045. India’s working age population alone could then rival that of China. The graph below illustrates this clearly.

Demographic_dividendThis clearly highlights that by 2026, India’s population will be 1.4 billion. Of this some 68.4 per cent (or nearly 70 per cent) are likely to be in the working age group of 15-64. This translates into a billion strong workforce and hence the need to create a billion jobs! Such youth bulges have traditionally been associated with bloody revolutions in human history. A more optimistic way to look at this problem would be to contrast India’s youth bulge with the ageing populations in USA, Europe, Russia and China. Optimists assume that we could export cheap labour or outsource jobs on a massive scale and hence feel that the youth bulge will give India a demographic dividend. The Indian economy is booming at 9 per cent per annum. However, it is required to grow at a sustained rate that generates growth that is not just capital intensive but manpower intensive and can generate employment for a billion strong workforce.

A failure to do this could unleash socio-economic turbulence on a massive scale. The Indian Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh summed it up very succinctly when he said: “In the first 50 years of India’s Independence we were faced with two shortages – shortages of food and shortages of foreign exchange. Today, we have solved them both – the first through the Green Revolution and the second through higher export earnings and a more liberal trade regime. Today, our key problem is quite different. Our biggest single problem is the lack of jobs for ordinary people. We need employment for the semi-skilled workers on a large scale, and it is not happening to anything like the degree to which we are witnessing it in China. We need to industrialise to provide jobs for people with fewer skills. Why is this not happening on the scale that we should hope?”

Security Implications of Demographic Trends

There is a serious need to engage in a systematic study of the key drivers of our demography that are inexorably shaping India’s internal security environment. Historically, periods of massive youth bulges have unfortunately coincided with bloody revolutions and violent upsurges. The Islamic world incidentally, is in the throes of a youth bulge. Far from massive economic upsurges, it has led to the rise of violent anti state ideologies and nihilistic terrorist violence. The rise of Left Wing Extremism in India’s marginalised rural spaces is as much an outcome of a failure of the infrastructural penetration of the state in these tribal areas, as it is a mathematical implication of India’s rising youth population that is without jobs.

We need to generate one billion jobs by 2026. Today, we are stagnating at some 350 million jobs. Our economy cannot afford the luxury of jobless growth any longer.

The Naxalities and Maoists are all in the 15-30 age group. If the Indian state fails to provide large scale employment to its burgeoning youth population, it will have to prepare to deal with the consequences of unrest and violent movements amongst large bands of the rural unemployed. Left Wing Extremism already affects some 180 out of 602 districts in India.23 It could merely be a precursor to much higher levels of violence and unrest that could result from a failure to provide meaningful employment to our vast number of youngmen entering the working age group. An army of the unemployed gazing balefully at the shameless islands of affluence in our metropolitan centres, can be the best prescription for an internal security disaster. What we need is an attitudinal paradigm shift from capital intensive to manpower intensive growth strategies.

Mohan Das Karam Chand Gandhi’s rural egalitarian bias may have much more to recommend it that mere romanticism. The Mahtma’s insights into the Indian reality were not anachronistic. They were prophetic and unerring. We do not seem to have comprehended the sheer scale and enormity of the challenge we confront. We need to generate one billion jobs by 2026. Today, we are stagnating at some 350 million jobs. Our economy cannot afford the luxury of jobless growth any longer. The internal security pressures generated by such patently flawed growth strategies have the potential to rend the Indian nation state apart. The challenges we face are enormous. So paradoxically, are the opportunities.

At the very least, India’s youth bulge gives it the highest RMP (Recruitable Male Population) in the world. There is a need to revisit our basic axioms and come up with radically different growth paths that can usher in a labour (and not capital intensive) economy that is freed from its unsustainable dependence on fossil fuels and switches to solar and other alternative energies in a demassified fashion. Our very paradigm of what a sustainable human civilisation should be, needs to be reinvented. The consequences of a failure to do so could be a catastrophic for our national security. Let us not forget that the mighty Soviet Union had collapsed internally and not due to a massive external attack.

Notes

  1. “Demographics of India,” Wikipidea.
  2. Ibid.
  3. Jayati Ghosh and CP Chandrashekhar,“India’s Potential Demographic Dividend,” The Hindu, January 17, 2006.
  4. Ibid.
  5. Ibid.
  6. Ibid.
  7. Ibid.
  8. Ibid.
  9. Ibid.
  10. Ibid.
  11. Jayati Ghosh, “The Uncertain Advantages of Demographic Change,” The Asian Age, January 26, 2006.
  12. Ibid.
  13. Ibid.
  14. Ibid.
  15. Edward Lace, In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India, (London: Little Brown, 2006)
  16. Ibid.
  17. Ibid.
  18. Ibid.
  19. Ibid.
  20. Ibid.
  21. Will Hutton, Writing on the Wall: Why we Must Embrace China as a Partner or Face it as an Enemy, (New York: Free Press [Simon & Schuster], 2006)
  22. Edward, n. 15.
  23. Prakash Singh, The Naxalite Movement in India, (New Delhi: Rupa and Co., 2006)
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The views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions or policies of the Indian Defence Review.

About the Author

Maj Gen GD Bakshi, (Retd)

is a war Veteran and Strategic Analyst.

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