Can India’s cities rise to the looming demographic challenge? | In Focus podcast
This podcast episode explores India's demographic dividend and the urgent need to improve urban infrastructure to support a growing working-age population. Expert Apoorva Jadhav argues that India must empower its cities to create jobs and services to avoid missing this economic opportunity.
Why it matters
Urbanization is a central pillar of India's future economic growth and social stability.
India is entering a demographic window of opportunity. For the next 15 years or so, our ratio of our working age population to the dependent population will be the highest. This is a historic opportunity to convert this demographic dividend into economic dividend.Now, cities are the engines of economic growth. To make our demographic dividend count, we need to create urban dividend. This basically means that our cities should be able to offer millions of jobs, host thousands of firms, and provide the urban services needed to sustain a large working population.Is India ready for this challenge?A new article titled, ‘Unlocking India’s Urban Dividend’, points out that India is not even accurately mapping its urban spread, and argues that unless we empower our cities, India will fail to encash its urban dividend.
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