A Nation Preparing Forever

Every year in school we had to write that essay — “India’s Growing Population: A Boon or a Curse.” It wasn’t really a debate. The answer was pre-decided. It was a boon because India has a young population. More hands to work. That line was sacred. I wrote it every year like a patriotic parrot. What I didn’t understand then was that having more hands only works if there are enough chairs. India’s median age today is around 28 — one of the youngest among major economies. Economists call this a “demographic dividend.” It sounds impressive. It sounds like free economic growth. But dividends only pay when invested well. Youth unemployment has hovered in the mid-to-high teens in recent years. Female labor force participation has been around 20–25%. So yes, we have a dividend. It’s just that half of it is sitting at home, and the other half is refreshing job portals.

We produce millions of graduates every year. Degrees are not the issue. Employability is. Industry surveys quietly admit that a large share of graduates aren’t considered job-ready. So what do we do? We prepare. And prepare. And prepare. The national sport is no longer cricket; it is competitive exam preparation. If population is power, why does it feel like potential energy stuck in neutral?

Take sports. We expect Olympic medals from a system where public spending on sports as a percentage of GDP is modest at best. Athletes often self-fund, crowd-fund, or sponsor-hunt their way to international competitions. If they win, the real marathon begins: paperwork. Medal in athletics. Endurance training in bureaucracy. But yes, more hands to work.

Let’s talk healthcare. India’s public health expenditure as a share of GDP has historically been far lower than many developed economies. The result? One of the highest out-of-pocket health expenditures among major nations. Translation: when someone falls sick, the family becomes the insurance company. A hospital visit can quietly eat into years of savings. You don’t just pray for recovery; you pray your bank account survives it. Education follows a similar pattern. Public systems exist, but rising demand for quality pushes families toward private schooling, private colleges, private coaching. Education — which should reduce inequality — becomes a multi-year financial strategy.

Then comes housing. In many urban centers, property prices have grown faster than incomes over decades. So congratulations, you’re earning. Now sign a 25–30 year EMI. Stability becomes your life goal. Not wealth. Not creativity. Not risk-taking. Just stability. “Please let nothing go wrong this year” becomes the adult mantra.

And governance? Imagine in corporate life your job description says build infrastructure, create jobs, improve public health, strengthen education. You achieve one major target and hold a celebration. In the private sector, you’d be asked what happened to the rest. In public life, sometimes the expectation bar is so low that incremental progress feels revolutionary. The issue isn’t effort. The issue is scale. A young country requires exponential thinking. Incremental execution feels like trying to cool a wildfire with a water bottle.

Population isn’t automatically a curse. It isn’t automatically a boon either. A demographic dividend works when jobs expand, public systems function, women participate fully in the workforce, healthcare doesn’t bankrupt families, and education doesn’t drain them. Otherwise, it’s just unrealized capacity. And unrealized capacity is expensive. It creates frustration. It creates migration. It creates quiet resentment.

Somewhere, a child is still writing that essay, confidently concluding that India’s population is a boon because it has more hands to work. And somewhere else, those hands are still waiting.