Giving Compass' Take:

• Snigdha Poonam from the Hindustan Times shares with the Aspen Institute the complexity of India's youth and their limited choices in job development and careers.

• How can the international community help support young Indians? 

• Read about how India is trying to reach it's development goals. 

More than half of India’s population is under 25 years old. It is the largest number of young people in any country on earth. A 2014 UN report distilled the meaning of India’s unprecedented demographic edge into the plainest possible words: “Never again is there likely to be such potential for economic and social progress. How we meet the needs and aspirations of young people will define our common future.”

The world’s future depends on young Indians meeting their aspirations, but right now it’s a pipe dream. As developmental economists have been warning for years, India needs urgently to take care of its ‘3E’ problem.

The majority of India’s youth bulge falls into one of three categories: uneducated, unemployed, or unemployable.

The logistics of the challenge befuddle even the most hopeful of India cheerleaders. To call the shots in the global economy, India will need to educate about 100 million young people over the next ten years, a task never undertaken before. At least 1,000 universities and nearly 50,000 colleges will need to be built over this period. Even if the country magically achieves this feat, questions about the quality of education in these schools and colleges will persist.

At the moment, fewer than 17 percent of India’s graduates are immediately employable. Only 2.3 percent of the Indian workforce has undergone formal skill training (compared to 80 percent in Japan and 96 percent in South Korea).  Around 117 million people need to be absorbed into new and more productive jobs. The growing gap between jobs and job-seekers may lead to what the International Labour Organisation calls a “scarred generation.”

This is a generation of Indians hanging between extremes. No matter how poorly placed they find themselves now, they make up the world’s largest ever cohort of like-minded young people, and they see absolutely no reason why the world shouldn’t run by their rules.

Read the full article about Indian youth by Snigdha Poonam at The Aspen Institute