To harness the demographic dividend before it peters out, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will place human capital for Viksit Bharat at the centre of India’s long-term growth and development agenda at the annual Chief Secretaries’ conference to be held here from December 26 to 28, sources told FE.
The plan is to adopt a lifecycle-based strategy to strengthen human development — from early childhood to higher education, skilling, sports and youth welfare — setting the stage for a comprehensive governance blueprint, positioning human capital as the central determinant of India’s growth trajectory over the next two decades.
The three-day meeting, to be chaired by Modi, will discuss five deeply interconnected pillars: early childhood education, schooling, skilling, higher education, and sports & youth welfare. These stages are linked through “backward and forward” dependencies. For example, foundational learning in early years shapes school outcomes, which in turn determine readiness for higher education or vocational pathways; skilling supports employability not only for graduates but also for school dropouts; and sports engagement across all ages is positioned as key to physical and mental fitness.
States are being nudged to recognise these interlinkages while preparing their points for the conference.
The note also calls for enhanced coordination across ministries — such as education, skill development, youth affairs, culture, health, and Ayush — to ensure convergence of initiatives across the human-capital spectrum.
The proposed mapping of interdependencies includes smooth transition strategies from anganwadis to schools, strengthening skill education from Class 6 onwards, revising curricula for tech-ready workforce development, upgrading sports infrastructure in schools, and integrating credits for extracurricular activities such as NCC, NSS, and youth clubs under the National Credit Framework.
It also calls for a roadmap to create 10 million internships annually by 2035, stronger industry linkages, enhanced R&D ecosystems, and creation of world-class universities (MERUs).
In sports and youth welfare, the government may push for integrating yoga and fitness from early childhood, tiered tournaments for talent spotting, flexible schooling for athletes, and stronger coordination with local bodies and health infrastructure to expand the Fit India movement.
With India’s demographic dividend likely to peak by 2040, making skill, health and education investments have become urgent.
The demographic dividend is the economic growth potential that can result from shifts in a population’s age structure, mainly when the share of the working-age population (15 to 64) is larger than the non-working-age share of the population (14 and younger, and 65 and older). India’s working-age population is rising and stood at 68% compared with 67.3% in 2020 and 66%
in 2015, according to the United Nations Population Fund’s State of World Population Report 2023.
During a demographic transition – where fertility rates decline, life expectancy rises and workforces grow – human capital investment could trigger a demographic dividend, not only through greater economic productivity but also from more health, education and empowerment.
With most developed nations already experiencing population degrowth, the world is also expected to increase its reliance on the Indian talent pool for its manufacturing and services sectors.