India's demographic dividend - a mirage ?!

Reading this wonderful article in the mint on the lack of challenges in a typical middle-class kids' life was quite an eye opener to the risk in India's much anticipated demographic dividend. It is certainly something most of us who spent our childhood in the pre-liberalization era can relate to - cycle as the only known mode of transport, one channel on TV, no computer, no video games, no internet, no mobiles, no apartments and no playing indoor games.

Kids of this age are getting increasingly isolated and cushioned at the same society from the realities of the society. My friend who runs a pre-school at Gurgaon was commenting about how a lot many kids in cities have never seen the outside except through the window of an air conditioned car. This might be great news for kids' TV channels, makers of video games and eatables but is not great news for the society (no, no "no sour grapes" syndrome here- coming from someone from the previous generation). I am now starting to find kids of house-maids and autorickshaw drivers to be much smarter on the street - for eg., buying vegetables, running errands, managing minor tussles on the street or for that matter even helping out their parents by earning a buck or two.



Every country at some point of time went through this stage of increasing luxury and isolation of children (Nordic countries and US in the 1970s) and it has remarkable repercussions like gun/drug/LSD culture, increasing suicides, violence. A spotless scrubbing of all grey/dark zones of life leads to an aimless drifting with most of them taking to "taboos" simply because those they are the only challenges for them to surmount.

Of course, it is just as likely that a few of these guys will turn out to be the Bill Gates-es and Michael Phelps-es, provided they have their value systems in place. Of course, that is contingent on parents and the time and effort they spend instilling basic values in place and giving kids a check of the societal realities. I am no doomsayer, but it is'nt going to be a rollercoaster as most of us imagine it to be.

~Varadha
(varadha.r1@gmail.com)

Back in black

Not so long ago I read this article in BusinessWorld that throws light on the black side.


While I must say, BusinessWorld deserves full credit for having got out something on an area which no one dares to touch, the article at its very best was academic and was threw as much light as a pencil light does in a dark, deep coal mine.

Needless to say, this is one thing that slips away, quite modestly and rather uncanningly from the view of millions of salaried middle class, all of whom are content servicing their EMIs to the Government in the form of direct taxes even before their money sees daylight.

It certainly is not surprising that no Government, State or Central, Federal or otherwise, even wants to speak about this. While P. Chidambaram talks about increasing the tax net, this hardly seems to find a mention any where. To top it all, we have an atrocious Cash Withdrawal Tax which is predicated on the fundamental hypothesis that an insignificant fee would give clues to the trail and hopefully (this is wistful thinking at its very best) act as a barricade for origination of cash hardly seems to yield results that anyone would be proud of.

One of the downsides of India being a democracy is that a vicious yet comfortable cycle has been created that allows for bureaucrats, politicans and business men to co-exist by paying the others in the symbiosis a mere fraction of what they would have to pay if they were to walk the line. So, what can be done ? Any thoughts on this ?