Harnessing the Dividend

I vividly recall sitting in a humble mud floored house of village Por, near Gandhinagar, having buffaloes tethered right outside. With a chart paper map of the village spread before us, the Sarpanch and village elders were involved in the rural appraisal, as we tried understanding their problems and needs.

Just then an Opel Astra breezed in and a young man stepped out. Wearing flashy clothes with tattoos and reflective sunglasses, he swaggered in, picked up his stuff and drove back just as he stormed in. As I was recovering from this strange, incongruous happening, the Sarpanch spoke up with a choking voice. 

‘We actually have everything and don’t need anything but there’s a problem staring at us and slapping us hard. Our land prices have hit the roof and the huge money that the land is fetching is completely tearing us apart! Our younger generation, like you just saw, has no respect for hard work or us!’ 

I gathered that not rooted in values or education they were completely carried away with the ‘Vigha na paisa’ that translates to ‘money from acres’, which had become ‘money with a curse’!

Given to eating, drinking, watching TV and making merry, even a slight confrontation by parents was retorted with a threat of committing suicide.  This heart-wrenching account got me thinking about the ‘poverty of prosperity’.  

Walking back, we crossed the village square with about twenty, loudly dressed youth, just twiddling their thumbs! The Sarpanch gesticulated and softly said these were the ‘acre money’ ones! The numbing of their aspirations pained me.   Their prosperity had wreaked havoc, tearing their fragile fabric of peaceful, village life.

India today has the world’s youngest work force. Half the population was under 25 in 2010 and half the population will be under 28 in 2030, the demographic dividend that we need to harness. 

Juxtaposed with ‘Por’ is an inspiring story from Amirgadh in North Gujarat.

Visiting the Marg centre of Sarjan foundation, I was struck by their impact on young people aspiring for livelihood with skills, practical training, and yoga too set up septuagenarians, Vasuben Shah and Bhalchandrabhai Shah. Highly respected and very successful lawyers, they both decided to listen to their inner voice, quit legal practice and serve society.

Their efforts have created hundreds of life stories. For instance, Rajesh from Marg went on to start an electric shop and take up wiring contracts, employing other pass outs too.  

Harshad Prajapati of Marg joined back as a teacher. Durga, from masonary trade is doing very well with the skills, values and dignity that she got at Marg.

Although the contexts and symptoms at Por and Amirgadh were very different, their roots seemed quite similar to me. Inspiring young people with various paths makes them take charge of their lives. Across diverse contexts, we need to harvest the demographic dividend, banishing poverty, including the poverty of prosperity. Or else, the dividend would become a demographic liability, a millstone around the nation’s neck! 

Like Vasuben and Bhalchandrabhai, if people like us took up such causes, instilling the right values at home and all around us, it would spawn the prosperity of prosperity and our nation would be transformed.  As Maharaja Sayaji Rao, a great Indian expressed- ‘Value of knowledge depends on the use we make of it.

Those high and noble faculties of the mind and will have been given to us so that, by developing them to the utmost, we may apply them to the welfare of our fellow men, whether they be rich or poor.

Realization of this truth makes for the correct spirit of democracy.’