1 Billion - a liability or an asset

For decades and decades, India’s ballooning population has been credited with India’s sorry state. The Indian political machine shrewdly disassociated themselves with all the issues blaming our population for all the chaos and mayhem. Even for the general public, we had our population as our excuse for self pity and complacency.

Of course, our population is rising alarmingly. After all, more people we have, higher is the burden on economy for education, healthcare and infrastructure. With more people joining the workforce, more employment opportunities have to be created. With our badly administered population plan, we are adding one Australia every year to our population ranks. Some statistics for you – India occupies 2.23% of total land in the world, has 17.17% of world population and contributes 1.49% to the world GDP. Do you smell a shocking disparity between our economics and our population?

If I would be you, I would be very worried!!

This used to be the universal perception of India and its population “crisis”.

However, since economic reforms in 1991, there have been an astonishing "paradigm shift" across the world where our population is no longer considered a liability but now it’s branded as our largest asset.

The rationality behind it is –

The economy of a nation is driven by its workforce. This is how US‘s economy boomed through baby boomers era of 50s and 60s. This is how China has been growing for the last 30 years. And now it’s India’s turn. India already has an advantage over more advanced economies. The median age in India in 2000 was 24, compared to 30 in China, 38 in Europe and 41 in rusty Japan. The bottom line is - India will be the only young country in the ageing world.

While US will need to drain its crippling federal reserve on pensions & health care and China will need to equip itself with these issues in next 20 years, half of India’s population, which is under 25, will gives us a competitive edge over these economies. I personally believed that India doesn’t have any chance to compete with China economically. But I might be wrong as many economists around the world believe.

But things are not as rosy as it appears.
One major issue is creating enough job opportunities for these new entrants into the labor market. Unemployment looms large at 9.8% in India; that’s 40 million people. Huge amount of literature has written on unemployment and social disharmony in the society. India already has severe incumbency issues – right from Maoists to Naxals to ULFA to Bajrang Dal. These organizations have been capitalizing on the unemployed youth to increase its member strength. Unemployment also increases the economic gap between rich and poor which is another significant issue faced by India. 


Another issue is the quality of workforce entering the job market. If you look at the college graduates alone, due to low quality of education standards, 75% of 3.2 million Indian graduates are unemployable. Recently, I met a Masters in Economics degree holder from Delhi University who was working as a rickshaw driver in New Delhi. And guess what, he said he is lucky to be driving an auto rickshaw, several of his colleagues from college are completely unemployed. 


Lastly, the largest issue is our huge huge illiteracy rate. We have a illiteracy rate of 41% compared to 9% in China, 10% in Indonesia and 11.6% in Brazil. Every issue that Indian society faces is like links to a chain. Every issue is connected directly or indirectly to each other. The strongest link of Indian society is our staggering illiteracy rate. Illiteracy is the root to all issues as it gives rise to other issues like poverty, unemployment and child labor.

We need to overcome these key issues to leverage upon our human capital. For that we need Investment in education, health care and infrastructure.

Nandan Nilekani recently mentioned that we have a god gifted young population ( demographic dividend). If we don’t invest in this demographic dividend, the same demographic dividend can easily turn out into a demographic disaster.  
So let’s hope our politicians can stop worrying about securing their seats in the next elections and start working on these basic necessities for us – its future.

Mistakes - are they lessons

I recently was reading about Stan Shih – the ex-chairman of Acer. He said something which really clicked with me. He mentioned that life is about continuous learning and the hardships and misery we face during this learning is the tuition fee which we need to pay for this learning. Very simply put and very irrelevant in today’s fast food culture but his thought connected well with me.

After reading his brilliant philosophy of life, I took a step back and thought about my life and my learnings and of course the tuition fee I paid for it.

After a lot of contemplation and lots of “brainstorming”, I realized one thing for sure that regardless of what my mistakes were and the tuition fee I paid for it, “I must start loving the fool within me, the one who feel s too much, speaks too long, takes too many risks, seldom succeeds and fails often, have insufficient self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, laughs and cries”.

Most of us when we do something wrong, or we do something that makes us guilty or feel bad, we tend to get angry with ourselves. Most of us have this ghastly habit of beating ourselves mentally over and over again on the mistakes we do. We need to stop that and love ourselves for our mistakes. I ensure that I make 3 mistakes a day and ensure that I learn from them and don’t repeat them.              

We need to start believing that ‘there are no mistakes in life, there are only lessons’.

Bad things happen to everyone. After all life is like a bush of roses, with the beautiful roses, you need to face the thorns. Metaphorically speaking, thorns are the breakdowns we face during this journey of life- the bad judgement calls, the deceptions, the misinterpretations. What one needs to understand is that every thorn should be considered a cornerstone to ensure those mistakes are not repeated.

I try to consider mistakes souvenirs or rewards for taking risks in our daily to daily lives. Many of us don’t ever want to fail. We try to be picture perfect and completely error free. And how do we do that? We prevent ourselves from scouting unfamiliar territories, don’t experiment and try to be in our comfort zones.

I read about this concept where there are 3 sections of knowledge maps in us. They are –

1.       I know

2.       I know that I don’t know

3.       I don’t know that I don’t know

For example, we know that we know how to ride a bike. We also know that we don’t know how to fly a space shuttle but many people don't know that they don’t know that their colleagues hate them at work or that they smell bad.

The point is – many of us are so “risk averse” that we never try to venture out and seek the 3^rd section of our knowledge map. The significance of the third section can’t be ignored. If you consider knowledge map to be 100%, you might have section 1 as 1%, section2 as 3% and the remaining 96% belongs to section 3. The most successful people around the world have penetrated section 3 through enquiry and observation, and have developed insights which helped them to attain business, political and spiritual glory.

All I am trying to say is that venture out and take roads less travelled because who knows in one of those ‘road trips’ you’ll find your calling. And don’t care too much about the mistakes you make during those journeys, after all even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Robert Frost very aptly said “In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life. -   “It goes on”. So remember that regardless of your mistakes, your life will go on. So go out and start making mistakes.

Key to Happiness

I sometimes become philosophical about stuff. Today seems to be one of those days.
Today I am trying to decipher the code behind unhappiness.
Let me try to list out possible things that “might” make me happy.
A sleek black Maserati will be the ultimate happiness tool, or maybe a penthouse in Stanley, definitely someone special in life, perhaps a leaner me, or at least a job at McKinsey or Google.
Well, I have many many more things which might make me happy. The list never ends.
However, there is only one thing which makes me “or to generalize - all of us” unhappy. That is when our expectations are not met. The pain caused by failed expectations can be very severe.
A failed expectation can be a deferred job promotion, a break up, the way your friends & family treat you or maybe getting an application rejection from Harvard.
Basically, an expectation says that “I want something to happen and if that doesn’t happen, then you will be unhappy”.
On so many occasions I hear disgruntled voices talking about expectations not met or things not happening the way people want it to happen. Managing your expectations can be very challenging and is an art one learns through trial-error and experience. 

Please don’t mistake me here. I don’t say expectations are wrong. We need to have expectations. They are the primary source of hope and aspirations. Life would be empty and meaningless without them. However, what I propose is that keep your mind flexible and adaptable to their outcome so that you can be more forthcoming and acceptable to the occurrence of any possible event.

Though I am writing on this topic, I kinda suck at managing my own expectations.
I personally try to have very little expectations. However, expectations naturally build up and when they fail they cause lot of pain and anguish.
For instance, when it comes to communication, I am very particular about both parties putting in equal effort to sustain a communication channel. In simple words, I will not be the one who will always start a conversation even if I want one. Now, this expectation does fail and when it does it tends to severe my relationships and friendships.
What I know but fail to implement is that one must liberate themselves from attaching themselves to any result caused by someone else's actions or inactions!

As humans, we all need expectations but what we also need is a realization that they can fail.
Sometimes, I ask myself a question- To be happy do we need to lower our expectations or to strive harder to improve our current situation"? What I realized is that accepting reality can be much more satisfying.
However I still don’t have an effective answer - If you have one, please comment on this blog.