Missing Demographic Dividend

It was a hush hush meeting at the very top. PM was there accompanied by the HM. NIA Chief was there. FM was there surprisingly making one wonder what was this meeting all about? Defence minister was also there and so was the planning chief.

PM right at the outset said this discussion will not be recorded and was to kept tight. “You all know already that I am reputed to work for 20 hours a day, no vacation and all. I can’t work any harder. But the paper published by the Indian origin Harvard economist concerns me a lot. He has said very clearly that the demographic dividend has gone missing from India. What is this entity mean? Why has it gone missing? We need to take this paper seriously. That is why I had called the HM, DM and NIA too for this meeting.

NIA chief spoke “If some more light could be shed about this entity, whose name I don’t even want to mention then I could deploy a team of secret agents and trace him or her out. Even better if someone could sit with our sketch artist so that an outline could be formed. We can put this in our facial recognition soft-ware and where in India this person is hiding, we can locate now or later.”

DM asked “is he an enemy of the nation? Or is this person an avatar who would lead our country to become a ‘viswaguru’ by 2047 as PM had stated? We can deploy our satellites to trace him out. Anyways I would ask my chiefs to be on alert.

FM said by way of explanation we are talking about not a live entity like a human being. What is meant by DD is that as our country is going to become the most populated one in the globe by 2023. Youth would form the bulk of population in the next two decades. If they are going to be selling pakoras and chai, no offence meant and she looked at the PM who was frowning, then we are not going to be harnessing the potential of youth. We should be talking of skilling them and place them in skilled jobs that would bring value to the country and to them as well. Otherwise, the DD would become a demographic disaster.

HM intervened and said that our style of governance lends to some chaos, violence which we use effectively to distract the masses continuously proving the dictum wrong that we cannot fool all the people all the time. We need youth to promote incidence of lynching, beating up minority, occasional rape of women especially Dalit types, bus burning so that we can replace them with new buses and delivery boys and girls.

FM intervened that these provide temporary pre-occupation only. How long can one keep providing ration to eighty crore people and that too for subsistence.

I agree said the DM. I am told that most of the applications that came for the “path of fire scheme” we had floated had been rejected for want of physical build up. We are getting teeny weeny youth who have grown up on ration and don’t have the muscles of the kind that army requires.

The planning chief cleared his throat and said “unfortunately our start-ups after a grand start have lost the stamina. Being successful is like running a marathon which requires endurance. Where as in case of start-ups they run a 100-meter race and lose steam.” Yet again the economist in the same paper has talked of winter of discontent and drying up of angel funders.

What about the make in India scheme? Asked PM. It was his pet idea. FM said maids in India are useful for the families and in establishments. But the boys cannot be employed in the same way. When the PM glared at her she veered from the topic and said recently railways and metro have gone yet again for Chinese companies. Looks like our Chinese dependency will continue for some more time.

PM asked “should we then hire this economist and create a new department like DD and give him a cabinet rank?” His task is then to find this entity and bring it under our control.

The planning chief cleared his throat and said he was a known Chinese sympathizer.

So what? Barked the DM. We need solutions be it desi or videsi shouldn’t matter at all. He didn’t dare look at PM and closed his eyes as if deep thinking.

PM looked not satisfied with the way the discussion was proceeding and he asked “how about asking our knowledgeable gurus? Can’t they not fish out something from our ancient wisdom?”

“If only the length of their beards was in proportion to the depth of their wisdom” sniggered the planning chief and bit his tongue when he saw the spark of anger in the PM eyes. What I meant to say was that they all seem to have recently trimmed their beards and laughed at his own what he thought was a joke. Just to cool the atmosphere he added he would check it out with the gurus and get back in a few minutes.

What about the gaushala program of giving two cows to youth in the utter Pradesh? Asked the PM.

The planning chief responded stating that the program has not been a success. Foot in the mouth disease has started spreading in the state among the humans. People are blaming it on the cows. As the meeting took a break for tea time the planning chief frantically made calls to the Gurus of renown.

The art of conning people guru, he was told was in Congo mediating for supplies of nickel a basic metal required for chips for the semi-conductor industries. The planning chief wondered what this guru had to do with semi-conductor industries. He was amused by the thought that may be the guru ran out of charge and wanted an eternal charging station in his ashram. The other guru was on a world tour to save the soil. He got stranded in the Sahara Desert, had a close shave and was now unrecognisable. The guru renowned for yoga had tried out a difficult contortion pose and got caught up in his own knots. So, the planning chief told the PM that the gurus belonged to the nil dividend category as at the moment.

Sensing the tense atmosphere as no solution was in sight the HM intervened to say that the har ghar tiranga was an outstanding success and further he said that the PM’s speech was found to be stirring. It also contributed to Rs 500 Cr in sale and added to the GDP.

But the PM was in no mood to relent and he said now people will start flagging real issues of hunger and employment not withstanding my comment about foreign certificates that I talked about.

At the moment a knock was heard and the NIA Chief rushed to the door as he was expecting some message. He took a chit from the aide and read out the message that the DD was last seen in China a few years ago and has since absconded.

Ah! Said the PM with a sigh of relief. Even China was no exception to the missing DD phenomenon. There we have an escape route for ourselves. Anyway, we have till 2047 to search out this DD. We have to tame this entity if as I had announced India to become a developed country.

The meeting ended with a sigh of relief on everyone’s face.