Myth about  India's demographic dividend.
Mainstream economists cant stop ranting about the huge market potential and the possible labour supply pool China and India ,with their 1 billion plus populace represent. Not much thought has been given on the rapacious demands on an already fragile ecosystem and large scale ecological and environmental degradation they will wreak, not to mention the enormous demand on natural resources needed to sustain an increased standard of living for their restive people.
Seeing the rapid development in China, I am of the opinion that for freakish demographic disasters like India and china with each having over 1.2 billion people ( fortuitously the next biggest is the US with about 300 million) , a benevolent dictatorship does wonders to the well being of its vast populace through a rapid transformation in the standard of living, in contrast to a feudal,oligarchical, semi literate democracy combined with a despotic leadership at the state and local level and a callous bureaucracy on the other hand and one of the most venal administrative setup in the third world as per transparency International.
No other nation in the world has such stark disparities as in India inspite of following a 'socialist' model of development for 40 years till 1991, and the word ' socialist' stubbornly  inserted into the Preamble of the constitution somewhere midway .I do not subscribe to the BRIC reports prepared by Goldman Sachs (essentially a hedge fund masquerading as an investment bank) prepared in the steel and glass towers of Manhattan, which made a virtue out of India's vast illiterate 'working age' population of over a billion plus, projecting it as a demographic dividend and supplier to the world's labour pool already battered by a meltdown.The reality in India , which many are loathe to admit, (as some seem to bask in the glory these reports generate) is that out of a population of around 1.2 billion , and the startling statistic that about 70 crore Indians still defecate in the open, is a testimony to the fact that only about 10% can be classified as worthy of leading a life worthy of human existence even by East Asian standards and the vast majority,sadly, lead a subhuman existence. And only around 20% can be classified as literate , where in the definition of literacy should encompass awareness of ones rights and basic understanding of polity and society , not just functional literacy where knowledge of alphabets and ability to sign is classified as literate as per Government census.With the state education schooling system,virtually non existent, I wonder how India will be able to provide trained manpower to the 'millions of jobs to be created in the future'.Lets face it , inspite of the reported 9-10% rate of growth, pockets of affluence will coexist along with large scale destitution given the venal admisistrative setup, and the vast majority of the productive population , will take a few generations to lift out of this destitution they are trapped in due to the demographic disaster in South Asia , in which India and China are the only 2 nations in the world with a billion plus people. As Mahatma Gandhi had stated, "There are enough resources in the planet for everyone's need ..but not for everyone's greed'. With the present land mass and the resources India has, even with a 10% rate of growth, there is no way in which India's vast multitudes will lift themselves out the morass they are in. A billion plus population is always a curse.. never an asset as it is being made out to be.A clever combination of a feudal setup and an entrenched caste system , ensured that the status quo of stark disaprities remain. Any other nation with a similar setup, would have been ripe for revolution way back.China with its dictatorial policy, and the legacy of the Iron Bowl and almost full literacy left behind by Mao in 1976, ensured an more equitable deal for its people.