Letter from the Editor
There’s a curiously schizophrenic attitude in Indian society about the fact that this nation hosts the world’s youngest population. A mind-boggling 415 million Indians are children (less than 18 years of age), and 540 million citizens are youth less than 25. To understand these numbers in their proper perspective, one should bear in mind that the total population of the United States is 380 million and there are only 350 million people of all ages in Europe. Even the world’s most populous nation, the People’s Republic of China doesn’t have as large a population of youth. Given this demographic profile of contemporary India, one would expect a societal consensus that nutrition, health, education and general welfare of the country’s children and youth should be the # 1 national priority. Alas, the reality is quite the opposite. Of the 200 million children nationwide in primary school at the start of every academic year, only 35 million complete secondary education and a mere 10 million make it to college, university or other institutions of tertiary learning. That, ladies and gentlemen, constitutes the most profligate wastage of human capital in contemporary history. And it explains why over 350 million Indian citizens — a number almost equivalent to the aggregate population of the United States — are comprehensively illiterate.
Quite obviously given the ageing demographics of the rest of the world, particularly the developed industrial nations, relatively young India has the opportunity to become the workshop and services provider of the world in the near future if our human resource pool — our youthful population — is healthy and well educated. Therefore the imperative not only to educate the nation’s youth, but to give them all the encouragement possible.
It was this objective of encouraging and celebrating the extra-curricular achievements — beyond the narrow definition of education — of the nation’s youth that we invited the enlightened management of the globally respected information technology services major, Infosys Technologies Ltd to partner with us to institute the annual Infosys-EducationWorld Young Achievers Awards last year. Infosys which employs a massive workforce of 52,715 professionals worldwide is particularly well-qualified to sponsor the eponymous annual young achievers awards. The average age of its huge, highly-skilled workforce is a mere 26 years.
Following a somewhat tentative start last year, the procedures and process to invite nominations of young achievers countrywide have improved in the second year of the Infosys-EducationWorld Young Achievers Awards which attracted qualitatively superior nominations this year. You can read all about the inspirational young achievers of 2006 in our cover story of this issue.
Our second lead feature also focuses on the nation’s youth. Is the contentious proposal to legislate an additional 27 percent quota in Central government funded institutions of higher education for OBCs (other backward classes/castes) indicative of a widening generation gap in Indian society? There’s emerging evidence which supports this hypothesis.
Dilip Thakore