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Source: The Hindu

Context

On World Population Day 2025, the focus will be on empowering India's 371 million young, particularly girls, via education, health, skill development, and reproductive rights, in order to unlock their potential and create inclusive, sustainable national progress.

India’s Youth Demographic: Background

• India has the world’s largest youth population, with over 371 million people aged 15–29.
  
  
• This segment presents a massive potential to harness a demographic dividend, provided they are educated, skilled, and healthy.
  
  
• The youth bulge is an economic asset that can drive growth, reduce poverty, and boost innovation if strategically empowered.
  
  
• The World Bank and NITI Aayog estimate that unleashing this potential could increase India’s GDP by up to $1 trillion by 2030.
  

Why Youth Empowerment is Essential

• Enhances productivity: Empowered youth can reduce unemployment and contribute to higher national productivity and economic output.
  
  
• Drives social transformation: With access to quality education, reproductive rights, and gender equality, youth, especially young women,can actively shape society.
  
  
• Improves governance and participation: Involving youth in decision-making fosters inclusive development and sustains democracy.
  
  
• Promotes health and wellbeing: Investments in health, nutrition, mental health, and reproductive services lead to a more capable and resilient population.
  
  
• Strengthens gender equity: Enabling young women’s autonomy ensures higher female labour participation and social equality.
  
  
• Boosts employment and innovation: Youth with future-ready skills can lead in AI, green energy, tech startups, and social entrepreneurship.
  

Policy Context, Challenges

• Policy Alignment:
  
  
• Based on the ICPD 1994 principle of bodily autonomy and reproductive rights.
  
  
• Linked with World Population Day 2025 theme: “Empowering young people to create the families they want in a fair and hopeful world.”
  
  
• Supported by national policies like Skill India, National Youth Policy, NEP 2020, and Ayushman Bharat.
  
  
• Key Challenges:
  
  
• High number of NEETs (Not in Education, Employment, or Training), especially among females.
  
  
• Learning gaps (ASER/NAS reports), digital divide, and inadequate vocational training.
  
  
• Poor adolescent health, including malnutrition and rising mental health issues.
  
  
• Dominance of informal employment and lack of future-oriented job opportunities.
  
  
• Strategic Actions Needed:
  
  
• Improve school-to-work transition via apprenticeships, career counselling, and skill partnerships.
  
  
• Invest in frontier skills, digital literacy, coding, AI, and sustainability-linked jobs.
  
  
• Expand reproductive and mental health services, and strengthen adolescent nutrition.
  
  
• Empower girls and young women through education, safety, leadership roles, and SRHR (Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights).
  
  
• Encourage youth-led governance via advisory councils, local representation, and digital participation.
  
  
• Expected Outcomes:
  
  
• Increase in GDP, employment, and gender equality.
  
  
• A healthier, more capable, and confident youth population.
  
  
• A robust, innovative, and inclusive India that fully utilises its demographic advantage.

Tackling Child Marriage and Advancing Women’s Empowerment

• Promoting Girls’ Education:
  
  
• Schemes like Project Udaan in Rajasthan aim to delay early marriages by ensuring girls remain in secondary school.
  
  
• Government scholarships reduce dropouts, lowering child marriage and teenage pregnancy rates.
  
  
• Enhancing Reproductive Health:
  
  
• Programs like Udaan and Advika improve access to modern contraceptives and sexual and reproductive health (SRH) education.
  
  
• These initiatives boost young women’s reproductive agency and informed decision-making.
  
  
• Life Skills & Leadership Training:
  
  
• Odisha’s Advika Programme empowers adolescents with life-skills training, leadership development, and child protection awareness.
  
  
• It has been implemented across thousands of villages, significantly preventing child marriages.
  
  
• Fostering Economic Independence:
  
  
• Project Manzil in Rajasthan aligns skill development with young women’s aspirations and connects them to gender-sensitive workplaces.
  
  
• It has empowered over 16,000 women with employment and negotiation power.
  
  
• Shifting Social Norms:
  
  
• Behavioural change strategies under Manzil target harmful gender norms and involve families and communities.
  
  
• These efforts reduce resistance to girls’ education and women’s employment.

Why Focus Population Discourse on Rights and Gender Equity, Not Fertility Panic?

• Respect Reproductive Autonomy:
  
  
• Labeling falling fertility a “crisis” can lead to coercive pronatalist policies.
  
  
• Countries like Hungary and Iran have restricted abortion and contraception, violating bodily autonomy.
  
  
• Empowering Women for Social Gains:
  
  
• Gender equality, education, and economic participation enhance both fertility decisions and development outcomes.
  
  
• Nordic countries like Sweden ensure choice through workplace equality and parental leave.
  
  
• Avoiding Harmful Stereotypes:
  
  
• Fertility panic ignores people unable to conceive due to economic or structural barriers.
  
  
• The UNFPA 2025 Report finds 40% globally had to forgo children not by choice but due to lack of support.
  

Challenges Impeding Youth Empowerment in India

• Despite progress through initiatives like Beti Bachao Beti Padhao and the National Adolescent Health Programme, which have helped reduce child marriage and adolescent fertility rates, critical issues remain.
  
  
• Deep-rooted socio-cultural barriers and gender inequality continue to restrict the empowerment of youth, especially young women.
  
  
• Reproductive autonomy remains limited, affecting their ability to make informed choices about their health and future.
  
  
• The prevalence of child marriage stands at 23.3%, though it has halved since 2006.
  
  
• Teenage childbearing affects 7% of women aged 15–19 nationally, but the percentage doubles in several states, reflecting regional disparities (NFHS-5).
  
  
• According to the State of World Population Report 2025 by UNFPA:
  
  
• 36% of Indian adults face unintended pregnancies.
  
  
• 30% report unmet reproductive goals, lacking control over the number of children they have.
  
  
• 23% experience both unintended pregnancies and unmet reproductive goals, pointing to a fertility crisis.
  
  
• External pressures often influence decisions on childbearing, with many women lacking autonomy over the timing, age, and economic context of childbirth.

Impactful programmes 

• Education as a Transformational Tool: Every additional year of secondary education reduces the likelihood of child marriage by up to 6%.
• Project Udaan (Rajasthan, 2017-2022): Implemented by IPE Global, this effort successfully addressed early marriages and teenage pregnancies by retaining girls in secondary education through smart government scholarship programs.
• It raised their sexual and reproductive health awareness and improved access to modern contraception, empowering girls and women to make reproductive decisions for themselves. 
• Project Udaan successfully avoided approximately 30,000 child marriages and almost 15,000 teen pregnancies.
• Advika Programme (Odisha, 2019–2020): The Government of Odisha launched Advika in collaboration with UNICEF-UNFPA to prevent child marriage by strengthening state processes, raising awareness about child protection issues, and empowering adolescents through education, skill development, and leadership training. 
• This youth-centric approach has resulted in the declaration of nearly 11,000 villages as child marriage-free. 
• In 2022 alone, approximately 950 child marriages were quickly terminated.
• Project Manzil (Rajasthan, 2019-2025): Implemented by IPE Global in conjunction with the Rajasthan government in six selected districts, this programme addresses women's economic empowerment and low female labor force participation. 
• Using a human-centered design, it integrates skill training with young women's objectives, allowing them to pursue dignified employment in gender-friendly organizations. 
• Project Manzil has helped 28,000 young women (ages 18-21) complete vocational training at government centers, with 16,000 finding work, many becoming the first women in their areas to enter professional careers.

Practice Question: Q. Empowering women is the key to control population growth”. Discuss