1.

Towards resuscitating CAPART

Pramathesh Ambasta An innovative space for a meeting between civil society and government, CAPART will need firm resolve and purposeful action by the Rural Development Ministry to bring it back from the brink. The Council for Advancement of People's Action and Rural Technology (CAPART) is perhaps a unique example of an institutional meeting space for government and civil society. The Union Minister for Rural Development is the Chairperson of CAPART, which is registered as an autonomous Society. It has eminent and distinguished people from civil society on its General Body (GB) and Executive Committee (EC). Compared to the parent Ministry, the CAPART budget is minuscule. However, the raison d'etre of CAPART is to facilitate and support voluntary action so that people-led models of excellence can be created in backward and remote villages which would, in turn, show the way forward for all social sector initiatives of the government. CAPART was also visualised as an autonomous space for the voluntary sector, which would foster and encourage grass-roots action even if this sometimes went against the grain of the local vested interests. What makes CAPART unique is that its funds belong to the people and can be used well for the empowerment of the poorest in the country.

In all fairness to the Council, in its life of three decades, it has contributed to some very good and innovative grass-roots work done in India. A feature of this work has been its regional spread and its encouragement of small voluntary organisations. For many of them, CAPART's support in their formative years was a critical factor. It has also been the first and perhaps only funding agency to have attempted institutional reform by inviting independent experts and civil society luminaries to be part of its National Standing Committees (NSCs), empowered to sanction and review CAPART support to voluntary organisations. Being associated with the government, it is periodically reviewed by Parliament, the highest decision-making body in the country. How many funding agencies in the voluntary sector can claim similar scrutiny?

Despite all this, the institution has shown a remarkable commitment to keep its self-destruct button firmly pressed. In its 30-odd years, it has been dogged by controversies over corruption, lack of accountability, lack of understanding of voluntary action and its context, and an inability to move fast enough to innovate. Indeed, the best in the voluntary sector sooner rather than later began to see it as something they would like to keep a safe distance from. And CAPART began to reflect some of the most serious accountability issues facing the voluntary sector.

While CAPART has tried to learn from experience, the process has been sluggish and partial and the will to give expression to the lessons on the ground, indifferent at best. One such attempt to learn (and the most significant to date) was the drive to reinvent itself launched last year. This was fresh on the heels of the United Progressive Alliance winning the Parliament elections on the Bharat plank, and the sinking in of the realisation in government that civil society action could be potentially helpful in re-connecting with the people. The drive was launched by reconstituting the EC and the GB, and inviting some of the best in the voluntary sector to participate in giving direction to both bodies. At the first meeting of this reconstituted EC and GB, the Chairperson strongly signalled his intention of overhauling CAPART and clearing the way for it to be led by the voluntary sector itself, creating a powerful groundswell of support in the sector. To back his intentions with action, he announced the setting up of four sub-groups of the EC led by the Member, Planning Commission, in-charge of Rural Development. These sub-groups were to look at new and innovative ways of CAPART facilitation in the areas of capacity building, social mobilisation and people's institutions (with a focus on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the Right to Food, the Forest Rights Act and the Right to Information). They were to devise innovative programmes for promoting nature based livelihoods and appropriate technology, micro-credit, rural industrialisation and marketing, and suggest measures for the structural reform of CAPART.

After several rounds of intense deliberations, the sub-groups submitted their reports, which reflected the vast experience and rich insight of the EC members. New and detailed programmes for voluntary action were worked out for each of the flagship areas. Perhaps the most crucial recommendations came from the sub-group on structural reforms. The sub-groups took serious note of the high turnover at the top with 24 Directors-General appointed in

the space of 25 years at last count. This clearly meant that the top post (reserved for an IAS officer, normally in the rank of Additional Secretary to the Government of India) was not one where selections were made on the principle of best fit for the post, but was a waiting ground for senior bureaucrats before they got better postings.

Among the most radical of the group's recommendations, and perhaps one which has ruffled the maximum feathers, was opening up the top post and institutionalising a search-and-screen process to get the best people available in the country to head CAPART. These people could be sitting officers of the government or people from outside with an impeccable track record of public service, in-sourced by CAPART. In order to infuse the functioning of CAPART with greater quality, the group similarly recommended that programme heads be in-sourced after a due search-and-screen process. The sub-group worked out a detailed blueprint for fostering voluntary sector participation through a consortium model, which would bring in a healthy culture of mutual accountability, peer review and partnership with CAPART based on mutual respect and trust. To ensure proper performance of staff and to disincentivise non-performance, the sub-group went on to suggest performance-based evaluation of personnel. The group took note of the tendency of foot-dragging when it came to swift action on vigilance issues and suggested a tighter control of the EC over the vigilance and monitoring functions.

Alas, however, all this labour of love met with stiff resistance within CAPART from those who predictably saw this as an invasion of their turf. The first meeting of the EC, after the reports were submitted, did not see any discussion on the reports. At the subsequent meeting three months after, the reports were relegated to the last five minutes or so with the insiders winning the day when the Chairperson announced that the reports of the subgroups should be referred to a third-party external review. EC members from the voluntary sector then wrote to the Chairperson, pointing out that the decision was an attempt at subversion of his own clear vision spelt out at the first meeting of the new EC. They also said that since CAPART had put on hold its programmes until after the review by EC was over, it would be in the best interests of the organisation to start action on the schemes even as external review was being carried out. As a result, another meeting of the EC was convened in August this year and it was decided that detailed programme guidelines would be drawn up on the themes for action based on the recommendations of the sub-groups. Simultaneously, NSCs would be constituted for each of the thematic areas and a process of dialogue with the

voluntary sector to seed these new ideas would be kicked off.

However, this is still to be implemented. In sum, the entire effort initiated last year, heralding a new era of a different kind of public-private partnership, has somehow morphed into a process which has brought the institution to a complete standstill. It has also clearly pointed to the roadblocks to reform of governance, without which inclusive development will remain an empty slogan. For if change in an organisation with such a small budget and scope is so obdurately resisted by a fiercely recalcitrant executive leadership, what hope can there be of larger governance reforms for the poorest in the country? It is clear that the Chairperson needs to step in with a clear resolve to reclaim his own vision for CAPART so that the institution is brought back from the brink.

(The author is member of the Executive Committee, CAPART.)

Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu 2.Unique facility, or recipe for trouble?

Jean Drze Many questions remain about the Unique Identity Number system that is being rolled out by the Central government. It is quite likely that a few weeks from now someone will be knocking at your doors and asking for your fingerprints. If you agree, your fingerprints will enter a national database, along with personal characteristics (age, sex, occupation, and so on) that have already been collected from you, unless you were missed in the Census household listing earlier this year.

The purpose of this exercise is to build the National Population Register (NPR). In due course, your UID (Unique Identity Number, or Aadhaar) will be added to it. This will make it possible to link the NPR with other Aadhaarenabled databases, from tax returns to bank records and SIM (subscriber identity module) registers. This includes the Home Ministry's National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID), smoothly linking 21 national databases.

For the intelligence agencies, this will be a dream-come-true. Imagine, everyone's fingerprints at the click of a mouse, that too with demographic information and all the rest. Should any suspicious person book a flight, or use a cybercaf, or any of the services that will soon require an Aadhaar number, she will be on their radar. If, say, Arundhati Roy makes another trip to Dantewada, she will be picked up on arrival like a ripe plum. Fantastic!

A half-truth'

So, when the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) tells us that the UID data (the Central Identities Data Repository) will be safe and confidential, it is a half-truth. The confidentiality of the Repository itself is not a minor issue, considering that UIDAI can authorise any entity to maintain it, and that it can be accessed not only by intelligence agencies but also by any Ministry. But more important, the UID will help integrate vast amounts of personal data, that are available to government agencies with few restrictions.

Confidentiality is not the only half-truth propagated by UIDAI. Another one is that Aadhaar is not compulsory it is just a voluntary facility. UIDAI's concept note stresses that enrolment will not be mandated. But there is a catch: ... benefits and services that are linked to the UID will ensure demand for the number. This is like selling bottled water in a village after poisoning the well, and claiming that people are buying water voluntarily. The next sentence is also ominous: This will not, however, preclude governments or Registrars from mandating enrolment.

That UID is, in effect, going to be compulsory is clear from many other documents. For instance, the Planning Commission's proposal for the National Food Security Act argues for mandatory use of UID numbers which are expected to become operational by the end of 2010 (note the optimistic time-frame). No UID, no food. Similarly, UIDAI's concept note on the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) assumes that each citizen needs to provide his UID before claiming employment. Thus, Aadhaar will also be a condition for the right to work so much for its voluntary nature.

Now, if the UID is compulsory, then everyone should have a right to free, convenient and reliable enrolment. The enrolment process, however, is all set to be a hit-or-miss affair, with no guarantee of timely and hassle-free inclusion. UIDAI hopes to enrol 600 million people in the next four years. That is about half of India's population in the next four years. What about the other half?

Nor is there any guarantee of reliability. Anyone familiar with the way things work in rural India would expect the UID database to be full of errors. There is a sobering lesson here from the Below Poverty Line (BPL) Census. A recent World Bank study found rampant anomalies in the BPL list: A common problem was erroneous information entered for household members. In one district of Rajasthan, more than 50 per cent of the household members were listed as sisters-in-law.

Will the UID database be more reliable? Don't bet on it. And it is not clear how the errors will be corrected as and when they emerge.

Under the proposed National Identification Authority of India Bill (NIDAI Bill), if someone finds that her identity information is wrong, she is supposed to request the Authority to correct it, upon which the Authority may, if it is satisfied, make such alteration as may be required. There is a legal obligation to alert the Authority, but no right to correction.

The Aadhaar juggernaut is rolling on regardless (and without any legal safeguards in place), fuelled by mesmerising claims about the social applications of UID. A prime example is UID's invasion of the NREGA. NREGA workers are barely recovering from the chaotic rush to payments of wages through banks. Aadhaar is likely to be the next ordeal. The local administration is going to be hijacked by enrolment drives. NREGA works or payments will come to a standstill where workers are waiting for their Aadhaar number. Others will be the victims of unreliable technology, inadequate information technology facilities, or data errors. And for what? Gradual, people-friendly introduction of innovative technologies would serve the NREGA better than the UID tamasha.

The real game plan, for social policy, seems to be a massive transition to

conditional cash transfers (CCTs). There is more than a hint of this revolutionary plan in Nandan Nilekani's book, Imagining India. Since then, CCTs have become the rage in policy circles. A recent Planning Commission document argues that successful CCTs require a biometric identification system, now made possible by the initiation of a Unique Identification System (UID) for the entire population The same document recommends a string of mega CCTs, including cash transfers to replace the Public Distribution System.

If the backroom boys have their way, India's public services as we know them will soon be history, and every citizen will just have a Smart Card food stamps, health insurance, school vouchers, conditional maternity entitlements and all that rolled into one. This approach may or may not work (that is incidental), but business at least will prosper. As the Wall Street Journal says about the Rashtriya Swasthya Bhima Yojana (which is a pioneering CCT project, for health insurance), the plan presents a way for insurance companies to market themselves and develop brand awareness.

The danger

The biggest danger of UID, however, lies in a restriction of civil liberties. As one observer aptly put it, Aadhaar is creating the infrastructure of authoritarianism an unprecedented degree of state surveillance (and potential control) of citizens. This infrastructure may or may not be used for sinister designs. But can we take a chance, in a country where state agencies have such an awful record of arbitrariness, brutality and impunity?

In fact, I suspect that the drive towards permanent state surveillance of all residents has already begun. UIDAI is no Big Brother, but could others be on the job? Take for instance Captain Raghu Raman (of the Mahindra Special Services Group), who is quietly building NATGRID on behalf of the Home Ministry. His columns in the business media make for chilling reading. Captain Raman believes that growing inequality is a powder keg waiting for a spark, and advocates corporate takeover of internal security (including a private territorial army), to enable the commercial czars to protect their empires. The Maoists sound like choir boys in comparison.

There are equally troubling questions about the NIDAI Bill, starting with why it was drafted by UIDAI itself. Not surprisingly, the draft Bill gives enormous powers to UIDAI's successor, NIDAI and with minimal safeguards. To illustrate, the Bill empowers NIDAI to decide the biometric and demographic information required for an Aadhaar number (Section 23); specify the usage and applicability of the Aadhaar number for delivery of various benefits and services (Section 23); authorise whoever it wishes to maintain the Central Identities Data Repository (Section 7) or even to exercise any of its own powers and functions (Section 51); and dictate all the relevant regulations (Section 54).

Ordinary citizens, for their part, are powerless: they have no right to a UID number except on NIDAI's terms, no right to correction of inaccurate data, and last but not least no specific means to redress grievances. In fact, believe it or not, the Bill states (in Section 46) that no court shall take cognisance of any offence punishable under this Act except based on a complaint authorised by NIDAI.

So, is UID a facility or a calamity? It depends for whom. For the intelligence agencies, bank managers, the corporate sector, and NIDAI, it will be a facility and a blessing. For ordinary citizens, especially the poor and marginalised, it could well be a calamity.

( The author is Visiting Professor at the Department of Economics, University of Allahabad and Member of the National Advisory Council.) 3.NATO and South Asian security

M. K. BHADRAKUMAR SHARE COMMENT PRINT T+

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen sign a declaration on enduring partnership, as UN General Secretary Ban ki-Moon, centre, looks on at the Nato summit in Lisbon on Nov. 20 2010. Photo: AP From a seemingly reluctant arrival in Afghanistan seven years ago, NATO is

deepening its presence and recasting its role and activities on a long-term basis.

The summit meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation in Lisbon constituted a significant event for South Asia. The alliance is transforming itself into playing a global political-military role. We are firmly committed to preserving its [NATO's] effectiveness as the globe's most successful politicalmilitary alliance. Its core task will be to defend Europe and ensure the collective security of its 28 members, while the Strategic Concept adopted at Lisbon envisages NATO's prerogative to mount expeditionary operations globally.

The document is explicit: Where conflict prevention proves unsuccessful, NATO will be prepared and capable to manage ongoing hostilities. NATO has unique conflict-management capacities, including the unparalleled capability to deploy and sustain robust military forces in the field. The alliance pledged to strengthen and modernise its conventional forces, and develop the full range of military capabilities. It will remain a nuclear alliance while developing a missile defence capability. The Strategic Concept reaffirmed that NATO would forge partnerships globally and reconfirmed the commitment to expand membership to democratic states that meet the alliance's criteria.

As an emerging regional power, India needs to take note of NATO's transformation. Indian discourses blithely assumed that NATO would have no appetite for far-flung operations anymore and was desperately looking for an exit strategy in Afghanistan. But on the contrary, the NATO psyche comes out unscathed. Will NATO be prepared to subject itself to the collective will of the international community as represented in the United Nations or will Article 5 of its Charter be the overriding principle? India hopes to become a permanent member of the Security Council in a not-too-distant future. Historically speaking, India's worldview opposed military blocs and alliances and placed primacy on the U.N. Charter and international law. Again, the world order needs to be factored in NATO assertively proclaims its transatlantic moorings on a global plane while Europe's (western world) dominance in international politics is on the wane and the locus of power is rapidly shifting to Asia.

But what is of great import for South Asian security is that from a seemingly reluctant arrival in Afghanistan seven years ago in an out-of-area operation as part of the U.N.-mandated ISAF (International Security Assistance Force), with a limited mandate, NATO is suo motu stepping out of ISAF, deepening its presence and recasting its role and activities on a long-term basis. South Asian security will never be the same again. This has grave implications for Indian strategies as an emerging power in the Indian Ocean region.

At the Lisbon summit, NATO and Afghanistan signed a Declaration, the thrust of which is on affirming their long-term partnership and building a robust, enduring partnership which complements the ISAF security mission and continues beyond it. It recognises Afghanistan as an important NATO partner contributing to regional security and, in turn, expects that country to provide the alliance with necessary assistance to carry out its partnership activities while recognising the importance and relevance of broader regionally-owned cooperation, coordination and confidence-building between Afghan and its regional partners, as exemplified in the Istanbul Statement.

In short, NATO and Afghanistan will strengthen their consultation on issues of strategic concern and, to this end, develop effective measures of cooperation which would include mechanisms for political and military dialogue a continuing NATO liaison in Afghanistan with a common understanding that NATO has no ambition to establish a permanent military presence in Afghanistan or use its presence in Afghanistan against other nations (emphasis added). NATO and Afghanistan will initiate discussion on a Status of Forces Agreement within the next three years. The Declaration also provides for the inclusion of non-NATO nations in the cooperation framework.

The Lisbon summit confirmed that the NATO military presence in Afghanistan will continue even beyond 2014, the timeline suggested by President Hamid Karzai for Kabul to be completely in charge of the security of the country. United States President Barack Obama summed up: Our goal is that the Afghans have taken the lead in 2014 and in the same way that we have transitioned in Iraq, we will have successfully transitioned so that we are still providing a training and support function. Even after 2014, NATO will maintain its counterterrorism capability in Afghanistan until we have the confidence that the al-Qaeda is no longer operative and is no longer a threat. NATO may even undertake combat operations beyond 2014 if and when need arises. As Mr. Obama put it, by 2014 the NATO footprint in

Afghanistan will have been significantly reduced. But beyond that, it's hard to anticipate exactly what is going to be necessary I'll make that determination when I get there. Clearly, the U.S. will be in the driving seat in the Hindu Kush for the long-term. The billions of dollars the U.S. has been pumping in for upgrading Soviet-era military bases in Afghanistan and constructing new military bases now fall into perspective.

It almost seems that New Delhi has been quietly preparing for this moment, backtracking unobtrusively from its traditional stance of seeking a neutral Afghanistan. Of course, the bottom line for the government is that the foreign policy should be optimally harmonised with U.S. regional strategies. But then, the geopolitics of the Afghan war cannot be equated with New Delhi's longing for permanent membership of the Security Council or viewed merely through the prism of U.S.-India strategic partnership. Nor can India as a responsible regional power fundamentally regard the NATO military presence in zero-sum terms or in terms of U.S.-China rivalries. On balance, New Delhi's motivation seems to be tactical a lingering hope that an open-ended NATO presence may sooner or later prompt the Obama administration to confront the Pakistani military on its policy of using Taliban militants to gain strategic depth and of conceiving terrorism as an instrument of state policy. However, this would be a short-sighted approach for two reasons: one, it wrongly assumes that the American and Pakistani objectives in Afghanistan are irreconcilable and, two, it overlooks that a great power invariably distinguishes between tactic and strategy.

The following elements reveal how, despite the prickly nature of their partnership, the U.S. and Pakistan are like Siamese twins: Both seek a peaceful Afghanistan but have divergent approaches to how to achieve it; both agree that durable peace is not possible without legitimising traditional Pashtun aspirations; the U.S. knows that Pakistani military leadership wields influence over the insurgents; it accepts that Pakistan's cooperation is vital not only for reaching a settlement but also ensuring that peace will be durable so that Afghanistan stabilises; Pakistan remains hesitant to give up its strategic assets lest Washington overlook its strategic needs; NATO operations will run into serious difficulty without the supply routes via NWFP and Baluchistan but then Pakistan receives billions of dollars in aid annually and it cannot afford to antagonise the U.S. either; the Pakistani military is averse to undertaking operations in North Waziristan but at the same time it tacitly provides basing facilities (and probably intelligence) for the U.S. drone operations in the tribal areas, besides permitting hundreds or thousands of American intelligence operatives to function all over the country; all in all, the

U.S. has limits to its capacity to pressure Pakistan, which seamlessly leverages its all-weather friendship with China.

Quite clearly, Pakistan and the U.S. are under a strong compulsion to reconcile their divergent approaches and work toward an Afghan settlement. The main sticking point is the strategy currently pursued by U.S. commander David Petraeus, who hopes to degrade the insurgents so that the Americans can eventually talk with the Taliban leadership from a position of strength. Indian pundits shouldn't exaggerate the gravity of this discord.

Overarching these considerations comes the U.S. strategy visualising NATO as the provider of security to the Silk Road that transports the multi-trillion dollar mineral wealth in Central Asia to the world market via the port of Gwadar. The Afghan-Pakistan trade and transit agreement concluded last month was a historic milestone and was possible only because of Washington's sense of urgency. Without doubt, Pakistan is assured of a key role in the U.S. regional strategy. This will keep foreign money flowing into Pakistan's economy and the Pakistani military will willingly accelerate the partnership programmes with NATO, and even upgrade them.

India's ability to tap into the Silk Road depends on the settlement of differences with Pakistan which would, hopefully, encourage the generals in Rawalpindi to jettison their India-centric mindset. Being NATO membercountries alone didn't really help Turkey and Greece through four decades and ultimately it was the sustained bilateral initiative by Ankara, keeping in view the imperative of accession talks with the European Union, that improved the climate of relations with Athens. 4.Can India garner the demographic dividend?

PHILIP G. ALTBACH & N. JAYARAM SHARE PRINT T+ Much has been said recently about India's demographic dividend: that its working-age (15-59 years) population, as of now, largely consists of youth (15-34 years), and as a result its economy has the potential to grow more quickly than that of many other countries, including China. China, because of its one-child policy over the past several decades will soon begin ageing

and, as a result, say the demographers, will become less competitive. But can India hope to garner its demographic gift?

Demographic realities

According to the Census of India, while the proportion of population in the under 14 age group declined from 41 per cent in 1961 to 35.3 per cent in 2001 (that is, by 5.7 percentage points), the proportion of population in the age group 15-59 increased from 53.3 per cent to 56.9 per cent (that is, by 3.6 percentage points) during the same period. The proportion of those above 60 years of age also increased from 5.6 per cent to 7.4 per cent (that is, by 1.8 percentage points). In terms of absolute numbers, the increase in the 15-34 age-group population is even more dramatic: from 174.26 million (31.79 per cent) in 1970 to 354.15 million (34.43 per cent) in 2000. The youth segment of the population is projected to peak at 484.86 million in 2030.

This demographic fact has important implications for the labour market. According to official data, India's labour force, which was 472 million in 2006, is expected to be around 526 million in 2011 and 653 million in 2031. It is noteworthy that the growth rate of labour force will continue to be higher than that of the population until 2021. According to the Indian Labour Report, 300 million youth would enter the labour force by 2025, and 25 per cent of the world's workers in the next three years would be Indians.

The United Nations Population Division projections show that, while in absolute numbers the youth segment (15-34 years) of the Indian population tapers off after 2030, as a proportion to the total population it tapers off from 2010 itself. Although this tapering off is marginal (from 35.4 per cent in 2010 to 34.5 per cent in 2020, to 32.4 per cent in 2030) in the next three decades, it will be swift to follow (to 29.7 per cent in 2040, to 26.6 per cent in 2050). Even so, the youth segment of the population will be a massive 441.1 million in 2050.

Since a majority of the youth knock on the doors of the labour market right by the age of 15, the youth segment of the population will also have to be considered in relation to the larger working-age (15-59 years) population. The United Nations Population Division's analysis and projections offer valuable

insights on this development. Although the percentage of the 15-34 age group reaches its peak (35.4 per cent) in 2010 and tapers off from then onwards, the percentage of the 15-59 age group reaches its peak (64.6 per cnet) only in 2035, and tapers off gradually over the next 15 years to 61.6 per cent in 2050 (still marginally higher than what it was in 2005, that is, 59.5 per cent).

Educational deficits

Thus the demographic predictions are loud and clear: that the promise of demographic dividend will not last long, in any case beyond 2050. Can India take advantage of this demographic window in the next couple of decades and garner its benefits? One cannot be too optimistic about this trend considering its poor education system from bottom to top. India's literacy rate, after 60 years of independence, is around 63 per cent China's is 93 per cent. The largest part of India's schools is of poor quality. Teachers are inadequately prepared, weakly motivated, poorly paid, and frequently absent.

The situation in higher education is even more problematic for India's participation in the global knowledge economy. The overall quality of the higher education system is well below global standards and it has shown no significant sign of improving. High-tech employers complain that a large majority of engineering and other graduates are inadequately trained and must be re-educated, at considerable expense, by their employers or not hired at all. The large high-tech firms such as IBM, Infosys and Wipro have set up their own in-house academies to prepare employees for productive work.

The highly regarded Indian Institutes of Technology and a small number of other Indian world-class institutions produce only a small number of graduates each year. Many of these graduates leave the country for employment or further education immediately after graduation.

The government's plans for expanding and upgrading higher education are inadequate both in size and scope. They are also impractical. For example, the IITs are already short of staff and cannot find the quality of professors

that they need. The protective discrimination policy in vogue that reserves close to half of teaching positions for members of indigenous tribes, disadvantaged castes, and other groups makes it even less likely that topquality faculty can be found. Some of the new IITs, now in the planning stage, are located far from metropolitan areas, and convincing well-qualified faculty to relocate there will be difficult if not impossible.

On the quantitative side too, there are problems. India now educates only 10 per cent of the age group in higher education. Dropout rates among that 10 per cent are high. A growing number now attends often low-quality colleges and other institutions that are not funded by the government some of which are little more than teaching shops and degree mills. Current plans to raise the participation rate to 15 per cent by 2015 still well under what other emerging economies are now educating seem inadequate to achieve 15 per cent participation.

India has a serious infrastructure problem in education as it does with roads, ports, public transportation, electricity, and so on. Long-term inadequate spending and poor planning will catch up with India's booming economy at some point. In terms of human resource, it is not enough to have lots of young people these young people need to be properly educated to fully contribute to the new economy. After all, as the Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist, Carl Gustav Jung (18751961), expresses: The wine of youth does not always clear with advancing years; sometimes it grows turbid.

(Philip G. Altbach is Monan professor of higher education and director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College, USA. N. Jayaram is professor, Centre for Research Methodology, Tata Institute of Social Science, Mumbai.)

The promise of demographic dividend will not last long. Can India take advantage of this demographic window in the next couple of decades and benefit from it?