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India must integrate coastal ecosystems into its climate strategy. Its maritime geography is not merely a conduit for commerce; it is an ecological asset of strategic significance.

What if the solution to India’s net-zero ambition isn’t just on land but beneath the waves? The ‘blue economy’ is India’s overlooked trillion-dollar lever where environmental sustainability, economic growth, and strategic maritime power intersect. With a coastline stretching over 11,098.81 km and an Exclusive Economic Zone of 2.3 million sq km, India holds vast, untapped marine wealth. Yet, the blue economy continues to remain peripheral to economic planning, climate policy, and industrial strategy.

The Union budget 2024-25 marked a welcome departure with the launch of Blue Economy 2.0 aimed at building climate-resilient coastal livelihoods through aquaculture, mariculture, and sustainable marine tourism. However, one vital component within this ecosystem continues to receive inadequate attention: blue carbon. Representing the carbon sequestered by marine-vegetated ecosystems such as mangroves, tidal marshes, and seagrasses, blue carbon constitutes a high-impact, nature-based solution to climate change.

India’s mangrove cover, at 4,991.68 sq km, plays a pivotal role in carbon sequestration, biodiversity protection, and coastal buffering. Despite their capacity to store up to four times more carbon per hectare than terrestrial tropical forests, blue carbon ecosystems are neither fully integrated into India’s climate accounting under the Paris Agreement nor into its carbon market frameworks. Worse, these ecosystems are facing threats due to extreme pollution, rising sea levels, coastal erosion, and extreme weather events. An estimated 75-199 million tonnes of plastic waste now pollute the oceans, with over 33 billion pounds added annually, alongside chemical runoff and untreated sewage. This pollution severely degrades marine biodiversity and diminishes the ocean’s capacity to sequester carbon. Notably, the die-off of microscopic algae like phytoplankton, responsible for absorbing 30-40% of global CO₂ emissions, undermines one of the most effective natural carbon sinks.

Recent fiscal interventions signal intent. The Union budget 2025-26 earmarked Rs 25,000 crore for a Maritime Development Fund, targeting investments in shipbuilding, port electrification, logistics, and marine infrastructure. This includes Rs 6,100 crore to modernise public shipyards and Rs 2,850 crore to skill India’s youth in maritime technologies, laying the groundwork for a green maritime industrial base capable of producing low-emission vessels and sustainable port ecosystems. Concurrently, the fisheries sector has received a substantial boost. The Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana saw a 64% rise in allocation. These funds will scale up infrastructure for fish harbours, cold chains, and processing units, aiming to reduce post-harvest losses, raise export readiness, and transition towards carbon-neutral fisheries.

What remains missing is a direct fiscal and policy impetus for restoring and conserving blue carbon ecosystems. Hearteningly, Tamil Nadu has articulated a pathway for coastal prosperity, focusing on sustainable shipbuilding, seafood processing, eco-tourism, and mangrove restoration.

To unlock the full potential of blue carbon, India must integrate coastal ecosystems into its formal climate strategy. This includes recognising their carbon sequestration capacity in updated Nationally Determined Contributions, incorporating them into voluntary carbon markets and climate finance mechanisms, and prioritising their restoration. Dedicated funding for blue carbon conservation, improved scientific monitoring, and state-level incentives for coastal ecosystem management are essential.

India’s maritime geography is not merely a conduit for commerce; it is an ecological and economic asset of strategic significance.

Sanjib Pohit is a Professor and Sovini Mondal is a Research Associate at the National Council of Applied Economic Research. Views are personal.

The current care-giving model is overwhelmingly informal and family-based, with little to no state or institutional support.

In the quiet routines of everyday Indian households, an invisible yet indispensable workforce is at play, one that fuels the nation’s social fabric through everyday acts of care. Whether it is a grandmother helping with child-care, a father tending to an ageing parent, a mother attending to a toddler or the elderly, the care economy in India is thriving, albeit unrecognised and unremunerated. Data from the NSSO’s Time Use Survey-2024 reveals an economy hidden in plain sight, an immense engine of social welfare.

On average, an individual dedicates an average of over two hours (120.7 minutes) daily of caring activities for children and the bulk of this is directed towards routine activities such as bathing, minding the children, feeding them, and helping with school-work. An average of 1 hour 40 minutes is dedicated for caring adults which includes assisting the elderly with daily life, providing emotional support, passive care or assisting adults with medical care which can include feeding, cleaning and other physical care. 

Urban vs rural divide

Urban dwellers spent marginally more total time on care-giving work for both children and adults compared to their rural counterparts. On average, urban residents spent 122.3 minutes on child care and 101.0 minutes on adult care, while rural residents spent 120.0 minutes and 99.0 minutes, respectively. A more significant difference emerges when looking at the type of care. Rural residents spent significantly more time on medical related care for both children and adults.

This is likely driven by limited and inadequate access to sufficient healthcare facilities and other critical professional services, forcing families to personally manage such medical care needs. Conversely, rural households, which are more likely to be extended families, can better share non-medical related care duties. In contrast, urban families are typically nuclear, meaning fewer members are available to divide responsibilities, which often increases the overall care burden per person despite having greater access to professional care services.

The aged as care providers

Contrary to common perceptions that the elderly are primarily care recipients, data reveals that senior citizens in India are active contributors to care activities. Those aged over 65 spent an average of 108.3 minutes per day on caring for children, and 117.6 minutes on adult care which is more than that by many younger age groups, say those in the age group of 36-45 or the 56-65 age groups. Even those in the age groups of 56-65 years spent more time on care work than those in the lower age groups.

This suggests that a substantial portion of family care is an intergenerational and intra-generational duty, with older persons often caring for their elderly spouses, siblings, or even great-grandchildren. This is a quiet crisis as those who need care often end up as care-givers, putting immense physical and emotional strain on a vulnerable demographic. The increasing dependence on older family members has also risen due to shifting family structures and the rise of nuclear households. Their contribution highlights the dual vulnerability of the elderly. As both caregivers and potential care-receivers, the elderly pose critical questions.

A shifting balance

In a revealing comparison of care-giving patterns across genders, data shows marked differences in the time men and women spend on caregiving activities. While both men and women participate actively in care work, the divide in certain areas reflects traditional gender roles that continue to shape responsibilities within households.

On average, women spend 141 minutes daily on child care, nearly double the 80.4 minutes reported by men. This gap is most evident among younger women (15-35 years), who handle much of the non-medical child care like feeding and playing. However, men spend more time on medical care for children (88.8 minutes against 62 for women), suggesting a more focused involvement in occasional health-related tasks.

In contrast, men spend more time caring for adults at an average of 105.3 minutes daily compared to women at 96.9 minutes. This is especially true for non-medical adult care, where men report higher involvement across most age groups, particularly those who are in the higher age groups.

Thus, data suggest the evolution of a unique care-giving roles by each of the genders. While the core responsibility for daily, non-medical childcare remains largely with women, data suggest that care-giving roles are becoming increasingly complex. Men are taking on equal or greater responsibility in critical areas like adult care and medical child care, challenging the monolithic view of gender roles in the home.

A sector hiding in plain sight

With India’s demographic transition of a rising life expectancy and growing nuclear families, the demand for structured care-giving services is set to surge. This presents both a challenge and an opportunity. The current care-giving model is overwhelmingly informal and family-based, with little to no state or institutional support. Hence, there is immense scope to formalise care-giving through professional services, trained home helpers and community support programmes. Transitioning even a fraction of these care activities into paid services could unlock umpteen opportunities for the care economy. It would create employment, especially for women while ensuring that care is delivered with dignity, professionalism, and consistency.

The future prospects

Care-giving activities is the invisible engine of Indian households, overwhelmingly provided by women and largely absent from economic calculations. Recognising, redistributing, and reducing this massive burden through better policy, investment, and public awareness is not just a matter of fairness, it is essential for India’s socio-economic progress. As we stand on the cusp of demographic, social, and economic shifts, it is time that we begin to value the time spent on care and the people who provide it. The sheer volume of care-giving hours, a slow but rising ageing population, and the decline of the joint family model create a powerful economic imperative for a formal care-giving sector. India’s elderly population is projected to soar, meaning the current family-based care system is simply unsustainable.

As more educated women enter the paid workforce and the “sandwich generation” (caring for both children and elderly parents) faces severe time-poverty, the willingness to pay for professional services right from nannies and daycares to specialised elder and palliative care will gradually rise.

By taking decisive actions like investing in training, guaranteeing fair wages, and establishing strong regulatory oversight, India can successfully formalise its care economy. This move will achieve a dual purpose, it will honour and value the historic contribution by such caregivers, and it will ensure a rapidly ageing India can meet its care needs with dignity, professionalism, and an enormous new wave of economic opportunity.

Baruah is Fellow at National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), New Delhi, and Wankhar is a retired Government of India officer. Views are personal.

Once defined by its growing population, India now faces a quieter but deeper demographic shift. According to the Sample Registration System (SRS) 2023, the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of the country has reached 1.9 children per woman, below the replacement rate of 2.1. In urban India, the TFR stands at 1.5, while rural India is at the threshold of 2.1.

A TFR below the replacement level precursors a shrinking population, an ageing society and potential labour shortages. By 2050, one in five Indians will be 60 or older, increasing pressure on public finances and health care systems. With fewer workers contributing to taxes while more retirees rely on pensions and welfare, the government could face growing fiscal deficit, a challenge already apparent in ageing economies like Japan. India’s Gross Reproduction Rate has now fallen below one nationally, signaling each successive generation of women entering childbearing age will keep shrinking, making course correction more difficult.

However, India is not in the red zone just yet. Demographic changes occur with a lag due to population momentum. If a country slows down births, a youthful age structure can sustain population growth for decades, just as an older population can continue to shrink long after fertility rates recover. Currently, this lag is in our favour. According to the World Bank 2024 report, India has 68.2% of its population aged 15 to 64 years. Thus, even if families are having fewer children today, population growth will sustain for decades until the decline sets in. The UN World Population Prospects (UN WPP) 2024 projects India’s young working-age population will peak at 69.2% in the mid-2030s and then start to decline. This would be a turning point, as the dependency ratio of children and older people on the working population would decline from 66.6% in 2000 to 44.5% in the mid-2030s and then rise again. This is a window of demographic opportunity, or as NITI Aayog calls it, India’s demographic “sweet spot.” This period, spanning roughly from 2025 to 2035, will see the working-age population peak, with median age rising from 28.8 to 38.3 years between 2025 to 2050 (UN WPP, 2024). It represents the country’s most favourable phase for accelerating productivity and income growth before aging pressures intensify.

Lessons from East Asia provide a cautionary insight. According to UN estimates, China’s working-age share peaked around 2010 at 72.9% and is expected to decline steadily through 2040. Japan reached its peak much earlier in 1992 at about 70%. Since then its old-age dependency ratio has doubled from 25.6% in 2000 to over 50.7 % in 2024, while its public debt exceeds 250% of GDP, driven largely by pension and health care spending (World Bank, 2024). Similarly, South Korea peaked around 2015 at 73.3% and is currently grappling with a TFR of 0.75. India now has their opportunity to convert the incoming peak into an economic dividend.

Expectedly, much depends on how effectively India addresses its employment, skills, and participation gaps. Much of the labour market still suffers from spatial mismatch, skilling up and poor training quality. Furthermore, a substantial number of people are employed in low-productivity jobs, such as construction (12% of total workforce). In contrast, the services sector has the highest contribution to growth (54.4% GVA share), while its employment has stagnated from 31.1% in 2017-18 to 29.7% in 2023-24). India’s young workforce is shifting, but too slowly, from farms to factories, or informal to formal jobs. Deep gender imbalances continue to persist with female labour force participation at 41.7% and only 28% in urban areas. The World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law (2024) report estimates that eliminating such disparities could raise global GDP by over 20%. Addressing this divide is not only a matter of equity but also essential for sustaining India’s economic growth as the population ages.

Thus, while baseline scenarios tempt one to show India’s demographic transition as a one-way slide into population aging, peer history proffers solutions. European nations have shown policy change in children and eldercare can increase output per worker, while reversing low fertility rates. Household data across different income and age groups can also show fertility rates to recover naturally within the next few generations akin to a business cycle with the advent of AI and the global workforce reaching the downward sloping part of the labour supply curve. The latter especially hopes the tough trade-off between income and replacement-level fertility (a U-shaped curve) eventually auto-corrects the microeconomic family decisions, restoring the trend. It remains to be seen what path India carves out for itself. This demographic story, after all, is not a crisis to fear but a transition to manage. With foresight and inclusive planning, it can still be one of adaptation and growth.

This article is authored by Kritika Soni, research associate and Jayanta Talukder, associate fellow, National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi. Views are personal.

India has made significant progress in its Biofuel Mission over the last 10 years. The commitment to biofuel production, promotion and its usage as part of a global alliance was reinstated in India’s launch of the Global Biofuel Alliance at the G20 Summit of 2023. On the Bioethanol front, the country has achieved the target of 20 per cent blending much before the target date. The country has also realised and launched revised biofuel policies focusing on first — second generation biofuels and has also given clear policy directions on the need for multiple biofuel feedstock promotion to reach the Biofuel Target of the country to align with the net zero vision of India.

However, in this entire discourse of biofuel promotion and pathways for India, biodiesel has taken a backseat. Even though the country started its ambitious Biodiesel Mission way back in 2003, the Biodiesel Sector has almost stayed like a sub-altern in all Biofuel Discussions.

The history of the Biodiesel Sector in India, however, presents a different picture. It shows that biodiesel promotion in India was divided into two phases: Phase 1) — Research and Demonstration  with a focused plantation in wastelands and the Phase 2 as the implementation phase for large-scale uptake.

This was decided to be achieved between 2003- 07 as the Phase 1 and 2007 — 2012 as the Phase 2. A 20 per cent biodiesel blending target was decided to be achieved by the end of Phase 2 in 2012. The mission started systematically, involving several universities, research institutions to work on plant varieties, feedstock quality and also engaged Oil Marketing Companies to ensure the procurement of biodiesel

at an assured price. By 2007, almost 7,00,000 ha of wasteland was brought under Jatropha cultivation, which was however, less to meet the 20 Per cent biodiesel blending target.

However, the biodiesel mission could not scale up due to a lack of yield certainty, quality of feedstocks across locations and a shortage of feedstocks and their transmission across the value chain of the biodiesel feedstock value chain. The procurement of biodiesel also did not happen in spite of a mandated policy push and announced biodiesel procurement prices. By  August 2008, the mission was abandoned. Subsequently, a new policy was brought in to create biodiesel production from all sorts of non-edible feedstocks with multiple varying agro-climatic conditions.

In India, 400 varieties of oilseed-bearing plants have been identified with oil generation capacity. However, Jatropha was chosen as it needed less irrigation, was non interfering with the agricultural harvests, needed less gestation period for full yield maximisation by 6 years and is pest-resistant and not grased by cattle. However, despite of all these advantages, biodiesel gradually went to the back seat and almost became like a sub-altern in the space of multiple protagonists within the biofuel space and vision of India.

Some of the key issues owing to which it happened are related to a non-standardisation of yield quality and level across multiple agroclimatic conditions. Often, the gestation period, yield quality were also not standardised across India and in various agro-climatic conditions of states of India.

One of the limitations also pertained to the proper documentation of the record of wastelands. Some of these wastelands are being owned by the forestry department, marginal farmers, landless labourers and rural rich farmers. The PESA Act allows the tribal people to plant jatropha in the marginal lands and forest departments can also lease their degraded lands to private entrepreneurs. Even though, ideally it seemed to be easy, this highly heterogeneous land ownership structure has not facilitated the cause of setting up a smooth biodiesel value chain.

The risk-sharing mechanism between the government, communities, farmers and enterprises needed to be worked out. In most cases, the risk sharing mechanism of access to land, feedstock production chain and possible uncertainties of the production value chain has not been defined or executed properly in various state, agro climatic contexts of States of India. Oil Marketing companies were also often not ready to procure at the declared price due to the uncertainty in the value chain of the biodiesel production.

The country needed proper institutional structures to create standardised high-quality plant varieties, information dissemination to farmers and constant feedback incorporation of the plant and seed growers into the mission implementation. In the last two decades, the hope has been given by science and technology development for creating new plant varieties with higher yields across various agro-climatic zones.

With the strong commitment of central and state Governments, efficient intermediate agencies, institutions and experiments of high-yielding plant varieties for varied agro-climatic conditions need to be built up.

A knowledge repository of the yield of plant varieties, cultivation practices, with context and location-specific minimum support prices has to be set up. All of these have to be transparently maintained, disseminated across all the stakeholders of the value chain and to the final users of the biodiesel.

In the last 22 years, since 2003, when the Mission was launched in two phases, Biodiesel has seen the rise as a protagonist and then it has also seen a phase where it has gone to be the sub-altern. However, with the learning accumulated in the last 22 years and with the reduction of the new blending targets, the role of the state, enterprises and multiple agents within the biodiesel sector value chain has become clear. It has become clearer that if implemented properly with adequate, transparent regulations of the feedstock and biodiesel production value chain and its pricing, the sector can grow by attracting private players. However, the necessary conditions behind this deal with the formation of efficient institutions and regulatory structures and processes, which can facilitate the mobilisation of land, development of suitable plant varieties, creation of incentives for the stakeholders under different value chain organisations.

If done properly, as per a 2021 study, biodiesel sector with a movement towards 20 per cent blending can lead to the potential of 14.45 million sustainable entrepreneurship creation with a primary focus on micro and small entrepreneurs. It can also create jobs for 331.17 days for unskilled and semi-skilled people. This can only happen if the biodiesel production value chains are minimised, with minimum support prices of seeds and yield stabilisation backed by the centre and the states.

Further, an ADB working paper using Computable General Equilibrium Model shows that an expansion of biodiesel sector without hinging on land, water and food security can have a beneficial impact on household welfare, other sectors of the economy, carbon emissions, rural development, and employment generation. Biodiesel sector of India can generate 0.70 per cent-

1.0 per cent one-time incremental growth with significant employment and income generation in rural areas.

Hence, it can provide an opportunity towards addressing energy security, inclusive, sustainable growth towards Viksit Bharat 2047 within India. It can only happen if the constraints are minimised. Minimisation of such a constraint can improve the economic conditions of rural wage earners. However, the catch is that such an outcome can only be achieved with proper land allocation, land rights, tenures, high yielding seed varieties in different agroeconomic conditions and practices.

This has to be backed up by real time technology driven information dissemination, with reduction of institutional failures and biodiesel market development. A sound public policy of India towards Bioeconomic Industrialisation to make Viksit Bharat cannot ignore “The Sub Altern” — “Biodiesel” Sector anymore to become a protagonist of India’s Biofuel Story in the long term!

Anandajit Goswami is Research Lead, Senior Research Fellow, Ashoka Centre For People Centric Energy Transition, Professor, Advisor, MRIIRS and Sanjib Pohit is Professor, National Council of Applied Economic Research. Views are personal.