Archives: Publication

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.

Law will remain powerless, unless women speak up.

The Constitution guarantees equality, dignity, and protection from violence, and the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (2005) provides a legal framework. Yet, when women do not name their suffering, these protections lose their power. Until women can speak up fearlessly — in homes, workplaces, and streets — laws and policies will remain hollow words wrapped in moral pride.

In countless Indian homes, silence speaks louder than words. It is not the quiet of peace, but the silence that follows hurt — the silence of women who have been taught that obedience is virtue, that endurance is strength, and that a husband’s anger is an expression of care. The National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) exposes the depth of this belief. Nearly half of Indian women (45 per cent) and men (44 per cent) believe a husband is justified in beating his wife under certain circumstances — if she argues, neglects duties, or disobeys elders.

These are not just statistics; they are reflections of how culture shapes conscience. When violence becomes commonplace, law becomes ornamental. Given how deeply violence is normalised in Indian homes, many women may not even identify what they experience as violence. NFHS, for all its rigour, measures what women dare to disclose — not what they are conditioned to endure.

When culture outruns law

In my fieldwork across Assam during 2023-24, I met women who spoke of violence as routine, not as a violation. When asked about coercion or control, some smiled nervously, calling it “part of married life.” To name it as violence, they said, would be dangerous — both emotionally and socially. “He hits only when angry,” one woman told me, as if that were a kind of restraint.

Across the world, women remain quiet not because they accept abuse, but because they fear stigma, economic ruin, or ostracism. Silence be-comes a strategy for survival. The Constitution guarantees equality, dignity, and protection from violence, and the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (2005) provides a legal framework. But culture quietly cancels out constitutional rights. NFHS-5 data show that 32 percent of ever-married women aged 18-49 have experienced physical, sexual, or emotional spousal violence, yet only 14 per cent have ever sought help. Patriarchy, in its most enduring form, operates not through overt control but through habit — through jokes, rituals, and silence.

In India, women begin to speak only when others — especially celebrities — begin to speak. When a public figure names violence, thousands of ordinary women find a language for what they have long felt. Why must women wait for someone powerful to speak first? The deeper change must be one that allows every woman, whether in a city office ora rural courtyard, to say without hesitation, ‘this is not acceptable’.

Education and economic independence are essential, but they are not sufficient. Educated women can still be silent, and economically independent women can still be controlled. The true transformation must go beyond material empowerment to cultivate social courage — the courage to challenge norms that glorify female endurance and condemn resistance as rebellion.

This courage must be nurtured from the family outward. Homes must teach boys that respect is strength, not weakness. Schools must include empathy, consent, and equality as part of civic learning. The media must portray women who resist without ridiculing them, and and men who accord respect should not be mocked. Institutions must treat women’s testimonies not with suspicion but with solidarity. Above all, society must learn to listen when women speak — not to question their motives, not to doubt their pain, and not to dismiss their words as exaggeration. True freedom will flow not from the letter of the law but from thevoice of women who resist silence.

The writer is Fellow, National Council of Applied Economic Research(NCAER). Views are personal.

Such reform can make India’s infrastructure spending equitable apart from being efficient.

Summary

• Public infrastructure evaluations often overlook intangible benefits like improved health and social stability.
• Traditional metrics focus on direct outputs, missing the broader impacts on welfare and productivity.
• Integrating social indices and participatory metrics can lead to more informed policy decisions and equitable infrastructure investments.

Public infrastructure has long been judged by visible metrics — kilometres of canals dug or roads built and megawatts generated. Yet the most profound impacts of infrastructure often lie beneath the surface: The health of a child drinking clean water, a family choosing not to migrate to on finding local work, or the time a woman saves each day because irrigation or electricity reduces her burden of manual labour.

India’s development accounting still under-values these intangible or indirect benefits — outcomes that cannot be neatly tabulated but powerfully shape welfare, productivity and resilience.

In large public investments, evaluation frameworks typically stop at direct outputs: Hectares irrigated, households electrified, villages connected. Such metrics help track implementation but fail to capture the social and institutional multipliers that make infrastructure transformative.

For instance, an irrigation project does not merely increase crop yields. It stabilises farm incomes, improves nutritional diversity, reduces waterborne disease, encourages education (because children no longer fetch water) and even deepens women’s participation in self-help groups and local governance. When these linkages remain invisible in appraisal models, projects appear less rewarding than they truly are — skewing policy priorities and funding away from high-impact areas.

Cost of ignoring the intangible

Two systemic reasons explain why intangible benefits are omitted.
First, the conventional cost–benefit analysis (CBA) used in government planning relies on market-priced outputs. Anything without a clear market value — like reduced drudgery, environmental restoration or institutional trust — gets excluded. Second, data systems rarely collect the micro-evidence required to value such effects. Administrative records report physical progress, not behavioural change.

This narrow accounting has real fiscal consequences. It can make socially valuable projects appear economically inefficient, while projects with immediate but shallow pay-offs seem more attractive.

In irrigation, for example, excluding health and social gains can reduce the estimated economic internal rate of return by several percentage points — leading to under-investment in water infrastructure just when climate variability demands more.

Evidence from the field

Recent studies by National Council of Applied Economic Research demonstrate why the paradigm must shift. The ongoing evaluation of 57 major irrigation projects across 21 states shows that benefits radiate far beyond farm level benefits, in which the sample households in the project area reported lower incidence of diarrhoeal illness, higher school attendance of their children, greater women’s participation in community institutions, along with lower distress migration compared to non-project areas. When these outcomes were expressed through composite social indices and linked to household income effects, the true social return on irrigation investments rose dramatically. 

How can planners systematically capture the unmeasured? Three complementary approaches are emerging:

• Composite indices for social benefits: By combining indicators on health, education, gender, and environmental resilience, one can construct a Social Benefit Index alongside the conventional Economic Benefit Index. Normalising and weighting these components allow comparison across projects and regions.
• Monetisation through proxy valuation: Techniques such as avoided-cost valuation (such as cost of treating illness avoided due to cleaner water) or time-savings valuation (such as value of women’s labour saved) can translate intangible outcomes into monetary terms.
• Participatory and perceptual metrics: Integrating beneficiary perceptions through structured surveys and focus groups help quantify qualitative gains — like empowerment, trust, or reduced vulnerability — which traditional datasets slip.
• Together, these tools can make evaluation frameworks more holistic without sacrificing rigour.

Call for new evaluation architecture

The shift toward measuring intangible benefits is not just a technical refinement; it is a governance reform. When policymakers recognise social and environmental externalities, funding priorities change.

Projects that deliver community well-being, gender equity or ecological balance gain legitimacy even if their immediate financial yield is modest. Moreover, quantifying intangibles builds public accountability — taxpayers see not only what was built but also what changed in people’s lives.

The global discourse is moving this way. The World Bank’s “Beyond the Gap” framework and the OECD’s well-being indicators both urge countries to look beyond GDP or asset creation. India, with its rich tradition of social planning and Panchayati Raj, is well-placed to lead this evolution by embedding social accounting in its infrastructure evaluations.

To institutionalise this change, three steps are crucial:

• Integrate intangible metrics in detailed project reports (DPR) and appraisals. Every DPR should include a template for assessing non-market benefits, backed by guidelines from NITI Aayog and the Union Ministry of Finance.
• Create a national repository of impact evaluations. Collating primary data on social, health and environmental outcomes across projects will allow cross-sectoral learning.
• Invest in statistical and capacity-building infrastructure. Enumerators, local governments, and research partners need training in participatory evaluation and data harmonisation methods.

If implemented, such reforms can revolutionise how India allocates trillions in infrastructure spending — making it not only efficient but also equitable.

Capturing intangible benefits is not an academic luxury; it is an ethical and developmental imperative. Only when our bridges, canals and roads are evaluated not just by where they lead, but by how far they carry people toward a better life, can we truly say that our infrastructure is taking India forward.

Saurabh Bandyopadhyay is a senior fellow, Laxmi Joshi a fellow and Kushagra Thakral a research associate at the National Council of Applied Economic Research.

Views expressed are the authors’ own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth.