‘Freelancers making reels’: Finfluencer sounds alarm about India’s untapped youth workforce

India is sitting on its most valuable resource, which is a huge young population. But according to Akshat Shrivastava, founder of Wisdom Hatch, failure to properly educate and mentor this demographic could spell disaster for the country’s economic ambitions.

In a sharp post on social media, Shrivastava wrote: “We don’t have oil, so we can’t get rich. We don’t have an authoritarian government, so we can’t get rich like China. Fact: Every country has a large youth population if you keep them unemployed.” “Educated people and turn them into exploitative filmmakers, we’ll never get rich.”

Shrivastava’s comments highlight the critical juncture that India is at in its economic journey. In light of the comparisons often made between India and China, the numbers tell a worrying story.

In 1980, India’s per capita GDP was almost double that of China. Today, China’s per capita GDP, which amounts to $25,015, is two and a half times higher than its counterpart in India ($10,123). Likewise, China’s exports, worth US$3.5 trillion, exceed India’s exports, worth US$0.78 trillion.

Although India has made progress, especially in the past decade, it lags significantly in leveraging its human capital. Shrivastava’s concerns reflect broader concerns about the misuse of resources.

“Consumption and economic growth depend on how we educate and mobilize this generation,” he implied, “and right now, we are not doing enough.”

Shrivastava’s concerns echo those expressed by Raghuram Rajan, a former Reserve Bank of India governor and professor at the University of Chicago, who has criticized India’s economic policy priorities. Recently, Rajan claimed that India’s focus on high-profile projects such as semiconductor manufacturing rather than critical investments in education is misguided. He pointed out that India spends more on supporting chip manufacturing than its annual budget for higher education.

“This is definitely not the way to become a developed country,” Rajan said.