Blitz India Business
None of India’s humancapital gaps is beyond repair. Six priorities would do most to turn a young population into a productive one — if pursued with money, urgency and honest measurement.
- Fund the promise: Move education decisively towards the NEP’s long-promised 6 per cent-of-GDP target and lift health outlay above 2 per cent. World-class outcomes cannot be bought on a developing-country budget.
- Win the first 1,000 days: Treat maternal and infant nutrition as a national mission, not a scheme. Stunting and anaemia inflict lifelong, largely irreversible losses on learning and earnings.
- Deliver NIPUN Bharat: Make universal foundational literacy and numeracy by Class 3 a hard, measured deadline rather than a funded aspiration, and track progress honestly through PARAKH.
- Fill the classrooms: Recruit against the roughly 10 lakh vacant teaching posts and end single-teacher schools. Teaching quality, not buildings, is the system’s binding constraint.
- Rebuild the skills bridge: Anchor vocational training in real apprenticeships and employer demand, so young Indians leave education employable, not merely certified.
- Bring women to work: Dismantle the barriers — safety, childcare, rigid hours — that keep half the workforce at home. Closing the gender gap could add up to a fifth to national output.