India to look for ways to convert adolescents' potential into demographic dividend

NEW DELHI: Maximising the potential of adolescents which is almost 21 per cent of the country's total population and translating them into a demographic dividend by putting into place more strengthened policies are issues that India will look at during a two-day international conference here next week.

India is hosting the 11th International Inter-Ministerial Conference on Population and Development here on November 25 and 26, which will be attended by representatives of 26 developing countries having more than 58 per cent of the world's population. The conference will be chaired by Union Health Minister J P Nadda.

"Ensuring a healthy life to the 250 million adolescents so that they can contribute to development of India and also streamlining and expanding the scope of the family planning programes are some of the major areas that we be looking at in the conference," said a senior Health Ministry official.

Sexual and reproductive health, nutrition, injuries and violence (including gender-based violence), non-communicable diseases, mental health and substance abuse among adolescents are the areas where the country still needs to work to reap the benefits of this population sector.

"Also family planning in India is still not up to the mark and India is still struggling to achieve the much-awaited goal of reaching the total fertility rate (TFR) of 2.1 per cent.

"Currently, India's TFR is 2.4 per cent, and Bihar (3.5), Uttar Pradesh (3.3), Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan (2.9) are the states having high TFR and contribute almost two third of the total maternal morbidity," the official said.

"As many as 47,000 mothers die in India every year due to lack of family planning like early marriage, early pregnancy and lack of gap between pregnancies," he said.

Over 33 per cent of the disease burden and nearly 60 per cent of premature deaths among adults in India are associated with conditions that began or occurred during adolescence.

These include tobacco and alcohol use, gender violence and sexual abuse and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) which, alone, accounts for 53 per cent of all deaths in India, according to the World Health Organization's NCD country profiles for 2011.

The conference, which will explore "South-South Cooperation in the field of Reproductive Health, Population, and Development", will provide a platform to share evidence with senior level policy makers from 26 developing countries and other stakeholders on key strategic and urgent investments in youth and second demographic dividends.

It will provide evidence and share the inter-linkage between population dynamics and demographic divided, highlight the challenges in achieving the demographic dividend, particularly in a developing country.

It will also call attention to the urgent need for investments in health, education, gender equity, economic policies that are needed to open and take advantage of the window of opportunity of accelerated economic growth that may result from a decline in a country's mortality and fertility and subsequent age structure of the population.