While it’s tough to prove a cause-and-effect relationship between the ‘youth bulge’ and crimes against women, there’s important ethnographic research that vividly documents the relationship. Craig Jeffrey, a geographer at Oxford, has written an important book, Timepass, which tracks idle young men in Meerut and the social pathologies that come out of this idleness, including violence against women. Speaking to me about the Delhi gang rape sometime back, Jeffrey said, “Rapid social change in provincial India has created a vast army of educated and semi-educated ‘loafers’ among young men.” Jeffrey’s research shows the prevalence of such young men, with poor prospects of a career or marriage, hanging around college campuses and provincial towns, fuels anger and resentment that could sometimes spill over into harassment or violence against women.…

If this wasn’t bad enough, it’s not just violence against women that’s likely to worsen as the demographic transition proceeds. Due to basic failures in public education, as well as the failure of successive governments to liberalise and reform labour laws, there’s a dearth of labour-intensive manufacturing activity in India that would be necessary to absorb the surplus labour force. Just imagine if the young men, the alleged perpetrators of the Delhi and Mumbai crimes, held down well-paying and productive jobs, were married and had kids; with the prospect of continued improvement in their lives, they would have stayed on the straight and narrow. Even if tempted, the opportunity cost of attempting a sexual assault would be so high, chances are they wouldn’t take the risk. A single, unemployed loafer has much less to lose and, therefore, is more likely to succumb to sexual frustration and engage in criminal behaviour.

Education and employment for India’s young is not only a necessity for getting India back on a high-growth trajectory; it might also be necessary to preserve social harmony and help reduce the scourge of violent crimes, including violence against women.

http://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/demographic-dividend-fast-becoming-a-curse-113083000056_1.html