Recently a friend made a guilty, late-night Swiggy food order. The order got marked as delivered but nothing arrived. Hungry and frustrated, she contacted Swiggy and got a refund.

But an hour later, a neighbour knocked on her door and handed her the parcel, which had been accidentally left outside his apartment. There was no option to reverse the refund on the Swiggy app.

The next day, a well-spoken young man turned up at her door in a panic. It was the Swiggy delivery person - he had been penalized the refund amount (Rs. 500). She gave him the money but was struck by his anxiety. This was money, he said, that he did not have. An amount that was small for her - a manager at Titan - was a lot for him.

The question for us is why there are so many like him, and so few like her. We see many young Indians working difficult, low-paying jobs in delivery, logistics, construction.   

This election, PM Narendra Modi is pitching to voters for another term. He insists that he is the best choice for a young, aspirational country. Some of the successes the government claims are indeed very real. Since 2014, India has seen 54,000 kilometres of new national highways built. The number of Indians taking flights has doubled to 200 million in the last decade. The government has invested in both physical and digital infrastructure, with flyovers, metro lines, electrification, direct cash transfers, UPI, and telecom connectivity. It's a big deal for a country that had become used to potholes and power cuts. 

But even with this progress, there are many questions. In the recent Lokniti-CDS survey of 10,000 voters across 19 Indian states, unemployment was the top worry for 27%, and 62% said that finding a job had become even harder in the past five years. India's unemployment rate, which hovers around 8% according to the private institution CMIE, is higher than other Asian economies at a comparable development stage.

We are often referred to as a young country that will be the 'world's next workforce'. But our youth boom is challenging India's policy makers: how are we going to provide these hundreds of millions of young people with jobs, and add to India's productivity and growth?

In this week's Analyticks:

Youth boom, yes. Job boom, no: India needs to ramp up on job creation, fast

Screener: Promoters selling stakes in their companies in the latest quarter

A youthful country, looking for work

When tourists visit India, they often remark on how visibly young the country looks. The median age of Indians is 29, compared to 39 in the US and 40 in China. Nearly half of our population is under the age of 25. 

India's youth is not evenly spread out across the country. Many of India's young people are now in the north. 

Over the last two decades, a big shift has happened in the Indian economy - the south and west of the country, which have long been the main drivers of growth, have grown older.

Population shifts put more young people in poorer states

The south and west of India still dominate in GDP contribution to the economy, and in GDP per capita. The Hindi heartland states, which have the youngest populations (UP, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan) have a low industrial base, making this a low GDP-per-capita region. 

Young people in the poorer states also have to deal with weaker educational infrastructure, resulting in low education levels. For example, nearly half of Tamil Nadu’s 18-to-23-year-olds are in higher education, compared with 17% in Bihar.

And while more Indians than ever before are finishing school, recruiters are finding major quality problems while hiring, with learning deficits that make many unemployable. The youth unemployment rate for Indians who cannot read or write is 3.4%. But the unemployment rate is 6X more for those who have completed secondary education (18.4%), and 9X more for college graduates (29.1%).

A digital skills survey showed large percentages of Indians unable to complete basic digital tasks.

At present, 83% of India's unemployed are young people, and 90% of workers are in informal work. States like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and MP have even higher unemployment levels - in Rajasthan for example, youth unemployment is estimated at 30.2%. The result of this is 3,700 PhD holders, 5,000 graduates and 28,000 postgraduates applying for 62 posts of “peon” in the Uttar Pradesh Police Department. 

To avoid a crisis, this needs to change fast. India's government sector employs only 5% of the population, so private job creation is key. In addition to building up our manufacturing base, India is providing subsidies to large companies through efforts like PLI schemes. But it needs to do more for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which are labour intensive and job creators, but were hit hard by demonetization in 2016 and the pandemic in 2020. 

But the problem is not just in the supply of jobs, but also the quality of people looking for work. So most of all, India needs to take a U-turn in its school and health policies, and raise funding here. This is crucial to build the innovators and entrepreneurs who create jobs, and the high skilled workers who attract investment.

Foreign investment has lots of countries competing for it right now - India, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Indonesia - and it will go where there is high-quality human capital. If we don't focus on education and health, we are doing India's youth a great disservice, condemning them to bad schools and indifferent jobs. 

But we will have to act quickly. Because the youth dividend, as China and the US already know, doesn't last long.  

Screener: Stocks with reduced promoter holding in Q4FY24

With the end of the last quarter of FY24, we take a look at stocks where promoters sold the most stakes during the quarter. This screener shows stocks that saw a decline in promoter holding over Q4FY24. 

There may be many reasons for a drop in promoter holdings, but investors often see it as signalling a lack of confidence in future growth. So promoter sales can trigger selling from other investors. Promoters may also sell their stake to earn profits when shares have risen sharply.

The screener is dominated by banking & finance, software & services, realty, metals & mining and pharmaceuticals & biotechnology. Major stocks that appear in the screener are Whirlpool of India, Aavas Financiers, Swan Energy, Suven Pharmaceuticals, Shyam Metalics and Energy, NLC India, InterGlobe Aviation and Samvardhana Motherson International.

Whirlpool of India’s promoters sold a 24% stake in the company during Q4FY24, the most among the Nifty 500 index. This takes the company’s promoter holding down to 51% in Q4FY24. The promoters plan to use the proceeds from the sale to repay a $500 million term loan. The sold shares were bought by mutual funds as they invested in a 21% stake in the company. SBI Small Cap Fund bought a 9.7% stake, the most among other mutual funds, in the company. The company’s stock price has underperformed the consumer electronics industry by 7.1 percentage points in the past quarter, despite rising by 15.8% in the same period.

You can find more screeners here.