India Requires 8% Growth. More Female Workers Needed to Transform Into a Developed Nation, Says World Bank Economist!

In order to transform into a developed nation by the year 2047, India is required to grow at about 8 percent. Dhruv Sharma, a World Bank senior economist has said that such fast growth can only be possible if female participation in the workforce is increased.

At the launch of the India Development Update report by the World Bank on the 3rd of October, Dhruv Sharma expressed that, "India has aspirations to become a high-income country by 2047. That will naturally require a faster pace of growth; it is growing around 6-6.5 percent. In order to get to a high-income country, it needs to grow closer to 8 percent. And you can't get there if a large part of your workforce – females – are not participating."

"So for India to go from 6 percent to 8 percent and become a high-income country, you need to get the female labor force participation rate to be higher," the economist added further.

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The World Bank, through its India Development Update report, has stated that while there was an increase of 1.4 percentage points and 2.3 percentage points respectively seen in January-March 2023 from a year ago in the male and female Worker Population Ratio (WPR), the escalation in the WPR for women was actually "primarily driven by an increase in the share of women in unpaid work",  according to the Periodic Labor Force Survey report data.

Additionally, the report also says that the quality of women's jobs in the country is actually much lower than the quality of men's jobs. Not to miss, women's share of regular salaried employment in urban regions is also declining.

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"According to data from PLFS (2021-22), women in India are almost three times less likely to be employed than men; even when they are employed, the average quality of their jobs is much lower (than) their male counterparts," said the report.

World Bank's Country Director for the country, Auguste Kouame further stated that increasing the female labor force participation rate in India is actually a very crucial topic, and the Bank is willing to work with all possible stakeholders to increase it from the average level of approximately 25 percent currently to the average level of 50 percent.

"We know from data that there has been a lot of investment in women and girls' education in India. India has done really well … in fact, today, there are more girls in universities than boys. So, India has done very well in educating girls and women. It is now time to use their skills and their brain power to power the economy towards becoming a high-income country," said Kouame.

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