India's swing Voters for 2024 general elections


We don't change our biases very often as adults, be it simple things about what we eat, or what we wear to more complex things about how a country needs to be governed.

As I thought about the topic, I tried to find out who could be the new voters of India in the 2024 general elections. Because potentially they could be the swing voters for India's next general election. Interestingly this new cohort of voters was born between 2002 to 2006 and is estimated to be about 12.5 crore.

By the way, I behave as an adult, I feel most adults don't change their biases ever in their lives. This means that most of us have opinions about how we think about different political ideologies as well. And also I feel most of our new cohorts are adults themselves and probably they have already made up their minds, though they have not expressed their views in the form of casting their votes so far.

So whichever ideology the new cohorts will choose will be forming the next new government in Delhi in 2024.

My objective in writing this article is to provide some food for thought to our young minds (first-time voters).

In my opinion, the following topics will be very crucial and impact the new cohort of voters and their subsequent voters as well.

Future of work;

According to a research report by Dell Technologies, The Next Era of Human/Machine Partnerships: Emerging Technologies’ Impact on Society in 2030, they estimate that about 85% of the jobs that today’s students will be doing in 2030 have yet to be invented. 

This leads to the question of what are we teaching our young kids at schools and higher education institutions. How are we preparing them for a future which is not known very well?

State of Our Higher Education System

As per the government-published report, All India Survey of Higher Education, 2020-21. Total enrolment in higher education has increased to nearly 4.13 crore in 2020-21. The total number of pass-outs was 95.4 Lakh in 2020-21.

At the undergraduate level, the highest out-turn is in Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) with 20.5 Lakh, followed by Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) with 11.3 Lakh, Bachelor of Commerce (B.Com.) with 10.2 Lakh and 8.3 Lakh in Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) & Bachelor of Technology (B. Tech.) combined. At the Post-graduate level, the highest out-turn is in Master of Arts (M.A.) 5.4 Lakh, followed by Master of Science (M.Sc.) 2.9 Lakh, Master of Business Administration (MBA) 2.2 Lakh and Master of Commerce (M.Com.) 1.6 Lakh. For diplomas, the total number of pass-outs is 8.48 Lakh. 

So from this, we can see, that the ratio of pass-out vs. enrolment is 1:4. What is worrying is what happens to the balance of 3/4 of the students who enroll in higher education every year.

Formal Job Sector in India.

Close to 81% of all employed persons in India make a living by working in the informal sector, with only 6.5% in the formal sector and 0.8% in the household sector. Among the five South Asian countries, formalization of labor is the highest in India and Nepal (90.7%), with Bangladesh (48.9%), Sri Lanka (60.6%), and Pakistan (77.6%) doing much better on this front. Formal employment in Bangladesh is the highest in the region at 13.5%, but it also has high household employment at 26.7%, says a new report by the International Labour Organisation.

Another striking statistic is about the percentage of youth who are not being educated, or in employment or any kind of training stands at 28% in 2021. The employment-population ratio (%) is at 48%, out of which 70% are male and only 25.6% are female. From the ILO statistics it is also very clear, that we are currently only employing 6% of our employable people in formal jobs.

There are some interesting developments as well in terms of the start-up culture proliferation in India in the last 10 years or so. As per the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, the total number of start-ups has gone up from 471 in 2016 to 72993 by June 2022. 

If the current cohort of young voters wants to be gainfully engaged in their professional careers, a lot needs to be done in the start-up environment, which might help us address the issue of the job sector in the formal sector. 

There are many more subjects to ponder over, but as a starting point, I think these three issues should trigger some thoughts amongst the new cohorts of voters born between 2002 to 2006.

I would love to hear from the new cohort of voters about this article and their thoughts. And of course welcome thoughts from everyone else, who is thinking about this topic or has done some work on this subject.

Through inputs/thoughts, I will also learn more about the topic.

Data Sources:

The population of India can be found in a couple of links shared below. Of course, there could be many more ways to estimate the new voters in India.

India Population (2023) - Worldometer (worldometers.info)

Population of India 2023 - PopulationPyramid.net

I am sharing the link to ILO for readers to explore all the other relevant data. Country profiles - ILOSTAT

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