India Could Age Before It Becomes Rich: From Demographic Dividend to Productivity Dividend

India’s fertility rates have dropped below replacement levels, and the nation faces the prospect of ageing before it becomes rich and escapes the middle-income trap. Vectors like shifting family dynamics and consumer demands, narrowing workforce window with a strain on state capacity, divergent regional trajectories, and urbanisation with new demands, converge into the need to migrate national growth models to productivity-driven frameworks—with technology as the over-arching bridge. This brief explores policy pathways that India can implement that utilise technology to drive broad-based productivity. These include enabling systemic skilling and education reforms, incentivising the rise of the silver economy, expanding India’s labour-intensive industrial base, deepening sovereign technology moats, smart urbanisation for productivity and climate resilience, building global talent mobility streams, and strengthening India’s position as a talent haven.