Myriad challenges that threaten to set off India's demographic time bomb

The ticking gets only louder with weak govt institutions, water crisis, minority targeting within and outside Parliament and an economy that refuses to kickstart

At the beginning of this decade, a series of labour protests broke out at the high profile factories of multinationals such as Foxconn, Honda and Flextronics in Guangdong, China’s powerhouse of a province just across the border from Hong Kong. The powerful party secretary then was named Wang Yang. He took a gamble and, in consultation with Beijing, mandated double-digit raises for workers for the next five years, including pay hikes of 20 per cent that year itself. Instead of sanctioning Communist Party-led disciplining and beatings at the first sign of worker protests as is paradoxically the norm in other