Mumbai, Aug 28 (PTI) The total outlay for youth-focused schemes is only 3.9 per cent of the overall spending budgeted for FY21 even as a third of the population is in the 10-34 years age group, indicating a "lack of focus" on the important segment, a global non-profit said on Friday.

Mental health, which has been in focus since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, has no allocation at all, the analysis by the UK-based 'Restless Development' said.

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India has among the largest populations of young people and policymakers often point out to the 'demographic dividend' as a key strength at a time when other countries are ageing.

However, some watchers have also warned of 'demographic disaster' if the country is not able to take adequate care of its population.

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'Restless Development' said it carried out an analysis of the budget proposals over the last five years from a youth development lens along with the think tank 'The Quantum Hub' (TQH), which showed the allocations have gone down in FY21. It has excluded spending on schemes which are not exclusively targeted towards the youth segment.

"The proportion of funding allocated to youth-focused schemes has declined in recent years; in fact, it is at its lowest in the 2020-21 budget. More than a third of India's population will be in the age group of 10-34 by the year 2021, but the 2020-21 Union Budget outlay for this group is only 3.9 per cent, indicating a lack of adequate focus to development of youth in India," it said.

The overall allocation devoted to youth issues had touched a peak of 4.40 per cent in FY18, and has been consistently sliding every fiscal since then, it said.

In absolute quantum, the spend on youth is Rs 1.18 lakh crore in FY21 in areas like education, employment, and skill development, sports, health, social justice/inclusion, community engagement and political representation, it said.

Education gets the largest proportion of budgetary allocation for the youth, and accounted for 3.07 per cent of the overall budget spends.

On the primary education side, a bulk of the funding is allocated to the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan but three-fourths of the money earmarked for higher education goes to select autonomous bodies like the IITs and IISc, even as the same for state higher education institutions has decreased by 78 per cent, it said.

The budget for skilling has halved to 1.4 per cent in 2020 as against 2.8 per cent in 2016, it said, adding that the government's Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana is looking to provide soft skills training to a "mere 10 million young people, out of over 450 million young people".

"A focused approach towards youth development in India's policy priorities is lacking," founding partner of TQH Rohit Kumar said.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)