The rollout of the new Unified Pension Scheme (UPS) for government employees, was preceded by a prolonged and feisty political exchange between the incumbent National Democratic Alliance and the opposition parties.
What it also did was to put the spotlight on India’s retirement dilemma: A challenge that is largely ignored given the overwhelmingly young demographic makeup of India.
At present only a tenth of India 56.3 crore workforce avails of some form of social security benefits. Given the growing health burden, with the rapid spread of non-communicable diseases, this lack of a social safety net poses a massive challenge to India’s youth when they approach retirement.
Can young India deal with this retirement dilemma?
To answer this and more StratNews Global spoke to Sumit Shukla, MD & CEO, Axis Pension Fund.