So, uh, in, in, in your essay, when you talk about how our urban centers, uh, degrade human capital, I was just wondering, are you referring to what happens to, say, the, the working population in a mega city where they live in, uh, dense, congested, uh, slum-like, uh, dwelling places, which really saps their energy when it comes to, you know, just basic things like commute and food, healthcare? Or are you talking about, uh, this example of a Hajipur kind of a system where you have this, uh, interconnected set of urban settlements which don't get any kind of, uh, municipal or urban services support, and therefore they too, in a way, uh, degrade the human capital which is living in those kinds of contiguous urban areas? Which, uh, which ones are you talking about, and which is a bigger problem for India at the moment?

I would say that they both are problems.

I know that's not a satisfactory answer, but I think it's probably worse for the Hajipur-like cases because it doesn't seem like there is an easy way out for, um, a lack of planning, a lack of funding.

But I think in my essay, the way that I wrote about it is I was looking at it in terms of, okay, let's look at what are cities as they're called cities.

What is it like to live in those cities, and how is that connected to the demographic dividend? Because if you, if you recall, this entire series is about India's demographic dividend.

And so how do our cities then degrade human capital, which is one of the major inputs into thinking about reaping a demographic dividend? So, you know, I think that we, we think of cities as places that build human capital, which is...

So let's, let's focus on cities then.

I was just wondering, do you think our cities, Indian cities, are designed to discourage women from entering the workforce?

So when you think about what you're doing at USAID, what do you think your power was as an office?

If I had to pick the power of the part that I worked on, it was the power to make demography, which is the study of populations through the three things that make population change possible, which is fertility.

So it's births, deaths, and migration.

Our power was we worked to make demography a critical lens with which to understand development.

And you've heard the phrase, which is that American foreign policy has long had three approaches, right? Defense, diplomacy, and development.

And we were basically working to make sure that that development piece included demography front and center.

And I had transitioned to a role as the agency's foremost demographic expert just two years before this dismantling.

Was there a moment where you just stopped and said, oh, this

So can you just unpack for the benefit of our readers, what exactly do these terms mean vis-à-vis the larger debates that we are facing today?

Yeah, sure.

So the way that I like to explain it to a non-demographic audience is if you think about a household, you know, imagine a multigenerational family where for a while, mostly everyone is either a child or kind of an older person.

So the earners that are there are stretched quite thin.

They're caring for the, their aging parents.

They're also taking care of their young children.

Um, and then you fast-forward a generation later.

participation.Which is the most, uh, worrying statistic when you think of India's demographic future?