A Final Boarding Call for Our Demographic Dividend

The flight from Mumbai to Bangkok was not what I expected.

- Tulsi Jayakumar

The flight from Mumbai to Bangkok was not what I expected. For one, it was an IndiGo flight—technically an international leg, but it felt like a Mumbai-to-Delhi hop. Same cabin crew uniforms, same boarding announcements, same scramble for overhead cabinet space. For another, the cabin was overwhelmingly Indian—and I don't mean 'slightly more.' The ratio was highly skewed.

Most of my fellow passengers were clearly salesmen—first-time-abroad enthusiasm radiating from every seat. The signs were unmistakable: company-logo backpacks, reels playing at full volume because "who needs Bluetooth," and the call-button for the cabin crew being pressed with the confidence of someone ordering room service. Laughter erupted in generous bursts, often at jokes that would never pass HR training. It was a boys' outing with just enough corporate sponsorship to ensure that their WhatsApp group would later be flooded with photos captioned 'Living the Dream.'

It's not the first time I've been on a flight abroad where the Indian presence is impossible to miss. It's just that these days, the scale of it feels... different. And perhaps it's no coincidence.

Last year, the UN officially crowned India the world's most populous country. We edged past China—and in doing so, we also edged past something else: the luxury of anonymity. We are over 1.4 billion strong. Which means that wherever we go, we no longer just 'show up.' We arrive.