India has the world's largest youth population. Nearly 65 percent of Indians are under 35, and around 85 percent live in the district of their birth. Their future, and India's, will be decided district by district.
Yet we lack a clear, comparable picture of how well each district helps its young people learn, work, participate, and build a dignified life. YouthPOWER fills that gap. We measure youth opportunity across all of India's roughly 800 districts, drawing on nearly 180 indicators from 27 government databases. Each district is scored on five pillars: Participation, Opportunity, Work, Education, and Readiness (Skilling).
The scores are a diagnostic: they show a district's strengths, surface its gaps, set priorities, and track progress over time.
We connect this evidence to the people who can act on it. Each district's picture is tied to its elected representative, alongside practical tools for elected, administrative, and civic stakeholders. In Telangana, the platform is in use under an MoU with the state government, and it is being piloted at the district level with a few Lok Sabha MPs across party lines.
The intent is to bring data, political leadership, and local action together so that every district becomes a place where young people learn, work, participate, and thrive. In doing so, India can harness both its demographic and its democratic dividend.
YouthPOWER has been selected for the 2026 McNulty Prize Catalyst Fund, a joint initiative of the McNulty Foundation and the Aspen Institute, as one of six projects named globally this year.