India’s median age is only 25.9

Comparing just the average ages of different cabinets doesn’t tell the full story. The fact is that India has the lowest median age — the level at which half the population is younger and half older — of 25.9 years on this list of the 15 largest economies. It, therefore, also has the largest mismatch between the age of its population and the age of its leaders.



The difference between the average age of India’s cabinet and the median age of its population is almost 39 years, which is three times the gap for the developed countries on this list. In fact, with the exception of the US, where this age difference is above 20 years, all the other G-8 countries have cabinet ministers on average less than 20 years older than the median age of the country.
The list indicates that developing countries tend to have a higher age difference between their leaders and the population. This gap is 31 for Brazil, 28 for Indonesia, and 26 for China. But remember that China’s median age is 10 years more than India’s, so a gap of 26 years is much less significant.
Could the response to a young leader like Rahul Gandhi, or his father Rajiv Gandhi in an earlier era, be a manifestation of a yearning among many for this age gap between the leader and the led to be reduced? Your reading is as good as ours.