Kolkata, Jun 29 (IANS): Vice President Venkaiah Naidu on Friday called for turning the "potential asset" of the country's vast young population into an "actual asset", otherwise it would be a "missed opportunity".

He made the remarks while addressing a gathering here on the occasion of 125th birth anniversary of professor Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis.

Describing the importance of Mahalanobis' application-driven research in the field of statistics, the Vice President also said that statistics is truly the backbone of good governance and it is absolutely essential for planning and indispensible for monitoring and evaluation.

"We need to harness the power of computing, communication and robotics to improve the quality of life...and to make informed choices, we need data, we need statistics, we need tools to analyse and synthesise," Naidu said.

The Vice President added: "Over 65 per cent of our population is under 35 years of age. This demographic statistics is significant if we can turn this potential asset into and actual asset.

"If we fail to tap into this reservoir of human resources and turn it into human capital, it will be a missed opportunity and the country would have to cope with a number of socio-economic consequences including poverty, inequality, social unrest and unsustainable growth."

According to Naidu, people now live in a world in which knowledge explosion, information overload and data-driven lives have become common place.

Naidu said statistics and big data management along with artificial intelligence would play an even more significant role in the years to come.