Tapping the potential of Indian Youth

 Youth! The UN, for statistical consistency across regions, defines ‘youth’, as those persons between the ages of 15 and 24 years, without prejudice to other definitions by Member States. With 28% of population of India in the age category of 10-24 years, we need to take the risk now or never. As quoted by Swami Vivekananda “Take risks in life, if you win, you can lead! If you lose, you can guide!” Whether we become the leader or a follower is secondary, at least we all will have something to do in life. Easier said than done? May be any of these clicks for us:

Start Early

When our young gen can handle mobiles, computers, video games and what not; they can learn other skills too during their academic years. The only requirement is to tweak the curriculum and make it more vocation based. Readers from 80’s and 90’s can easily recall the SUPW classes in their school. They learnt vocational skills like candle making, carpentry, embroidery etc. Today, it’s not only essential to make them independent entrepreneurs but also to combine these lost treasures to the modernizing India. Imagine if we combine the creativity of these young learners with the IT, what an economical boom will be created in our country.

Go Local

While following the global ideas and merging ourselves with the world movement, we can still maintain our uniqueness by optimizing the locally available natural and man-made resources and converting them into the global products. For instance, reviving the water bodies, forest regions, local craft skills etc are the few areas. This move will ensure less migration towards cities as we would be able to provide the education and basic life skills right there.

Each one, Reach one

The government has always been trying their level best in making the young population of India a competitive, self-sustaining and global citizen. Let’s make it mandatory for each one of skilled individual to train at least one more person in basic employability skills like spoken English, leadership skills, literacy etc. Can we start community services at the school level so that our youth develops the habit of co-existence and respect? Creating, collaborating and sustaining be the guiding principles for them. Give them an opportunity and we will see the results.

Let the disabled be our advantage

The differently – abled people are an untapped pool of skills and talents. Thus, employing them makes good business sense. Organisations can always benefit from more diverse workforce and improved productivity. Employing them will also make safer workplaces and increased customer service and community brand loyalty. Every sector has some jobs that can easily accommodate the differently-abled people. Just try to visualize the 3 crore of these people giving their best and also training others within their group to self-sustain.

Industry Connect

The purpose of education is to create a workforce that contributes to the economy and to live a healthy life. The gaps between the school education and industry requirement can easily be bridged by designing a new curriculum that is more skill based and not just the rote learning of few subjects. If one could ask the policy makers, what good a graduation degree will do that was formulated 20 to 30 years ago? The need of today is to create research based curriculum. We as a developing nation cannot afford to waste the human potential that is waiting to explode. Instead, we can easily create a niche for ourselves on the global platform by providing the youth what is needed by the various industries.

To sum it up, let’s join hands to make India a better place to live…

 Posted by Chetna Sabarwal