As per a report by BBC News, UN Estimates have declared India as the largest democratic country. And by 2020, India is expected to become the World’s youngest country with 64% of its population in the working age group. But a democratic country particularly depends on the quality of citizens. While the population of several countries like China, Japan is aging, India remains young and poised for growth. The Growth of a Nation is directly proportional to the Skilled Manpower and India has abundant still waiting to be up-skilled. But skilling the youth of India may not be as has easy, for, the biggest challenge in front of Indian youth is in form of providing employment. With such career oriented & talented youth, we have golden opportunity to transform India into a more competent, up-skilled, and a productive country. Key is to match our education system with the industry requirements. For now, we can start with making effective use of Governmental schemes, run for the benefit of the youth of our country, like: Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PKVY):It is a skill development initiative scheme launched by Government of India for recognition and standardization of skills. The aim of PKVYY scheme is to encourage aptitude towards employable skills and to increase working efficiency of probable and existing daily wages earners, by giving them monetary awards and rewards and by providing quality training to them. Skill India: Skill India is a campaign launched by our honorable Prime Minister Shri. Narendra Modi on July 15th, 2015, with an aim to train over 40 crore people in India, in different skills, by 2022. Standup India: Standup India is a scheme launched by our PM Narendra Modi on 05 April 2016, as a part of a government’s efforts to support entrepreneurship among women and people who belong to scheduled tribe/caste. Even with such massively functioning schemes, there are some challenges in skilling the Youth of India, like: India spends very less on youth development compared to its size of the population. According to RBI, expenditure on education and health remains 2.9 and 1.4 as a proportion of country GDP in 2016-17, which is same as last year. In Global Youth Development Index, India ranked 133rd among 183 countries. The report highlights that youth development falls behind mainly in education, employment, and health. People tend to go for education in conventional domains, example engineering. They end up jobless or forced to settle IT jobs. Even when this same youth has much more skills in other creative fields like art, music, sports, writing and other. But even today, creativity is not promoted as much as conventional subjects are up-rated amongst the youth. It is not just our education system but even the society is to be blamed. What should India do?? :- As Gandhi Ji, famously said India lives in its villages; 73% Indians live in rural areas, so we need more focus there. Social entrepreneurs and NGOs are being encouraged to set-up infrastructure and training programme in villages, increasing opportunities for the youth of our rural India. Technology also can play a significant role in skilling the youth. It can be used in multiple ways starting from the mobile applications to specialized websites playing role in lessening the gap between the demand of the skilled youth & the existing talent. Power of Youth is indubitable. They can achieve anything and everything if they want. If they are properly guided and provided with adequate resources and opportunities, they can contribute to the economic growth and help in the vision of developed India!!
