Harnessing the power of youth in a creative manner
India has a huge population and one of the biggest in the age group of 18 to 35. This is often called the "democratic dividend" of India. In other words, a great number of people are engaged in highly productive professions like Business Process Outsourcing, the IT sector, manufacturing, and other segments of the service sector like hotels, resorts, railways, the transport sector, and in the media.
The collective force of this generation of young people is the real reason why there is a big boom in the service sector. For example, in schools and colleges and in the shopping malls. And in the number of KFC and Domina pizza outlets and in the increase in the number of theme parks, to name a few.
However, are we in the right direction?
The anwers are very complex, because in spite of all efforts to bridge the skill gaps, we have hundreds of thousands of people, still unemployed.
This happens because the youth do not know the opportunities, the uninformed youth often take up courses that do not exactly match their inner potential and so on. For example, many do not even understand that after plus two, they can pursue courses in the tourism sector, where there is a huge demand at any point in time.
Furthermore, there are hundreds of thousands of students in the rural areas, who are totally uninformed about opportunities in the urban areas in the IT profession.
What we need are creartive ways in which we can make drastic improvements. One of such ways is to bring the best of minds in the Corproate Sector and get them to make out a training program for all placement officers or directors of engineering colleges.
Once trained, the placement officers or directors can in turn, train hundreds of students on each of the emerging professions and close the gaps. Already Infosys Technologies is trying its best through the Campus Connect program. A more concerted effort needs to be put in, to rope in a huge number of other engieering colleges and then bring about changes.
In Chennai, some creative collaborations are already on. For example, IBM is now collaborating with the SSN College of Engineering, through which it is offering a course in Business Analytics.
Since there is a huge demand for this course, it is inevitable that there will be huge opportunities for those who are well trained in this skill.
Similarly, the Hindustan University has tied up with a huge number of organizations to create some unique courses.
Be that as it may, there is a huge need to recruit youth from the villages, most of whom are just undergraduates, and sometimes have not even reached the school final stage.
The National Skill Council has already started doing a good job, but more of such efforts are needed to reach optimum levels of training in every field.
For example, the Big Bazaar group of companies have their own training school, where they train their own manpower on different aspects of retail management. This is a really good attempt, and is reportedly going very strong.
However, Universities such as the University of Madras, the Madurai Kamaraj University in Tamil Nadu or the Kerala University in Kerala and the Bangalore and Mysore Universities in Karnataka should have Memorandum of Understanding with this outfit and effectively train their own graduates through a diploma program. The UGC and the AICTE can also grant recognition for such collaborations and the graduates can be readily employed in the organized retail sector, which is now growing through leaps and bounds. This trend will continue, and hence colloborations are a must.
Apart from education, there is an urgent need to involve the youth in environmental campaigns, steet plays that highlight the need for total prohibition, campaings against smoking, violence against women and so on. These should form part and parcel of life at every stage and should not become special events. If this is done, there is every likelihood of massive action and the youth can also constructively engage themselves in good tasks.
A big environmentalist called Namvazhvar, who was not hihgly educated but had a passion for organic farming, utilized the rural youth in massive campaings in Tamil Nadu. The use of nitrogenous fertilizers has now come down to the maximum extent, and the rural youth are in the forefront of big campaings to educate people at various levels. Hundreds of farmers have taken to organic farming.
This is exactly what is needed. A huge awareness campaign on corruption was attempted by Anna Hazare, and the attempt was not sustained. However, we need to make the biggest of noises to ensure that such campaigns are not allowed to die a natural death.
The youth of this country wanted to get involved. It is not true that the youth are always interested in petty politics and getting invovled in love affairs. They have great ambitions and have the readiness to involve themselves in useful work.
Educationists, sociologists, lawyers and even the vice chancellors of Universities need to get together and put together a plan of action that involves the youth in every possible way.
Somewhere down the line, we should also make excessive use of the social media to spread awareness on good work done by the student community and also young entrepreneurs. Those who are successful in harnessing the potential of youth and making them involved in good employment, should be highlighted in a big way.
Entrepreneurship is a big game of positive thinking, of great innovative thinking and action. This can spur a huge amount of work to action and enable him or her to take up small businesses, particularly those that do not involve huge investment.
At the State Government level, the Government needs to provide good incentives that promote good causes. For example, those involved in the business of promoting solar energy should be provided loans from co-operative banks at very reasonable rates of interest. If this happens, a huge number of youth will be motivated to take up buiness in solar energy manufacturing or marketing.
Innovative methods are urgently needed to help the youth to involve themselves in many meaningful ways.
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