India is a country with 17.5% of the world population in just 2.5% of the total world’s land area. This densely packed population has to be converted to a wealth rather than a burden to see India’s developmental dreams come true. In the 1.2 billion Indian population, the youth population accounts for 26%. This 26% is not a small amount and this is going to decide the fate of India’s future. By 2010 to 2030 it is predicted that India will add 240 million people in the working group. This goes without saying that the said work force is today’s youth. Such highly mind pleasing statistics are on one side. On the other side are ground realities of a large mass of neglected, rural poor youth who are hardly exposed to job seeking education, knowledge or skill. What does these youth do?
Illiteracy is a major cause for this. India has the largest illiterate population of any nation on earth. Though literacy rate has increased from 12% in 1947 to 75% in 2011, the tag of the nation with highest number of illiterate population has not left us. Will India be able to remove this tag?
Youth should be more educated. They should understand the need of basic education. Only then can they give more interest in political life, more participation civil society works and more involvement in the nation’s development. The participation of youth in community led programmes should be high. Government and NGOs should make conducive environment for youth participation in such programmes. Vocational training is very important and will play a pivotal role in shaping the youth. The youth with less or no technical education can very well survive with short term vocational courses which can also be done at a lesser cost than the former ones. The main aim is to be employed and contribute to the nation’s GDP. A study conducted in 2005 says that the ratio of youth unemployed to adult unemployed in 3:1. With this sort of a situation prevailing in the country we can never be proud of the 26% youth population with high mental and physical strengths.
Both male and female youth population needs to be enhanced to make a considerable change in the nation. A female educated can be considered as a whole family educated in the near future as she will surely educate her children and siblings. The neglect of female education has still not left the minds of people, especially in the rural areas.
Today's youth is lucky when compared to older generations because of their exposure to many issues via different sources of media. The television has played a vital role in sensitizing the youth on various issues of local and national importance. They get to know more of the urban areas. This helped them to narrow down the gap between the urban and rural youth.
Various education drives need to be conducted by government to make the youth educated and well armed to face the future. Policies like meals to children in schools adopted by the Tamil Nadu government, less travel fare in buses for school going children in Kerala, etc. can make a great deal of change. Unless and until a youth is literate he/she can in no way contribute to the socio-economic development of the nation.
Every youth who has been fortunate enough to get good education should make it a point that he/she will contribute in some way or the other to make other people of his age fortunate like him/her. This sort of a mind set is demanding from the people also so that the onus on government is reduced. Every citizen should have this sort of an approach to see the nation as a strong one in the near future.
