“Arise, awake and not stop till the mission is achieved” so said Swami Vivekanand whose 153rd birth anniversary was celebrated recently as the National Youth Day. Sixty-five % of our population is below 35 years of age and it is this productive segment of our society that the nation looks upto with great expectation.
Twenty-first century knowledge has opened up new vistas of employment. Nearly 4 crores of our youth today are now on live unemployment register nationally. A degree based education is no doubt the focus of our educational system but the degree should be supplemented with knowledge. Many a captain of trade and industry continuously pounder about the worth of employability of our youngsters coming out of the portals of various institutions of higher learning. It is high time that we look beyond to address the problem of unemployment which is going out of proportions. It is time to think out of the box to enable us to arrest the trend of unemployment by creating a proper environment to arrest the rising unrest in our society.
The other end of the spectrum sees well qualified youth with capabilities going overseas to bring about brain drain in a big way. It is time to understand and take steps to arrest this rising trend by infusing confidence among our young minds. The approach needs to be done in an open minded nature. In a thriving knowledge era it is time to care and understand the youth to bring about the hidden talents to the fore.
A step in the right direction is the creation of self employment and entrepreneurship ministry at the National level. Besides many innovative programmes like Skill India and Digital India have been launched with huge corpus of nearly 40 crores of rupees with the creation of National skill development council (NSDC) to train youth in various skills required under the ambitious make in India programme for realising the cause of make for India a genuine reality.
It is a known fact that our youth possess talent in different skill sets and proper and co-ordinated efforts launched through the skill India initiative to upgrade the level of our technical institutions including the Industrial Training Institutes, Polytechnics and Engineering colleges.
A number of courses taken on certificate of excellence mode can also enable certain skills to be developed in a big way as per the need of each faculty. For instance a state like Goa can excel in a big way in the tourism sector by offering skills intensive programmes in different facets of the industry. The stand up India programme launched recently with an ambitious action plan for the next half a decade has thrown up a number of challenges for our youngsters to become a job giver rather than a job seeker. A number of start ups have already been launched by young and the not so young in various sectors of Indian economy promoting both technology and non technology sectors.
The Goa Governments ambitious Dr. Varghese Kuriens scheme for self employment under the economic development corporation can become a big health for the youth to enable them to launch their own set up of avenues in different fields by taking this self employment schemes to the nook and corner of the state to enthuse a spirit of self confidence in the rural youth to take up desired vocations in the self employment arena to realise the dream of self sustenance by creating a competitive arena of becoming a job giver rather than a job seeker which can reduce the unemployment figures in a big way throughout the state.
A number of Central Govt. Departments have thrown up opportunities for the youth to join their portals with suitable postings of apprenticeship to gather the desired hands on experience in a number of departments under the apprenticeship act 1961 to enhance the work ethics of a large technical force in the establishment. The Goa Shipyard Limited a Mini Ratna Company under the Ministry of Defence has an ambitious program of recruiting 1500 apprenticeships under their program of manufacturing frigates and a number of small ships for the coast guard and the Indian Navy.
It is time that youngsters in the State of Goa utilise their skill sets in a big way to realise their career dream by adopting a positive attitude towards this skill oriented programs to launch their careers with zeal, enthusiasm, determination and valour to realise their dream in the past changing IT world. The knowledge acquired in skill programs can thus be applied in a constructive manner to bring out self esteem to reduce unemployment in our country.
