Young and Restless India » Unemployment

Educating Rural Indian Youths

Raj — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 20:28:49 +0000

Courtesy mckaysavage on flickr

Yahoo India news article titled “Giving young India a foothold into the future”. The leading companies in India have joined hands with the central government to improve the career prospects of bright young people from rural India. In a public-private partnership effort to be shortly announced, foundations run by Wipro chief Azim Premji, Sunil Mittal’s Bharti Group and others corporate chiefs will fund the coaching of school leaving rural youth to prepare them for engineering, medical and other technical entrance examinations.

Around 4,000 youth will be selected every year from a network of 576 schools across the country set up to promote quality education in the rural areas. The government and the private sector may share the cost equally.

This unique public-private model for education is one of the ways India can translate demographic challenge into demographic dividend. Still the number of rural youth wanting to get good education is very large and India needs to move aggressively in tackling this issue.

Budget 2009-10 Youth and Rural Friendly

Raj — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:43:11 +0000

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said the government would make it a priority to reach 9% gross domestic product growth in the medium term and would seek to spend 9% of GDP on infrastructure development by 2014. Budget release was heavy on spending for farmers and the poor, a core constituency of the Congress party-led ruling coalition, funded by a surge in borrowing and an increase in the fiscal deficit to 6.8 percent of GDP. With the Budget supporting the rural economy, the bullish rural growth plans will get a major boost. Read more about the impact of budget on fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies here.

The Economic Times article titled “Budget 2009-10: Happy about shiksha, naukri & Bluetooth” says that India’s Budget for 2009-10 is also focused on Young India. The budget allows weaker sections access higher education with interest-free education loan which will enable poor and rural youth to have better access to education. The article also notes that implementation to make sure the subsidy for poor students will reach the beneficiaries is tough. Gen YRI concern on Energy and conservation was not tackled in the Budget. But the verdict is that the FM has done a lot for students, a section of the salaried class, women and also for infrastructure.

Now is the time for India to Shine?

Raj — Mon, 25 May 2009 23:59:25 +0000

New York Times Article ‘After Vote, Is it India’s Time to Shine?‘, makes a compelling case for India to reap its demographic dividend. According to the article, China’s population will soon start to age, eroding the demographic dividend that has helped fuel 10 percent annual growth for the past 30 years. Every second Indian, by contrast, is still younger than 25.

India can learn from China to develop light manufacturing to provide employment for tens of millions of surplus farm laborers. Better urban management will be an imperative as more Indians flock to cities in search of work.

Now, after a decisive general election victory for the Congress party, markets is anticipating the prospect that political and policy continuity will allow India to start closing the development gap with China.

India has a unique chance to finally live up to the hype ‘India Shining’.