In the summer of 2014, world’s biggest election will take place in India with 814 million people voting to decide the next Prime Minister of world’s biggest democracy. Approximately, 529 million of these voters are below the age of 35. This is the first election in the history of India where the youth outnumbers the elder’s population by a ratio of almost 2:1. Thus, transcending beyond caste, class and religion, the youth is the biggest vote bank that all the political parties are trying to attract. How they have fared so far and what are the issues that the youth of India looks forward to in this election is an intriguing question.
After the economic liberalisation in the early 90’s, the youth, particularly my generation has seen a different India than previous generations. It was an India filled with hope, aspirations and a hunger for progress. Skill development, educational research, science and technological prowess were some of the major areas of growth that the youth of the country was looking forward to; that these would ultimately lead to job creation was the idea. India’s time to materialise this idea and assert itself to the world as a seat of power in South-Asia came after 2003, when the economy started to grow at 8 per cent. But sadly, we squandered the golden opportunity that came knocking at our doorstep and were sidetracked in our race for progress and development in the last decade.
In 2014, the Congress party’s vice-president and potential Prime Ministerial candidate Rahul Gandhi still talks about ‘empowering’ the youth and changing the system. However, for the last decade of his career in the Parliament, when his party had the ruling majority, he kept absolutely mum and not a single suggestion was given about how the youth should be ‘empowered’. The unemployment rate has swollen to almost 9 per cent and rising inflation coupled with lack of jobs has made the youth of the country restless. The 2009 election was touted as a huge change from the conventional politics and it was said that the Congress has been voted back as a result of economic growth and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA). This act, we were told, would create jobs for the rural youth and ensure rural development. Far from development, this act resulted in wastage of more than 1 lakh crore rupees.
The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) is a law that was said to guarantee employment in rural areas. It does so by providing at least 100 days of guaranteed wages in a financial year to every household in which adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. The MNREGA was to provide jobs in sectors that had unemployment issues but was even implemented in places where there was a shortage of manual labor. This ill-conceived and faulty implementation resulted in an average worker refusing work while receiving MNREGA sops for being unemployed. As a result, the cost of labor in various fields such as agriculture shot up and became unsustainable for the owners.
Another issue that the Congress had promised to focus on was ‘skill development’. National Innovation Council was to be set up under Sam Pitroda. Tall claims of creating 15 million jobs every year were made but 5 years down the line, we are still to see the results.
In fact, the guaranteed income under MNREGA has ensured that even the skilled workers have abandoned their source of employment in favor of this largesse from the Government. There is ample evidence to suggest that the two schemes are working against each other. The MNREGA has no standardised policy for work implementation and cash allotment. The completion of work ranges from 8 per cent to 90 per cent. Also, lack of standardisation and excessive corruption is costing the economy heavily. The youth of this country does NOT want this kind of development.
The youth of this country is talented enough to progress without the sops of the Government. All it needs is an issue based policy. The issues of education, research and investments are the ones that need to be handled by the Government. The Government needs to develop high quality educational institutes with good research facilities to reduce the brain drain from India. The students those pass out of colleges need to be given an opportunity to expand their horizon; they need to be made aware of the possibilities that exist in the world. Skill development should be the first priority. Indian youth has an entrepreneurial spirit, has brilliant ideas but the process of starting a company is extremely complicated and riddled with corruption. The Government of India should encourage entrepreneurship by streamlining the process, and make policies that can let these small scale businesses grow. Who knows, we may have the idea for a next multi-national company in our backyard!
The Indian youth is battling with a lot of issues today. They are talented but their talent is not being harnessed. They are entrepreneurial but there are no policies that can help them take their ideas to the world. What has happened in the past decade is exactly the opposite of what should have been. The next Government has to ensure that the energy that the country has, is harnessed to its full potential. This will only happen with growth in various sectors, which will create jobs rather than the doles that the current Government is handing out to the youth. As many States of India have shown, ‘Dolenomics’ is not only bad economics but it is a bad precedent since it makes young people depend on the handouts from the Government. The youth should grow with the help of the Government rather than stumble because of it or merely survive in spite of it. The Government should act like a catalyst rather than an inhibitor.
Original link : http://www.niticentral.com/2014/03/25/2014-election-will-be-battle-of-and-for-youngistan-203463.html
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