Context: This was the second paper that was written by myself for an interschool conference (one of the toughest interschool conferences in the country) as part of my school's Model UN delegation (competing team, FYI). I won 2nd Best Delegate, and my school ended up winning the championship for the second time in a row.
[Name: Rahul Gandhi
Party: Indian National Congress
Committee: All India Political Parties Meet
Designation: MP – Wayanad, Rae Bareli; LoP – Designate
Agenda: Discussing Economic Models That Capitalize On India's Demographic Dividend
Alliance: INDIA]
-
Ralph Waldo Emerson
In this era, we see the rise of many trends in our societies. But
sometimes, we witness a specimen of trends that seem to increase exponentially,
the foremost being the ever-increasing potential of India to be a world leader
in the fields of manufacturing and technology with our highly agreeable
demographic divide.
With the advent of such developments, the international community
holds India in high esteem and maintains India’s presence as a global partner
due to the educated and highly skilled workforce that we possess as a nation
and wishes to partner with us in various sectors. But this development is not
reaching the populace of India, rather it leads to a minority of the populace
who is educated, and skill-developed.
At this juncture, we would like to bifurcate this agenda into two
broad straits, each describing the issues with our workforce, which includes:
1) A lack of development and jobs in the workforce:
Under-development is a prevalent issue in the workforce, specifically
in technological and skill-intensive jobs where the two main issues are the
lack of jobs (despite an election promise to create lakhs of jobs) for educated
youth leading to educated unemployment or there is a lack of education for
highly specialised fields and careers. But, India lacks the proper
infrastructure to develop chip-making abilities and also has a limited number
of people who are educated on how to assemble such chips, thus leading to a
vicious cycle of a lack of awareness, infrastructure, and a viable workforce
leading to the decline of the economy and leaving the young workforce
redundant, leading to violent protests and law-and-order situations as has been
seen in recent years. And the problem on this front is extremely shocking with
statistics showing that India’s progress is derailed. This includes:
● 1 in 3 Indian youths is unemployed, with graduate holders having an unemployment rate of 29.1% with some states like Haryana having a 37.4% unemployment rate.
● 80% of all engineers in India are unemployable and only 3% know new-age skills like AI and machine learning, unicorns like Wipro and Infosys have halted their campus placements due to a lack of suitable candidates.
● The manufacturing sector in India has lost 30% of all its jobs in just 5 years, with 97% of all household incomes declining in value.
● The IITs face increased rates of unemployment with some colleges having high unemployment figures such as IIT Kharagpur (39%), IIT Delhi (25%) and IIT Roorkee (46%).
2) A lack of clarity on the government’s side:
There is no question as to why the youth of India are faced with a
deprivation of jobs and hence, a lack of opportunity to take advantage of the
demographic divide of India. The government has clearly shown that it is
incompetent in developing the various sectors of the nation, leaving a trail of
failed economic policies in its wake. Policies released by the current
government were not properly implemented and brought to fruition by the union
government, hence they could not provide a sufficient amount of jobs for the
crores of eligible students in the market. This coupled with a steady decrease
in the number of seats in various colleges and universities, reduced quality of
faculty and other such amenities, and a lack of essential academic amenities,
is a searing indictment on the government’s incompetence to cash in on the
remarkable advantage India has in terms of the workforce.
How are we as a nation to tackle this issue? There are a variety of
ways we the opposition have proposed (and fulfilled) this issue:
1) The extension of MGNREGA into the organised sector, which, with a constitutional amendment, can ensure that skilled employees (from any industry with the condition of holding a degree) will be ensured a guaranteed job in the public/private sector to decrease educated unemployment greatly. This guarantees minimum experience in the industry our youth will be working in.
2) Improve skill
development through concerted efforts to increase education and industry
connectivity vis-a-vis integrated work-and-learn programs, internships, and
live courses, which give our Indian youth a more competitive edge in the
market.
We as a party acknowledge the uphill battle that is set before
(especially with a dictatorship set up against us). Still, we realize that with
the unity of the INDIA bloc, there is no end to how we can develop the nation
together.
Bibliography:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNKnlyx1HSQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5G0x1Ox28c
No comments:
Post a Comment