Yuva Nyay: How Congress will empower youth, create new jobs to ensure India's all-round development

New Delhi: The future lies in the youth of today. This is particularly relevant for a young nation like India with a median age of just 28 years. The youth of India face joblessness as well as hopelessness.

The root cause is massive unemployment that has got worse every year since 2014. It is a well-known fact that the youth of any country are a great asset and they are indeed the future of that country. The role of youth in nation-building is more important than one might think. They are the building blocks of any country. Likewise, India cannot progress and achieve big goals without the active participation of our young generation in every sphere of micro and macro-economic factors.

To make India one of the superpowers on the global landscape, we would need our youth to contribute significantly in all the fields, whether it is the technical field, non-technical field, medical field, entrepreneurship field, entertainment field, scientific field, economic field, politics, or sports field—they are needed. It is up to us how to help the youth play a major role and contribute to India’s development and growth.

India boasts a vibrant and dynamic youth population, making it a unique demographic asset. With half of its 1.4 billion people below the age of 25 and a quarter below 14, India’s youth represent the future of the nation. This demographic dividend holds immense potential for economic growth, innovation, and progress. India’s large youth population serves as both a workforce and a consumer market. As the average age of an Indian stands at 28 years (compared to 37 for China and 48 for Japan), the country’s dependency ratio is favorable for sustained development. However, unfortunately, in the last 10 years of the BJP rule, the youth of India are directionless. They are disoriented, and distorted, and they don’t know what to do. Millions are jobless, unemployed, and struggling to sustain themselves. Their future is doomed, and it’s a calculated design by the BJP Government to make them irrelevant…

One - by making education extremely expensive so that the youth of India will not get a chance to study and thereby won’t be competent to apply for jobs.

And two - BJP has deliberately damaged the future of our young generation in that they have not left any employment opportunities in Public Sector Units or Government Institutions or Industries.

Since the BJP government came to power in 2014, they have been selling or disinvesting almost all the Government-Owned Assets or Central Government Establishments and institutions to private sectors. To name a few, Bharat Aluminium Company (BALCO), Hindustan Zinc (both to Sterlite Industries), Indian Petrochemicals Corporation Limited (to Reliance Industries), and VSNL (to the Tata group), and many other sectors. Between 2014 and 2018, the BJP-led NDA government divested a total of ₹1,94,646 crore. Big-ticket privatization plans such as that of Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL), Shipping Corporation of India (SCI), and CONCOR are already on the back burner, and analysts feel meaningful privatization can happen only after the April/May general elections.

Strategic sales of a host of Central Public Sector Enterprises (CPSEs), including SCI, NMDC Steel Ltd, BEML, HLL Lifecare, and IDBI Bank, are in the pipeline for completion in the current fiscal year. And one more glaring example is the Agni Veer program, a short service commission. If selected in the Armed forces, one will be serving the nation for 5 years, and after 5 years, they have to leave. What will they do after that? Where will they go? How will they support their family? What will happen to their pride?

The majority of the Indian young generation and youth have been suffering and going through difficult times since the BJP came to power. Especially the poor, the middle-class, and the upper-middle-class India have been severely impacted by BJP’s policies and governance. The youths of India are left to their destiny and fate. No new jobs are being created, no guarantee scheme is being provided by the BJP Government for employment, no Government Jobs, no security, and no future. The data is out now, in the last 45 years, India has had the highest unemployment rate. Unemployment in the youth aged between 20 and 24 increased to 44.49 percent, which was 43.65 percent in the July-September quarter. Similarly, unemployment among the youth aged between 25 and 29 increased to 14.33 percent in the Oct-Dec quarter of 2023, which stood at 13.35 percent in the previous quarter.

Congress manifesto for Youth of India (Yuva Nyay) promises to empower youth by giving them equal opportunities in every sector and creating new jobs for them. It becomes a high priority for Congress to look forward to the development of the youth at first. Broadly there are two categories of youth in India, one category is the educated unemployed youth and the other category is the uneducated unemployed youth. Our Manifesto policy is designed to take care of both these categories and give them opportunities, protect their future, create jobs, right to apprenticeship program, right to education. Eligible degree/diploma holders to be placed in Government, public sectors, or private sectors. We guarantee social security for our Gig Economic workers such as part-time workers, freelancers, and independent contractors, working with OLA, UBER, Swiggy, Zomato, etc.

In summary, the Congress manifesto focuses on providing job opportunities, education reforms, and social security measures for the youth of India

Disclaimer:

This article has been penned by Irfan Aziz, All India Professional Congress, president of Secunderabad Chapter & Congress Manifesto Head from Telangana. The views and opinions expressed are his own and do not reflect the official policy or position of NewsMeter.