Employment, Empowerment & Education

India is young and restless and our youth has dreams and aspirations – and as a policy maker, I believe it is our duty to help them achieve their goals. To achieve their goals I think we need to focus on new politics. And the agenda of new politics is that the new politics should be focused on development oriented, transparent and accountable politics.

I propose the three key elements of new politics should be education, employment and empowerment.

An educated society is most important, or you can say, the key element for any nation in today’s world. If we look at the UNESCO figures in the recent report, India has the most illiterate aged people all over the world, it’s about 287 million people, which comes to about 32 percent. If we are looking at a stronger India, I think it is very, very important to have an educated society. To achieve that goal we need to work on 100 percent literacy rate, we have to make that an imperative. As a society we need to work on that  by passing a Right to Education Act.

You know, I have about hundred kids who I take responsibility to take them to the schools or enroll them into the schools. As a youth wing we tried to start a project called “Aao School Chale Hum” on Atal ji’s birthday, who started Sarva Shiksha Abhyan. We went to the slums and started a drive to educate people and create awareness and to start taking their kids to the school. I think it is very important, along with the education you provide them the vocational training, skill development centers.

I personally feel, not only education along with that, as I said, employment and empowerment. If you look at the employment sector in India, only three percent people are employed under the organized government sector, four percent under the private organized sector and 93 percent under the unorganized sector. So there is a huge scope to work in that area. If you look at the overall figures, I think we are adding one million to the workforce every month, and it’s a big task in front of India.

If you look at the corporate sector, the employees of corporate sector in India has an average of 28 years, whether in China it is 37 years, America 38, Japan is 44 years. So we have a large young population of work force available with us but unfortunately we are unable to create that kind of employment opportunities in India.

It is very important when you talk about the twenty first century; I believe youth has to play a very, very important role in the nation building process. Being the largest stakeholder, we must involve and engage the in building a new India, a stronger India. So that is why I said the three key elements should be education, employment and empowerment.

Anurag Thakur, BJP MP & India’s National President Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) spoke at the Salwan Media One Globe 2014 Conference, held at The Imperial in New Delhi, in February 2014.