Table of Contents
Empower the youth first
- To achieve/make Atmanirbhar Bharat, we have to enhance our citizens’ capabilities.
- Empowering our youth
- 2014 National Youth Policy (NYP): persons between 15 and 29 years
- In 2014, youth accounted for 27.5% of the population
- NYP report: Central government spends about ₹2,710 per youth on education, skill development, employment, healthcare and food subsidies.
- The total amount is pegged at more than ₹90,000 crore.
- Assuming that States spend an equal amount, the total investment in our youth would be under 1% of the GDP, hardly commensurate with their population and potential.
- World Bank: not investing in children and youth at 4% of the GDP every year.
- The costs of unemployment account for 0.6%.
- 2018 State of Working India Report: youth unemployment rate to be at least 18.3% (3.47 crore youths).
- About 30% of youth fall under the ‘neither in employment nor in education’ category and 33% of India’s skilled youth are unemployed.
- Further, around 50 lakh youth are expected to be entering the workforce annually.
- Following the COVID-19 lockdown, the CMIE estimated a loss of 14 crore jobs in April alone of which 2.7 crore concerned youth.
- These numbers, coupled with impending grim implications of the pandemic, have landed us in uncharted turbulent economic waters.
- India has just a decade’s time to seize the opportunity and realise this youth demographic dividend.
- Therefore, it is an appropriate time to launch an Indian Youth Guarantee (IYG) programme, akin to the European Union Youth Guarantee (EU-YG) but tuned to our country’s context.
- EU-YG emerged in 2010 at a time when youth unemployment rates were soaring above 20%.
- An IYG initiative, with statutory backing, can function as a facilitatory framework for ensuring gainful and productive engagement of youth.
- Not just another budgetary scheme.
- Young people graduating from college or losing a job either find a good quality job suited to their education and experience or acquire skills required to find a job through an apprenticeship.
- An important aspect of IYG should be to rope in the district administration and local bodies for effective outcomes.
- Existing youth schemes and skilling infrastructure need to be dovetailed and streamlined while leveraging industry to enable an in situ empowerment of youth.
- The Youth Development Index (YDI) in India serves as an advisory and monitory tool for youth development.
- It helps recognise priority areas, gaps and alternative approaches specific to each State.
- The index also packs a new dimension of social inclusion to assess the inclusiveness of societal progress due to prevalence of systemic inequalities.
- In short, YDI can be revisited and deployed to play a vital role in crafting a region-specific IYG.
Test by choice
- On September 4, India crossed four million novel coronavirus cases, 13 days after crossing three million on August 22.
- On Sunday, India surpassed Brazil to record the second highest number of cases in the world.
- India has been reporting the highest number of cases each day, which has been steadily increasing — from over 50,000 in the last week of July to over 60,000 in the first week of August, over 70,000 in the fourth week, before jumping to over 80,000 cases in September.
- Though the number of tests done each day has been over one million for the past week, the test positivity rate nationally is still high at 7.7%, indicating that testing has to be ramped up.
- Unfortunately, with no repeat testing of negative cases and only a small percentage of people with symptoms but negative results being validated with a RT-PCR, many of the infected are not being diagnosed.
- The ICMR’s latest advisory provides for testing on demand to “ensure higher levels of testing”.
- While ramping up testing is needed, testing on demand by anyone might not be the correct approach to adopt.
Vaccine Rush
- Countries and pharma companies are naturally rushing to roll out a vaccine for the disease.
- However, legitimate concerns have been raised whether vaccine development is being rushed to fulfil political goals and boost national prestige at the cost of safety protocols.
- It will put a huge number of people at risk.
- Several American pharma companies developing Covid vaccines have decided to issue a public pledge not to seek government approval until their shots have proven to be safe and effective.
- In this regard, Russia is in talks with India to supply, co-develop and co-produce its Sputnik V Covid vaccine.
- Moscow has been billing Sputnik V as the world’s first effective Covid shot, and received a boost from a recent Lancet study that said the Russian vaccine showed no side effects and elicited an antibody response.
- However, the Sputnik V trials have involved just 76 individuals.
- Therefore, India would do well not to rush to take up the Russian offer, invite bigger trials of the Russian vaccine here and then approve mass rollout if everything goes well.
Reviving the economy
- The numbers for Q1 will be even lower in reality as they don’t account for the informal sector, the hardest hit.
- For coming up with an approach to resolve an issue, the first step is to acknowledge that an issue exists.
- Living in denial might delay the realisation but not the outcome.
- Out of many, four key indicators have had me worried for the last 18 months.
- The Gross Fixed Capital Formation (as % of GDP) had been on a constant decline (except in 2018) between 2014 and 2019, falling from 30.1% to 27.4%.
- Developing countries generally invest heavily in fixed assets to increase aggregate demand and prepare capacities to meet future demands.
- Consumer demand in urban India.
- Exactly a year ago, domestic car sales were on a steady decline for nine consecutive months with a 41.09% decline in sales in August 2019.
- Even commercial vehicle sales were down by 39% indicating a fall in industrial activity.
- Weak FMCG demand in the rural economy.
- Data from India Ratings indicated that average real rural wage growth dropped from 11.18 % in FY13-FY15 to just 0.45 % in FY16-FY18.
- The eight core sectors registered a growth of -0.2% in August 2019, indicating that there was not only an issue with the demand but also with our preparedness for supply.
- Rural demand has been better than urban demand thanks to a surplus monsoon and a higher disposable income through MGNREGA wages.
America’s choice, India’s options
- World’s oldest democracy, the United States, heads into a presidential election and the world’s largest democracy, India, prepares for continuity or change in Washington.
- Even though there’s bipartisan support in the US for advancing the ‘Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership’ with India, significant differences in foreign policy style and priorities exist between President Donald Trump and his challenger, former vice-president Joe Biden.
- Through the lens of ‘America First’, no partner was a real friend and every country was an economic competitor.
- India was among dozens of countries which bore the brunt of Trump’s trade and immigration wars.
- It’s a supreme irony of Trump’s first term that he signed a ‘Phase I’ trade agreement with the most predatory economic power in the world, China, but hasn’t yet agreed to ink even a ‘mini deal’ with India.
- He initially took a hard line against Pakistan for its sponsorship of Islamist terrorism and cut off military aid.
- But later, he relented on Islamabad in exchange for its facilitation of a deal with Taliban in Afghanistan.
- Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’ campaign against Iran put India on the spot and endangered New Delhi’s geostrategic counter to Islamabad on its western flank via the Chabahar project.
- Trump did mount a belated but ferocious offensive against China by labelling it a ‘strategic competitor’ and subjecting it to a variety of sanctions and punitive measures.
- For India, a key ponderable is how would a Biden administration confront China.
- Biden’s vow to stand with India in confronting “new threats it faces in its own region and along its own border” is an assurance that New Delhi will gladly take, in light of its growing competition and conflict with China along the land border and in the Indo-Pacific.
- Biden will also look to build multilateral coalitions in the Indo-Pacific to roll back Chinese expansionism.
- The downside for India from a Biden administration lies in the liberal ideology of Democrats.
- The far-Left faction in Biden’s party has pushed him to believe that India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is worryingly illiberal and intolerant towards religious minorities.
- Neither Trump nor Biden is an unmitigated blessing for India.
NEWS
- New Education Policy will prepare Indian youth for new challenges in ever evolving sphere of Employment & Jobs: PM Modi
- President Ramnath Kovind asks states to organise virtual sessions to implement NEP
- Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar chairs webinar on International Day of Clean Air for Blue Skies
- Metro services in different cities including Delhi resume after gap of over five months
- Country as a whole so far received 7% excess rainfall: Secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences
- Bhanuprakash advocates for change in way Mathematics being taught in schools currently
- States mandated to set up panel on Content Regulation of Govt Ads
- Social Justice & Empowerment Minister launches toll-free mental health rehabilitation helpline “KIRAN”
- Plea for care of elderly during COVID-19: SC grants four weeks to states to file their responses
- Typhoon Haishen wreaks havoc in South Korea
- Chair protest in Berlin to underline calls to evacuate migrants from overcrowded Greek camp
- India-Bangladesh to hold Joint Consultative Commission meeting
- UK court rejects plea seeking partial reporting ban in fugitive diamantaire Nirav Modi case
- BCCI announces schedule for IPL 2020 to be held in UAE
- World No. 1 Novak Djokovic disqualified from US Open after striking line judge with ball
Download Free PDF – Daily Hindu Editorial Analysis
WhatsApp