Envisioning the value of Youth, Investing in the Future

The theme of International Youth Day 2017 is Youth Building Peace. There is growing recognition that as agents of change, young people are critical actors in conflict prevention and sustaining peace. In countries like India they also form a majority of the population. As per census data of 2011, 41% of India is below the age of 20. India is expected to have 34.33% share of youth in total population by 2020. India’s economy may be growing more than twice as fast as the rest of the world but the story on the jobs creation front is just the opposite. Recent trends have shown India's growth story to be slowing down with India's rate of employment declining and creation of jobs not keeping up with the growing working age population.

As per the Chief Statistician of India, Prof. T.C.A. Anant, in the foreword of a report on Youth in India 2017 produced by the Central Statistics Office- Youth of the nation are the trustees of prosperity. But where are the mechanisms to invest in the futures of those trustees? What legacy are we leaving them to build prosperity from in terms of resources and life options?  Can there be peace without prosperity? Can something be built out of nothing? Does the promise of potential suffice as the building blocks for a nation’s future? Currently, more than 30% of Indians ages 15-29 are neither in employment nor in education or training.

Education is seen as central to development and to the improvement of lives. Census data has revealed, only 4.5% of the population in the country is educated up to the level of graduate or above while a majority of 32.6% population is not even educated up to the primary school level. Despite significant improvements in increasing primary school enrolment in parts, the MDG of achieving universal primary level education by 2015 could not be achieved. There also has been no concerted effort to transition further into secondary education, and vocational or technical training either of a formal or non-formal nature leading up to a smooth entry into the job market.

The failure of the system is more pronounced for young girls and women. In a country where roughly 48.5% of the population is female and 51.5% is male, not only is the skewed gender balance obvious the level of neglect of the female population is an active indication of its future. As per the Indian Human Development Survey, the literacy rate has continued to climb to 73% in 2011 Census; however, the gender gap has only narrowed slightly, with women still at literacy levels 16% below men. Literacy rates among youths age 15-24 were higher still, at 81% in 2005-2008, yet a 14% gender gap remained

Human resource potential of individuals reaches its peak in youth. So then why is unemployment rife? Why is illiteracy rampant? Why is there still a gender disparity not just in education but also in employment? Why is skill development in our country lacking in quality and competence? Why is investment in scientific and academic research dropping alarmingly? Why the jhumlas, the marketing hype and the light and sound shows around skill development and social entrepreneurship when there is no plan in play neither for employment of the skilled or newly trained nor for promotion of self-employment? Why is there no focus on technical and scientific capacity building which is what the country needs more to shed the skin of being a developing country and metamorphose into a developed nation?

How many housekeeping staff, computer operators, carpenters, solar installers, tailors, machinists, refrigeration technicians, welders, electricians, automobile and appliance repairmen, fitters, bar-benders, security, plumbers, salesmen, beauticians and manicurists do we need to train without gainfully employing them? What is the quality of short term training certificate courses that last from 50-350 hours providing minimal exposure, experience and access to employment? What mechanisms are in place to ensure training partners perform with due diligence. As per the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship website, PMKVY envisages to link the aptitude, aspiration, and knowledge of the skilled workforce it creates with employment opportunities and demands in the market.

Every effort thereby needs to be made by the PMKVY to provide placement opportunities to candidates, trained and certified under the Scheme, though till now there is no clarity on how they are going to go about doing it. Training partners shall also provide support to entrepreneurship development as per the Ministry's Placement Guidelines. The question remains whose job is it to create the jobs for the inadequately trained? What sort of support is provided for entrepreneurship development? What environment is created conducive to mass hiring of these candidates by industry?

There is still a lack of clarity on exactly how many have secured jobs through PMKVY and their training partners and conflicting reports show that half of all trained landed jobs and others state far less have been placed through training partners and many remain gainfully unemployed. Now that these conflicting messages are out about potential fraud enrolments, botched figures and poor facilities, and placements the focus seems to have shifted to self-employment and entrepreneurship. Supposedly it would be easier to distort facts and figures and assume everyone is employed if it operates under the garb of mainly entrepreneurship focussed training and the onus is on training partners.

Personal experience has shown that some training partners maybe fly by night operators sub-contracting the work to other agencies reducing credibility, increasing fake enrolments, faking facilities and capacity and documentation. If the scheme is genuine in its desire then it needs to review and evaluate the performance of Training Partners to ensure quality in terms of input and output and ensure they do not sub-contract the work and have the competence to carry out the agreed works, if not the chances of public unrest in days to come will be high.

The current generation of youth are the largest in history and young people often comprise the majority in countries marked by armed conflict or unrest, therefore considering the needs and aspirations of youth in matters of peace and security is a demographic imperative. Creating employment is essential to national health and raising those aspirations, so assuming a certificate guarantees they are all trained and that they can just take to entrepreneurship without financial assistance, adequate experience and support without access to a job is unrealistic. Can you as corporates be active partners in turning this situation around and encouraging employment, education, experience and esteem in youth?

World Bank has identified the exercise of active citizenship as one of the most important activities for a healthy transition to adulthood for both the youth of today and the next generation. The focus on youth civic engagement is driven in part by the assumption that young people if involved in and connected to society are less likely to engage in risky behavior and violence. Genuine CSOs have a crucial role to play in that area, the growing violence and incidents of unrest in parts of the country under various banners is the collective expression of angst that could be directed to affirmative action with adequate engagement by companies and local government through formal public private partnerships with CSOs and not-for-profits.

However in India CSOs and not-for-profits are being branded, monitored, and harangued and shut down for fear that their work for a better civic society might lead to exposure of the Governments inadequacies and inefficiencies. CSOs at grassroots level today are struggling to make ends meet, unless of course they are the big ones dependent on government funding, internationally funded or are affiliated to government or have been set up by ex-government officials or god-men. Giving youth a sense of self-worth, of identity, of belonging, of ambition, of achievement and of participation is as essential as giving them an education, employment or 3 meals a day.

What role can corporates play in actively supporting the development of CSOs and not for profits that work with and for youth engagement grassroots initiatives? By CSOs and not-for-profits we do not mean the large foundations set up by some corporate houses to siphon off CSR funds, or ones set up to build  schools, toilets, libraries hospitals and other infrastructure in areas just where their work impacts the public and the environment as a face saving PR measure, or supporting Government affiliated large CSOs and not for profits that again can take funds in bulk but often lead to the gripe among corporates that CSOs and not for profits lack accountability, responsibility and impact. 

Infrastructure is important but not as important as impact. For e.g.: You could set up a library but if there is no teacher to instruct in reading, there are no children capable of reading,  there is not method to the madness the impact is lost. Running events with inflated costing to write off as CSR expenditure like CSR awards, NGO awards, Excellence awards, cultural programs tied up with big named NGOs or Government affiliated organizations, and celebrities to endorse them or throwing funds generously into Government sanctioned schemes and media campaigns that lack credibility and accountability again does not at the ground level impact or improve the condition of the environment and our youth.

Invest wisely in the future of this country, for its youth are your potential customer base. They are its’ back bone; they are your potential employees. Provide opportunities to reap the benefit of the youth boom in the near future. Another reason for adequately investing not just in employment, experience, research and education is migration. Young people often move within their home countries as internal migrants or beyond their national borders as international migrants in search of opportunities. The majority of migrants stay in their own countries as internal migrants. However, as the socio-economic and political dynamics change, skilled labor and technical people move where the opportunities are in terms of a better quality of life, pay, health care, security, etc. Skilled labor may fare well, but for unskilled labor which still constitutes the majority of our population the situation might be dire.

National level unrest often has led to mass migrations to other countries which result in not just a brain drain and skill deficit in the affected countries but also cause deprivation to economy and industry for want of quality people. Unskilled labor often suffer the most in terms of exploitation in other countries and even in their own. Mass migrations will severely cripple the skill base that keeps this country running. It is an adequate reminder that if Climate Change is not tackled, as a result of famines, droughts, disease, etc., unemployment, and poverty will escalate in the coming decade we are very likely to see the growth of unrest especially in youth which may lead to migrations or crisis.

The point of this write up is not to rant about the inefficiency of misplaced adventurism that passes for ill-conceived and rejigged government schemes and/or siphoning of funds into closely affiliated entities without accountability or to scare readers on the doomsday scene we are already building as a narrative for our future with respect to climate change, but rather to get corporates to think about how they can possibly contribute to pro-actively create a fail-safe mechanism to rejuvenate the corroded system for the betterment of not just the nation and its youth but also for their own organizational growth. It is about envisioning the value of our youth collective, empowering them and investing in a sustainable carbon neutral climate resilient future.