Youth Interventions in Mohgaon: Expanding Options

Helping the youth become active, creating opportunities for their employment, and getting jobs that provide them with dignity, the PRADAN team finds newer ways to train them in vocations that are not dependent on agriculture and that will empower them to travel away from their homes, find jobs and support their families

Helping the youth become active, creating opportunities for their employment, and getting jobs that provide them with dignity, the PRADAN team finds newer ways to train them in vocations that are not dependent on agriculture and that will empower them to travel away from their homes, find jobs and support their families.

A n economy’s growth story can be linked to its population in various ways. India has seen rapid growth in its population while the country has been trying to achieve a standing in the global economy. On the one hand, India’s growing population acts as a burden on its natural resources and infrastructure, and makes the implementation of rule of law a challenge. On the other, it is this very growing population that provides India with abundance in at least one very important resource—labour. India has the world’s largest youth population, making it a human resource-rich nation, and if managed optimally, this population can be a boon. With proper health, education and investment in human capital, this demographic dividend can be turned into an economic gain for the nation. But the lack of proper social security and inaccessibility to education, among other reasons, act as impediments to this realization.

An overwhelmingly large percentage of workers in India (about 92 per cent) are engaged in informal employment; less than 30 per cent of the workforce has completed secondary education or higher, and less than one-tenth have had vocational training, either formal or informal. Disadvantaged social groups such as Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), and large sections of Other Backward Classes (OBCs) are mostly concentrated in low-productivity sectors such as agriculture and construction and in low-paying jobs as casual labourers.

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