The largest chunk of black money is distributed during elections. Our aim was to make India a developed nation. However instead of improving governance the Modi government has asked people to go cashless. They also have introduced lottery system to incentivise people for going cashless. Even though India’s population is rising day by day no steps have been taken by the government to control it. No initiative has been taken to limit the ownership of private cars, reducing pollution, easing of huge traffic jams, providing parking lots for cars and taxis, offering meaningful education, eradicating hunger and malnutrition, addressing unemployment, improving basic health services etc.
We could have built swimming pools for improving public health and sports promotion. Aamir Khan has done an efficient job to popularise sports among girls through his latest film Dangal. He has done good service to the society by pointing out the deficiency of coaches. It is the need of the hour to ensure that India have reasonably good trainers, coaches and teachers. There is no harm in seeking assistance of trainers from other countries.
I am fed up of advocating a national service scheme for youth between 18 to 20 years for enhancing their physical and competence development, and instilling discipline among them. If this step is taken, we will not see young boys killing a small girl for money in such an obnoxious manner. Despite this, we see PM trying to popularize mobiles among the youth, first for clicking selfies and now for almost everything else.
In this daily discussion on remonetisation and digital payments, we are forgetting that youth may become unemployed in the future. It is necessary to mobilise the youth and impart training to them so that they become employable. We are talking of eradicating black money without realising that it is wide spread in our education system, medical and engineering colleges etc. However the government has failed to take action against black money holders. Everybody aspires to become an IAS or PCS officer today. The other day, I was reading that youth are interested in project management rather than how to set up an enterprise and operate it efficiently. In other words, they seem to be interested in white collared jobs rather than becoming self-employed. This issue can be addressed if the government starts a national service program for youth aged between 18 to 20 years. In marine field, about 50 per cent of faculty have not sailed on a ship in the last 15 to 20 years. We will face competition from crew members of countries like Vietnam, China, Myanmar, Ghana, Croatia, Ukraine etc. Our ship building and repairing is still not up to the mark. I would like to appeal to the youth to work hard because there are no shortcuts to achieve success.
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)