Dr. Parveen Kumar
With the world’s population expected to increase by 2 billion people in the next 30 years, it has now been widely recognized that simply producing a larger volume of healthier food more sustainably will not ensure human and planet well being. The world today stands at cross roads with multiple challenges that need to be addressed urgently. These challenges include achieving zero hunger, poverty reduction, social inclusion, access and availability of health care to all, biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation. The deadline for achieving SDG 2030 is also approaching fast. This cannot be achieved without involving youths..

International Youth Day Aug 12

Youth are important stakeholders in the development process. They play an important role in shaping the future of their country. Nearly one-sixth of the world population is youth. India is blessed to have much large number of youth and this is described by policy makers and planners as ‘demographic dividend’ for the country. India’s working-age population is now increasing because of rapidly declining birth and death rates. According to the Minister for Agriculture and Family Welfare, Narendra Singh Tomar, presently in the country the working population in the age group of 15 to 59 years is more than the dependent population and the average of working population is on the increase. India’s age dependency ratio, the ratio of dependents (children and the elderly) to the working age population is expected to only start rising in 2040, as per United Nations estimates. This presents a golden opportunity for economic growth. The economic survey 2018-19 pointed out that India’s demographic dividend will be at its peak by the year 2041 when the share of working people in the age group of 20 to 59 is expected to reach 59 per cent of the total population.
As the United Nations turns 75 and with only 10 years remaining to make the 2030 Agenda a reality for all, engagement of youth is a key to make the objectives achievable and to make the planet a better place to live in. At a time when the world already has been confronted with many humanitarian challenges, emergence of COVID-19 has given a severe setback to the initiatives of global community in fighting these challenges. Studies reveal that enabling the engagement of youth in formal political mechanisms does increase the fairness of political processes by reducing democratic deficits, contributes to better and more sustainable policies, and also has symbolic importance that can further contribute to restore trust in public institutions, especially among youth.
Moreover, the vast majority of challenges humanity currently faces, such as the COVID-19 outbreak and climate change require concerted global action and the meaningful engagement and participation of young people needs to be addressed effectively.
History of IYD: The ‘Key Club’ has been recognized as the oldest youth organization formed in 1925. It began at Sacramento High School to contend against the negative effects of the fraternities and social clubs. In 1965, the UN hosted the first ‘Declaration on the Promotion among Youth of the Ideals of Peace, Mutual Respect and Understanding between Peoples,’ which promotes the development of youth. The idea to celebrate International Youth Day was first proposed in 1991. Keeping in view the importance and the role of youth in shaping modern economies, the United Nations vide its resolution 54/120 endorsed the recommendation made by the World Conference of Ministers Responsible for Youth at Lisbon (Aug. 8-12) that August 12 be celebrated as International Youth Day all over the globe. The first day was celebrated in the year 1999. The day further aims to bring youth issues to the attention of the international community and to celebrate the potential of youth as active partners in the global society. The United Nations assembly also recommended that public information activities be organized to support the Day as a way to promote better awareness of the World Programme of Action for Youth.
Theme :
Every year the International Youth Day is celebrated with different themes. The theme of International Youth Day 2021 is, ‘Transforming Food Systems: Youth Innovation for Human and Planetary Health’, with the aim of highlighting that the success of such a global effort will not be achieved without the meaningful participation of young people. The aim is to highlight the ways in which the engagement of young people at the local, national and global levels is enriching national and multilateral institutions and processes, as well as draw lessons on how their representation and engagement in formal institutional politics can be significantly enhanced.
Engaging youth for transforming food systems:
For ensuring food and nutritional security of all, the participation of youth in this noble profession is must. Youth have the ability to adopt new concepts, ideas, technologies and various interventions which are vital for augmenting food production. They have the potential to transform our traditional food systems which are chemical intensive and not eco-friendly to more sustainable and inclusive ones. Unfortunately, youth are not attracted to agriculture, because it is not considered as a profitable enterprise. Some major lacunas holding back the youth from joining agriculture include low profitability due to high cost of inputs, access to land, lack of credit facilities, interest, inadequate marketing facilities, lack of specific skills and training. With lots of risk in terms of climatic uncertainties and physical labour involved, the youth mostly divert to other job opportunities in the cities increasing the number of migration and unemployed each year. It is also true that knowledge and skill are the driving force of socio-economic development of a country. If skilled youth are available in the country, there will be no shortage of skilled manpower for the agriculture, industries, factories and other manufacturing units. All this will definitely boost productivity. With demographic dividend favoring India and with a greater emphasis on skill development and entrepreneurship, the country has the potential to become the world skill capital.
To tap the potential of this demographic dividend, it is essential to skill our youths so that their energy can be channelized constructively and productively. The present government under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is focusing more on skill development of Youth. For this many programmes have been launched and many policies have been made to promote youth in agriculture. A different Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSD&E) has been created and entrusted with the task of skilling India. The government has set up the National Skill Development Corporation to provide skill related training to 500 million individuals by 2022. For this, the government is also promoting private sector in skill training programmes besides providing funds for them. The Pradhan Mantri Koushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) is an important programme in this direction. Skill Training of Rural Youth aims to skill rural youth in different activities like vermi compost, mushroom, cutting and tailoring, processing and value addition and this is being done through KVKs. The government’s prestigious Start-up programme has also revolutionized the agriculture sector; with the necessary skills, credit facilities and hand holding by Agri-business incubators set up across different universities in the country, many youths have come forward to set their own agriculture related enterprises and become job providers instead of job seekers. These steps have restored the faith of youth in agriculture as remunerative and attractive enterprise.
At such a critical time, when the COVID-19 has hit hard the agriculture sector by disrupting the supply chain food systems, the International Youth Day reinforces our commitment for engaging youth in this vital sector to transform it to a more sustainable, profitable and remunerative one by practicing and advocating policies and programmes that have a profound effect of this noble profession and that demonstrate their resilience, collective action and creativity in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Youths have now been duly acknowledged for the efforts they play. There is a need to further create inclusive support mechanisms that ensure youth continue to amplify efforts collectively and individually to restore the planet and protect life, while integrating biodiversity in the transformation of food systems.
(The author is a Scientist at KVK-Leh; can be reached at pkumar6674@gmail.com)

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