Pune: Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar believes that while the youths are the strength of the country, they are also a weakness as a majority of youngsters are unemployable. Blaming the education system, Parrikar said that while start-ups can solve the problem of employment, there needs to be a greater focus on primary education to enhance output at higher levels.
Parrikar said this while delivering the inaugural address at the Start-Up MasterClass organised by the Alumni Association of IIT Kanpur Pune Chapter in the city on Saturday. Also present were President of Japan-based Research Institute of Next Generation AI (RingAI) and Advisor to Japan for the Indian Bullet Train, Sanjeev Sinha, businessman Baba Kalyani, other city-based businessmen, professionals from the IT sector and students.
According to Parrikar, employment remains a prime challenge in the country. “However, the youths in the country are unemployable. The engineers are not getting employment as the base of education is very weak. Today, a Std V student can’t do division properly. There is a serious problem with primary education due to which the quality of output at higher levels is also impacted. The youths in the country are unskilled, and unemployable in large numbers, which has made it the country’s weakness,” he explained.
Citing an example of a pearl necklace, Parrikar said, “We as a nation have many pearls everywhere but the string to hold together that necklace is missing.”
“We have pearls everywhere but I think something is missing, the string which holds the necklace together is missing. I think that string is nationalism and there is a need to imbibe nationalism. One can criticise politicians but not the country. Until we have nationalism, the country’s necklace will never be complete,” he emphasised.
Parrikar also spoke about a new scheme for IT start-ups which has been launched by the Goa government in which the government will partner will start-ups by providing 50 per cent of capital requirement. “Government of India’s benefits do not reach the entrepreneurs directly and that is not how this scheme will work. There will be no interference by the bureaucracy in the scheme. A special team has been created to sanction and disburse funds under the scheme which will deal directly with the start-ups,” he said.