Whom to choose?
Oly Banerjee, INN/Gwalior, @infodeaofficial
India being the world’s fastest-growing, one of the largest economies, having outpaced China over the past years, it ranks 39th among the world’s most competitive economies, “The biggest leap for any country”, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report 2016-2017. After the 2014 elections, and being ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party nationally, in 2019, its again the time of the year, when we have the responsibility of choosing our Prime Minister. Is the voting solely meant for conducting or appreciating surgical strikes, funding states, providing loan waivers? All these sorts of things are remembered by the people for a few days, but at last, it comes to what we do for our living. According to NYTimes, Registration for voter identity cards are up, among young people; one released by the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School found that four out of 10 adults under 30 said they would “definitely vote” which could herald the highest voter turnout rate for young people in decades around the world.
Let us face the hard truth, that the Indian youth had to suffer since the inception of first general elections in 1951-52. According to Local Circles, NaMo had promised 1Crore jobs every year, only 2.31 lakh jobs were created during April- December 2016, despite launching various schemes like Skill India, Make in India and others to propel employment. Albeit, India is considered as the fastest growing economy, According to American economist Arthur Melvin Okun’s law, no government in the world can sustain a jobless growth for a long period of time. Even for a moment, if we stop cursing the present government for this failure and give a thought to how we flourished during the UPA regime, what they gave us were NREGA, MNREGA schemes, where a person is paid a minimal amount, which was similar to first chopping off the legs and then providing prosthetics. Instead of making the young minds, dependable on a specific thing making them independent contributes more towards a developed economy. Notably, CMIE ( Centre for monitoring Indian economy), started collecting job data extensively only a couple of years back and EPFO payroll data started from September 2017, which means there are no concrete numbers depicting job creation during the Manmohan Singh era.
Amidst this political dilemma, the youth is really confused about whom to choose as their leaders, and to be genuine, our future is not dependent on the final decision of construction of Ram Mandir or Babri Masjid, changing the name of the states, etc. Employment is what they need, the government must have employment on their top priority. An employed youth has the energy to help keep the GDP increasing at an unexpectedly high rate. The youth now has the chance to select the right over the wrong and bring justice for themselves. Young people have the power to move the nation, in the direction they want. They can shape their future, but too often their participation is discounted or suppressed.
