Skip to content- Youth in Numbers:
- Youth aged between 15 and 24 years accounted for 16% of the world’s population in 2019.
- Young people were concentrated in Asia, Central and Southern Asia with 361 million youth and Eastern and South-Eastern Asia with 307 million youth, followed by sub-Saharan Africa (211 million youth).
- The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimated that 440 million youth from the African continent would enter the labour market between 2015 and 2030.
Indian Scenario
- Youth in Numbers:
- The youth (18-29 years) constitute 22% of India’s population, which is more than 261 million people.
- According to the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, the median age of Indian population is around 28 years in 2021 and will become 31 years by 2031.
- India is also going through the stage of demographic dividend.
- Hardly 5% of the youth are engaged in agriculture though over 60% of the rural people derive their livelihood fully or partly from farming and its related activities.
- Clearly, the modern youth are disenchanted with agriculture and are shunning it as a profession.
- Related Initiatives:
- MAYA Roadmap, 2018: This was formulated in a conference in New Delhi on “Motivating and Attracting Youth in Agriculture” (MAYA).
- The MAYA road map envisages offering the youth a variety of avenues and opportunities for economic growth, social respect and application of modern technologies in farming and allied activities.
- ARYA (Attracting and Retaining Youth in Agriculture): Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has initiated this programme. Following are its Objectives:
- To attract and empower the Youth in Rural Areas to take up various Agriculture, allied and service sectors.
- To enable the Farm Youth to establish network groups to take up resource and capital intensive activities like processing, value addition and marketing.
- National Policy for Farmers, 2007: To introduce measures which can help attract and retain youths in farming and processing of farm products for higher value addition by making it intellectually stimulating and economically rewarding.
