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.