Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said the country needs to focus on imparting skills to its young population in order to compete with China, apart from bringing revolutionary changes in agriculture and energy sectors.
“If India has to compete with China, the focus should be on skill, scale and speed,” Mr. Modi said after launching the book ’Getting India Back on track — an action agenda for reform’ at a function in New Delhi.
He said that the country needs to exploit the demographic dividend as 65 per cent of population was below 35 years of age.
“For this skill development needs to be a priority area,” he said.
Referring to skills such as teaching, nursing and paramedics, he said good teachers were one of the biggest needs of society, but rued that there were very few good teachers available.
“Can India become an exporter of good teachers who would capture the imagination of an entire generation globally,” the Prime Minister asked.
Mr. Modi cited the three colours of the national flag while speaking on the need to develop key sectors for overall growth of the country.
Beginning with green, he said India needs to bring about a second green revolution focusing on increased agro-productivity, value addition, agro technology, and decentralization of warehousing.
Mr. Modi said a white revolution must focus on increasing milk productivity and developing a support system for ensuring cattle health.
“Saffron colour represents energy — and we need a saffron revolution that focuses on renewable energy sources such as solar energy to meet India’s growing energy demand,” he added.
He said, in infrastructure, the focus needs to shift from highways to “i-ways”, and optical fibre networks.
“Cities in the past were built on river-banks. They are now built along highways. But in future, they will be built based on availability of optical-fibre networks and next-generation infrastructure,” he added.
