Raghav Narsalay, economist and India Lead at the Accenture Institute for High Performance, underscored the need for the young generation to equip themselves with the right and acceptable skill-set to meet the demands of emerging industry and business so that the country's economy would continue to withstand any crisis in global economy.
Having performed better while many world countries badly felt the impact of economic depression of 2008, India should now rise to the challenge of sustaining this by taking advantage of its demographic dividend by training vast numbers of students into employable youth, said Mr. Raghav.
It must be noted that Japan succumbed during economic depression as it was not ready to face that challenge while India and China could stay afloat because of the inherent strengths in their economies at that particular time, he added.
Delivering a talk on “Emerging global economic scenario and challenge to India” organised jointly by the Mumbai-based Forum of Free Enterprise and Maris Stella College here on Monday, Mr. Raghav cautioned the students against taking a casual approach with regard to their employment opportunities in the coming years. During 2000-2008, there was buoyancy in industry and every student with minimum skills was absorbed, but the present situation was changing and the employers would look for far better skill-set now, he added.
Vital resource
Stating that the future story of Indian economy would depend largely on “skilling the youth”, Mr. Raghav said that the US, Germany and many other developed countries could taste huge successes mainly because of their focus on training their youth and creating a strong intellectual and scientific pool.
He asked the students to get well informed and stop falling prey to needless addictions like the Internet, as this was one of the reasons for erosion of reading habit. Without cultivating the reading habit, it would not be possible for the youth to get proper understanding and knowledge of any sector, he added.
The FFE director general S. Divakara said that they were organising talks by eminent economists by eminent economists and statesmen all over the country for the benefit of citizens and students. Maris Stella correspondent Alberta D., PG dean S. Subbalakshmi and others spoke.
