Azaadi ka amrit kaal: Initiatives to transform aspirations into reality

India’s biggest aspiration in the coming 25 years is to attain ‘aatmanirbharta’, or self-reliance. Today, we have the largest population of youth in the world, who can drive these aspirations. The 26 crore children in schools today will assume these responsibilities soon. It is imperative to ensure that they are equipped with the right skills to succeed in the contemporary 21st century order. With this resolve, the National Education Policy (NEP) was launched in 2020 - India’s third education policy launched after a period of 34 years, with an overarching vision of increasing the expenditure in education to 6% of the GDP.

The dynamic NEP 2020 takes a quality-centric outlook towards imparting education. The policy suggests several innovative reforms such as formalising early childhood education, multilingualism, no hard separation between streams, usage of technology to enable access to learning, skill development and so on. However, what truly sets it apart are the interventions to improve the quality of education such as competency-based assessments, play and activity-based learning, and focusing on Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN). The latter has been given top priority in the policy, as FLN skills consist of critical gateway skills which will enable higher order learning and understanding. The policy estimates that over 5 crore children in India do not have FLN skills, and to solve for the same, the National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy (NIPUN) Bharat Mission was launched in July 2021 at a cost of ₹13,000 crore, with the objective of ensuring universal acquisition of FLN skills among all grade 3 children in India by 2026/27.

Even beyond the foundational level in education, there has been an emphasis on upskilling youth to enhance their employability. Creating a link between education and practical real-life skills of children in India, Skill India Mission and Kaushal Vikas Yojana were launched in 2015 and 2018 respectively, and since then, have played a pivotal role in achieving this vision. Over 2.9 crore candidates have been skilled through these schemes to date and have been trained in useful, practical skills for gainful employment.

Through schemes such as Start-Up India, launched in 2016, we have taken significant steps towards becoming a hub of innovation and prosperity. In 2021-22, Indian start-ups raised a record 35 billion dollars, and in 2022-23 followed with 24 billion dollars of funding and today, India has the 2nd largest ecosystem of entrepreneurs in the world. PM Narendra Modi rightly said, our future generations should be the world’s leading ‘job creators’, and our work in skill development has laid a solid base for the same.

As India forges ahead on the path to global superpower status, PM’s leadership has been pivotal. The data-backed achievements in critical sectors mirror our preparedness to embrace a prominent global role. According to the United Nations Development Programme, through her welfare policies, India managed to uplift over 41.5 crore Indians out of multidimensional poverty in the last 15 years (UNDP, 2023), which is a commendable achievement.

However, the general sentiment is that such achievements are only the tip of the iceberg, and only a small showcase of the actual potential of Indians. As we enter the "azaadi ka amrit kaal," these accomplishments serve as building blocks to pave the way for a resilient, empowered, and influential India. As we stride toward our aspirations, on our 77th Independence Day, we affirm our goal of supplementing the economic growth in amrit kaal with social welfare for all, and no one is left behind in our diverse and expansive population, which constitutes the true wealth of the country.

This article is authored by Jagdambika Pal, Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha, and chairperson, Parliamentary Standing Committee on Energy.