 Professor Rao, Ministers, Distinguished Panelists, Ladies and Gentlemen. We are welcome on behalf of the World Economic Forum. My name is Philip and I have the honour to welcome you. And I am delighted to announce that this is our first open forum in India ever. So again, we are welcome. As I know, the World Economic Forum is the international organisation for public-private cooperation. That means that whenever it comes up any challenge, we are convinced that there is a need for a platform to gather the platform for public and the private sector. And public, that means distinguished ministers, the governments, administrations and certainly also international organisations. And the private sector means first and foremost business, but also civil society, academics and the youth. So it's about you. And we do know that the youth is so important, particularly for India. We have 1.3 billion people and two-thirds are younger than 35. It's on you to take your own future in your own hands in order to create the future by your own. And that's the idea of today's session. We'd like to bring you together with all the distinguished panellists so that you can raise your ideas about your future towards 2022, what about education, skills, vocational training, but also sports, arts and culture. That is the idea behind, to have a platform for real interaction with the public, with the private sector and the next generation, the youth. And on that note, I would like to hand over to Excellency our host today, Professor Rao. And it's on you to welcome us on behalf of the host. Thank you very much. I think we are very happy to have the panel here. And I see two alumni of IIT Delhi here, which is a proud thing. And Minister Irani, I'm not sure why the room is not full. Whenever she comes to IIT, I thought there will be at least 1000 students. But I think probably this event was not announced for students. Or there are some minor exams going on. These are the very selective kind of an audience. But I think I'm very happy that IIT Delhi is hosting this event. And IITs, the panel topics, as you can see, are all related to education. And IITs have been transforming themselves. They started as undergraduate institutions. Now we are no longer an undergraduate institution. IIT Delhi, where 60% of our students are actually post-graduate students. We have something like 2500 PhD students on the campus. So we are now more of a research sort of an institution. But one of the things which we are particularly looking at, which is very relevant for this panel discussion, is how do we produce more job providers rather than job seekers? I think that is one challenge that we are facing as an academic institution. Because the mindset of students is you come to IIT, you get a job. They don't come to IIT to start industries or to do entrepreneurship. Though there are exceptions, but that's not really a norm. I think that's what we are actually going through now. We have started many initiatives in the last one-and-a-half years. We started a deferred placement scheme. We said if students want to start companies, you can take one year off and then come back and sit for placements. Even our PhD students, since we are a technology institute, since we want to encourage technology incubation for PhD students, we are now going to say after your graduation, you can try for a couple of years in a technology startup. And then if it fails, you can come back and continue and sit for the job placements and all that. So we are providing these opportunities for students. We want to see that more and more of our students start companies, provide employment. I think that has to be the job of institutions rather than the government. The policies and everything, they are all quite okay right now. I don't want to say that something needs to change. I think it's just the mindsets which need to change in the academic institutions among the students. I think once that happens, IITs will be a source of inspiration for all entrepreneurs in the country. And IIT Delhi particularly is doing very well. In fact, since two of our alumni are here, out of the 12 billionaires IIT system has produced, six are from IIT Delhi alone. So I think that credit should go to this institute for some reason IIT Delhi has done pretty well. So that's the tradition that we want to build on. And welcome all of you to this panel discussion and welcome to IIT Delhi. Thank you very much. Well, thank you very much for that professor. Thanks Philip and a very warm welcome. Good afternoon everybody. As a moderator, I could not have asked for a better topic because I think this is one of the more pressing issues that we are grappling with today. And I could not have asked for a better set of panelists and a more informed audience. Before I start the panel discussion, let me just set the topic and give it a little more context, especially when everybody talks about how India is at a sweet spot. We have a young population and yes, that is true because by 2020 India will be the world's youngest country. And we've all often, we've sort of parroted the statistics that two-thirds of India's population is below the age of 35. But take a moment to digest that number and I urge you to do that because when we say two-thirds of our population we're talking about 800 million people. That's roughly twice the size of, twice the size of the population of the United States, more than the population of Europe. And it's particularly striking because population in the rest of the world, especially in the developed world, are aging. So that clearly throws open a lot of opportunities for us. From an economic standpoint, the opportunities are very clear. It means more people are productive. Therefore they can join the workforce. More people in the workforce would mean more disposable income, more consumption of goods and services, which is going to give a boost to domestic growth. Some economists even say can boost growth by up to two percent. But more importantly, we need to be a bit cautious. I mean, this is a very simplistic sort of picture I have painted for you. I want to draw the attention of my panelists and the audience this afternoon because very recently Harvard University, they came out with a study and they drew a correlation between a younger population and political violence. In fact, the report goes on to say that youth often plays a prominent role in political violence and the existence of a youth bulge has been associated with times of political crisis. And the writer concludes, therefore it's imperative for the government to focus more on education, focus more on health care and ensure that economic growth and the economy continues to grow. Well, I didn't want to bore you with all that statistic, but just to sort of lay out the context for you and the basic themes we'll be talking about today is transforming education and employability, enabling innovation and entrepreneurship and empowering youth through sports, arts and culture. I'm happy, I'm just the moderator and I will not be taking any of the answers or questions to these vexations issues. So let me open the panel with Mr. Jain Sinha, former alumni of IIT Delhi. Must be good to be back, sir? Very good to be back, thank you. All right, let's talk about, you know, because Prime Minister Modi has painted this, you know, his vision is of creating a new India and that clearly has resonated with a lot of youngsters around the country. Talk to me about the key achievements of the Prime Minister Modi's government in the last three, three and a half years and the some of the challenges that you foresee going forward. Thank you very much, Ron. And once again, let me say how happy and glad I am to be back in seminar hall here at IIT Delhi, which of course, as you know, is where I did my undergraduate engineering degree and graduated in prehistory in 1985. So a very long time ago, but again, very glad to be here and very glad to participate in this panel and to really grapple with a set of very important issues that you're raising. And in fact, these are the issues that we should be discussing. These are the issues that really will drive our future, our standing in the world and the well-being of our people in the next 10, 20, 30 years and we should really reflect on those. The good news, I think, is that the reforms that we have undertaken over the last three years have positioned us very well to be a successful player in the global economy of the 21st century and we have undertaken a very deep and broad set of reforms. I have characterized those as reforms 3.0 and I think what we've accomplished in the last three, three and a half years is actually much more sweeping, much more profound than what was done in the reforms of 1991, reforms 1.0 or the reforms of Atalji's government from 98 to 2004. So reforms 3.0 are preparing us very, very well for the future and really I characterize them in three important categories. One, of course, is that we have formalized the economy through GST, demonetization, digital payments by all of the measures that we have undertaken. We've taken the, you know, by some estimates between 20 to 40% of the Indian economy that was in the informal sector and started to bring it into the mainstream into the formal sector so they're paying taxes. They can take advantage of digital payments, digital transactions. They can get plugged into the 21st century global economy and so on. So that is a very profound and very important set of changes that we have undertaken. Number two, we focused on being cost competitive and again there's a whole host of things there, obviously building out a very high quality world-class infrastructure, ease of doing business, removing, you know, the FTI regulations that were inhibiting investments so there's a lot we've done to make the economy genuinely cost competitive going forward. And the third area which is the most profound, most important area is that we are positioning India to be an innovation driven economy because we know that economic well-being in the long run for the 20, 30, 40 years of this billion strong workforce that we're going to have is going to fundamentally be driven by innovation and productivity. And so for us what we've done through Startup India, Standup India, Utterly Innovation Mission, the India Aspiration Fund, creating a domestic venture capital industry, these are the drivers, these are the drivers that will really propel our economy forward through innovation and productivity. And I'll close it on by saying the following, I've spent many, many years in America, 22 years in America, and what the American economy has been able to achieve is that it has become the entrepreneurial engine, the entrepreneurial engine for the top one billion people on the planet, you know, the affluent people on this planet. I think what India can become and will become is to be the entrepreneurial engine for the next six billion people on the planet because we are innovating our services, our products that are being developed for a design point that is uniquely Indian. It's 80% of the features that you get when you buy something in the US but at 20% of the price. 80% of the features, 80% of the functionality, for 20% of the price, that's India's design point, that is the affordability revolution, the entrepreneurial revolution that we've embarked on and I think that's what's going to propel us forward in the future and that's what we as a government have been focused on. Thanks Mr. Sinha for laying out the overarching vision of the government. Ma'am, if I could come to you now because you were the HRD minister and you've sort of seen the evolution of the Indian education sector from very close quarters and one concern that has often come up is about the quality of students especially at the primary level and perhaps many would agree with me in this room that there was a feeling that when India gained independence most of the other East Asian economies invested a lot in education. Somehow India did not. I think per year I was reading Uthkarsh article less than $2 million Uthkarsh, isn't that right? Do you think in hindsight that was a mistake for which we are still paying and how do we overcome this historical legacy that this government has inherited? I think in hindsight everything is 20-20. So to say that everything went wrong and to say that we are burdened with past legacies would be an understatement. Money is not the problem in my two and a half years in the education system. Money was never the problem. I think as Dr. Rao has said in his opening remarks the problem is also about mindset. In your opening remarks yourself you brought everybody to notice that when we talk about two-thirds of the population the number is enormous. It's 800 million people. Now how do you use that amount of energy in your country to help them become a part of the solution? In this very hall close to two years ago we started something called the Unna Dharat ibhyaan and we are told every higher educational institution and in fact IIT Delhi is now where it is instituted now where the fulcrum of the whole activity is we said that instead of us going and asking people to help solve grassroots challenges can institutions like IITs or colleges or universities look at only five villages around your institution take the technology that you are developing or you have access to and apply it only to those five villages and see how many people get help. I was recently told by Dr. Rao that that number of villages that now interact in terms of technology and giving them inputs in terms of education has risen to 1,000. Now imagine this is just around 100 institutes which are now working with 1,000 villages. Imagine if many of us start taking that route of engaging with people using technology as an enabler and making sure that they are resources that they can connect to directly. For instance, when I was in HRD we said that today one of the biggest challenges for children is access to resource materials like books or additional material that they'd like to possibly read. We digitized every book in the school system available to us. We also recognize that when you talk about medium of instruction people say especially in the rural area that I might have books written in English but I do not speak that language. How do I get access to that knowledge? We started a portal which converted every available English book that is fed into the system into a local dialect and 22 schedule languages. The issue is now that those structures have been created. How are we linking more and more people to those structures? And I think that is where the solution lies because the Prime Minister, as he has said often, is that to presume that the government only can make things work means that we believe that democracy fundamentally means I've chosen somebody for five years. They'll give us the solution and we'll see what happens after five years. What is significant about these three years is that for the first time we are having conversations on details of what makes the economy take details of how we can make our education system better. So we have moved from this paralysis in our democracy where people just looked at a political establishment and said well nothing is working we'll look at it and revisit our views five years down the line. Now with even engagements like my Gov people are coming forth and saying I have a view on a policy decision that you're about to make and if you take my view into consideration maybe your path will change and I think that interaction is something which is very different about this particular government and that interaction is not limited to education it goes beyond and actually touches almost every segment of governance. So education is just one part for instance we talk about innovation and Jainth is absolutely right when he says that when people look at India they look at affordable innovation. When I talk to children let's say in the 12th standard or those who have gotten into the undergrad program most of them said well if I just had somebody encourage me when I was in the sixth standard possibly I could have been more inclined towards science because when you look at the extent of how aptitude wise a child fares you will see that in science and mathematics it's declining so how do you arrest that decline? Niti Aayog started something called the Tinkering Labs and Utterly Innovation Mission is now looking at upgrading labs only from the sixth standard to the twelfth standard. Similarly I saw that most of the time when we looked at entrance into the IIT system 90% to 95% of them were men and I said what happens to the female population and we were told well in the 12th standard or the 11th standard people felt that it's nice to give these extra support to a male child in the family because the daughter has to get married and leave so if we have to send them for let's say some coaching why spend on the girl, we'll spend on the boy and that is why more and more women were falling out so much so that when I went to the center I found 75% of the administrative staff was women but the scientific staff had only 25% of women in it and when we spoke to female scientists they said well if just somebody reaches out to these girls possibly we can see some kind of an increase in the number of girls who participate in institutes like IIT so we started something called Udan very small we said those girls with the aptitude for science in 11th and 12th we will give you additional devices where you can study a 24-7 helpline we had IIT professors, school principals who said well I will take the responsibility of one child I have a phone call away from that child and every weekend when the child would sit for some kind of an exam or a competency test with these professors whatever marks they would get we would end up paying that amount as fee for the child when she would enter into the system of any science and technology institution and we met with 80% success in it so these are the baby steps that we have taken and this is not a step taken only by the government we have had professors stand up and say we will help and I feel that that is the way forward a synergy between government and people because ultimately what we are trying to fix is ours, our own country you know you gave the example ma'am of the initiative of the portal the mygov.in and that kind of preempted my questions I want to throw one more question to you and minister Jensen I want to throw it open to my panelist tell me you know I am rather curious to know because you know we have a young population aspirational information barriers are breaking down what sort of pressure does it put on ministers and politicians what sort of an impact does this have on governance? ma'am if you could start and then I I think one of the best impact I have seen is the response time by the government let's say even in an establishment like the IIT Delhi when I walked in and I met Dr. Rao the first question I asked was did the hostile food get better because the last time I had a student when I was in HRD who tweeted to me that ma'am next time you come to IIT Delhi can you just pop into our hostile facilities and I did and Dr. Rao was kind enough that was one of his first few days in the organization he went around and he now tells me that I sit there once a week I eat with the students I think that it isn't reaches out to you and then you respond not only as a government but also institutions which are not government per se but at least in somewhere they are associated with government I think that helps bring solutions faster. In terms of the pressure on a politician I think it's good pressure because democracy needs that pressure and the fact that our Prime Minister was courageous enough to say well we want our system to be under that pressure speaks a lot for his own position and how he's going to provide solutions to citizens. Mr. Sinha. Yes, Smriti is exactly right. I think that kind of interaction and the way in which that is enabled through technology through social media creates tremendous positive pressure and of course in my life either when it comes to aviation where we've launched air saver and received thousands of complaints 93-94 percent of which we have resolved or whether I speak as a Lok Sabha member and people are tweeting me about potholes or tweeting me about schools that don't have teachers any of those kinds of complaints we can now address in a much more responsive way, in a much quicker way. In fact I've been able to get both my DCs in Hazaribagh district and Ramgarh district to also be on Twitter and Facebook and they're constantly replying to people and dealing with issues as they come up. So technology, social media all of the time is very responsive, much more able to deal with what needs to happen in real time and in a very efficient manner. So I think that's fantastic and in general for us really again coming back to how we should be thinking about the future and what are the great enablers, technology is really the key to all of this because that's what enables you to do things in a non-linear, exponentially improving manner and we have to be prepared to leverage and utilize technology in every facet of what we're doing because that's where the innovation is going to come from. So with respect to citizen interaction fantastic but we have to really make sure that it is pervasive in the way in which we run the government and the way in which we conduct ourselves as citizens. So far we've talked about the role of the government and what the government is doing instead of putting the systems and structures in place. Firstly, thank you. Thank you for inviting me. Nice to be here in IIT Delhi. I passed out in 79 much before Jayant. That time we were using slide rules you know and in 78-79 we just saw the first Texas Instrument Scientific Calculator. Hari, I learned my programming on punch cards right here on ICL 2960. That's how old we are. So how technology changed in one year of my life in terms of slide rule to getting on the calculator. Ron, I want to raise one important issue which I deal with and since the subject is about skills and I want to raise this because of my own experience. 65% of India is dependent on agriculture and the economy of agriculture is only about 14%. So it's highly inefficient as we know the productivity is very low. We cannot have so many people employed in agriculture. So what we are seeing is a big thrust as industry or as businesses is large number of people who are coming from the rural areas seeking employment. The challenge that I see while we talk about technology and re-skilling of people who are already skilled but my major issue is a lot of people are seeking our first time job seekers. Their parents are laborers or farmers. They have no mentoring at home. All of us here, we are sitting in this big institution, all of us here had great mentors as our parents and they told us where to study, how to network, how to get admission, where to do coaching and where to get a job. And once you get your first job you are into the system. Then you can and if you've passed out of IIT you don't need any re-skilling. If you need re-skilling it's your problem. You go and find what to do and you will be fine. But the person he doesn't have any mentor, really. He doesn't have even soft skills. You know, we go into villages to tell people how to run a food outlet. Very simple. Now, they don't have habit of coming on time. They don't know how to dress properly. They don't know how to speak. So even the soft skills are missing because there is no mentoring. And I see that as a biggest challenge that how do you get the person the first job? And the interesting part is if he gets the first job you know, we hire 25,000 people every year. They last only with us for one year. Because after they they work for a year they find much better jobs. Then they are networked. And then they are able to skill themselves. They are able to think themselves because they have got some basic level of life training. Now the key thing, in my view, the biggest problem that the government needs to face is how to give the job to the first-time job seeker whose parents are not real job holders. Because very few people have organized jobs. Percentage of jobs in India is very small. Most of them work as part-time laborers or part-time farmers or part-time service providers. Now if their kids have to come into the job market and I think all that cannot be done through or skilling programs. In my view entrepreneurs who are giving them the first job should be the one rewarded. That look, you are giving this person whose class 10 pass because I am not worried about the graduates. There are issues there. They need to be skilled and better skilled and all that. But somebody who has dropped out of school and needs a job and that's the largest number that we are dealing with. We are talking about technology and everything. But technology, again on the side, technology is also a challenge because technology is reducing jobs and I can give you examples of it. That where technology is also compressing jobs. So we are facing double challenges today. You know, today, just to give you an example, we have 1100 pizza outlets. Now all the orders come online. So when orders come online, two order takers per store is gone. So you have 2200 jobs are reduced because technology is now taking that over. So we are facing double challenges here. So my experience has been that in India because of the such large rural population who will need jobs is where a large amount of focus is required. And I don't think that you can bring them to a higher level of class 12 education. You have to give them jobs wherever they are. If they are class 10 pass, we have to give them jobs. If they are class 8 pass, we have to give them jobs. And how to, and this cannot be done through skilling institutions. It has to be done by businesses directly. We'll train them and we'll give them jobs. Absolutely. Partly to support what Mr. Bhartia is saying. His observation, I think Hariji about industry being rewarded because they help, mentor and put them in a way structured, formal economy and pathways correct because in textiles we have seen that whatever skilling happens in conjunction with industry, we have had a success of 72% in terms of placement. And when I say 72% success in terms of placement, I mean that we call up that individual even after six months of being in the job just to check whether they retain that job rightly said that once you're given everything in terms of support after that if you do not manage to keep your skill sets prudent enough or important enough for your organization then that is an individual issue. But to support what he has said I have personally seen a 72% success rate wherever the skilling is done in conjunction with the industry because mostly once killed the individual the industry itself absorbs given that they for themselves see how well the upskilling or the intervention has helped. But textiles in other industry where you see that technology threat in terms of disruption is very severe. And I have seen that let's say a weaver their children do not want to weave because they feel that I don't want to be looked upon as somebody who is a part of a very drudgery should not come as an adjective the minute somebody sees me. So wherever to a weaver's family especially the youngsters we have told them that if you want to do designing of a particular old legacy piece why don't you do it on a computer those are the kids and those are the families that retain the art. But wherever the kids say we do not want to be a part of this and we want to move over and find another job that is where the challenge comes. So technology while there is fear mongering that will be a huge disruptor at the same time it has enabled in preserving legacy works in many an areas. In fact I will be touching about technology and its impact on jobs a little more deeply. But Uthakash you've been doing a lot of interesting work to change the mindset how we think of education and you also partnered with the Atal Innovation Mission in brief tell us a little bit more about the experiences you've had. Sure I think if you go and analyze just to three or four years ago how did board examinations in India were conducted? So once one exam one question that struck me was what is the speed of light till eight significant figures? A similar question asked in the UK was what is the speed of light till eight significant figures? Now this focus of what to how and why is where India needs to go. And I feel Atal Innovation Mission is a step in the right direction and now I'd like to draw upon the points made by a panelist on the importance of mentoring. Many times you want people to be able to combine their skills and figure out economic opportunities and educational opportunities and their strengths. Not necessarily because this is something that you should study. So one of the most interesting innovators globally are the people who are contra disciplinary. People who are physicists and poets, mathematicians and musicians. So my vision for this... Teaching a physicist about poetry. Yeah, if in fact Adam Grant at his book original talks about contra disciplinary people have it if you look at Nobel laureates at 22x improvement if you look at the Nobel laureates and what they study. Math, music, poetry, physics. Because you're able to draw upon subjects. So the focus from road learning and focusing on what through the Atal Innovation Mission and other programs that are being championed is moving towards why and how. Recently we had teachers from 25 schools a part of the Atal Innovation Mission come and learn about what are some of the best practice in the technology space that are happening they can include in the classrooms. They had amazing insights on the ground and once they were trained on technology, once they knew that they had support from mentor India, which is corporate world people from start-ups coming and mentoring in classrooms. The whole new set of possibilities were unleashed. Now if you look at the World Economic Forum's competitiveness report it ranks India at 40. If you go down further in terms of innovation we are 29th. In terms of education and health we are 91st. And if you look at innovation it's more focused on Bangalore, Delhi, Bombay. You can't have a localized innovation. So I'm here to make a case for a more inclusive innovation. Where there is a Bangalore and Bhagalpur. Where there is a Hyderabad and Harisal India's first smart village. And that can only happen if you shift the focus from what to how and why. And I think Atal innovation mission and some of the other programs are pushing in the right direction. In fact talking about the World Economic Forum competitiveness report I think India jumped 16 positions also. I think a year or so ago and therefore to manage that 40th position perhaps is not bad at all. Anu you are in a high-skill industry. Map my genome. What has been your experience like? I think when you think about the future and you say that we can do things the way we currently do. I think that's the first flawed assumption because I think we are going to be living in a world where robots are going to be more omnipresent. We are going to be living in a world where CRISPR will become real. We are going to be living in a world where sequencing will become cheaper than anything else. So I think one thing that is common and I think Uthkarsh brought that up also was that the lowest common denominator for all of that is the freedom of thought. And how do we develop a skill set in a country where we can actually get people to start thinking. And I think that is one big thing. Because when we started Osimum 17 years ago and Map my Genomes 5 years ago which were newer areas for the country at that time I think one of the biggest challenges we had was to find people who could start thinking in a completely different subject. So we are trying to say that you want to do bioinformatics, you want to do genomics how do you get people who were trained in biology and mathematics and something else because you now have to think beyond what you had taught, whether it was in school, whether it was in college. So at least my thought process goes that what we had to do was we got people together with different skill sets but we look for aptitude in terms of aptitude and attitude in terms of how they are going to solve problems. And I think that would be the biggest thing that we need to focus on because in the end I think we can make smaller changes by looking at what we can do in the next 3-4 years but if we want to solve the problem of our youth that is going to be you said the young youth dividend the problem is that we will also be living longer because we would have solved a little bit of the aging Nirvana problem. We would have also solved a lot of other things from a scientific perspective. So how will this youth be able not instilling them a way of how to think and what if. So let me add to that and let me start that with a personal anecdote. When I was running for elections in 2014 there was a newspaper article which said about me from Harvard to Hazariba. They said from Harvard to Hazariba because I had done my graduate work there. But they've got it exactly wrong. Actually the story of my life is from Hazariba to Harvard. And I think that is precisely the way we have to think because if we start with this elite mindset that we have to go top down. That the smart people, the wonky heads at IIT Delhi or Harvard or Yale or IIT Bombay or wherever are going to be able to go to Hazariba and get them to undergo a cognitive revolution friends that's not going to happen. We have to think the other way around. How are you going to travel to Harvard? How are people going to travel that journey? And how are we going to be able to go to the Tati Jhariyas and the Dadi Blocks and the Rai Barelys and the Amethis where Smithiji has spent a lot of time. How do we go to those parts of India and enable them to undertake those personal journeys where in effect cognitively they can develop. They can get to the point where they can do this advanced kind of problem solving that you're all talking about. But we have to start at the grassroots. We have to start there. We have to start in Hazariba. We have to start in Amethi. And then we have to equip them at scale with the tools, the technologies, the skills so that they can progress themselves. That is I think a central challenge, a central task before us. If indeed we have to equip our people with the soft skills which Hari is exactly right. We need to be able to equip them with. But we have to start there. We can't start top down. We've got to start grassroots. And again I think as I was saying earlier technology is really the only way to be able to do that. So we need to issue the top down approach. I think just to complement what Jayanth is saying, my own two years in HRD there was one fascinating report which came in and Jayanth is absolutely right. We have this thing that we will teach people in the village what to do. Fascinatingly there was an analysis done by NCRT in the National Assessment Survey and it was found that children in the district of Ratnagiri had a better aptitude for mathematics and a better performance in mathematics as compared to children from Mumbai which just through a lot of academicians they said what aren't the Mumbai kids supposed to be and the Delhi kids supposed to be smarter. So the only challenge which happened to these children who were doing so well in mathematics and science in the school level had come to a higher educational institution which is extremely charismatic in a city like Mumbai and Delhi they needed better resources. They needed in terms of aptitude and language they needed that mentoring as Hariji is saying and imagine if that is provided that bridge is built they are happier doing their little labs and their little tinkering items in their own village, in their own districts is just that they need to go to a situation where they can get those skills technology and other skills and just come back they are happy to be back is just that the discontent arises when they do not get that support in their own districts and when we are putting too much pressure in only a few centres in our country and that one academician then has to cater to 50 or 100 or 200 students and even that one academician then says this is too many for me to mentor so to taper it all out we have to kind of make sure that this particular effort as Hariji has said and Jayanth has supplemented is taken to the villages to the districts because they are performing very well academically we only lose them after the 12th standard and again to reflect on what Hariji has said for the first time in the history of our country this government when you talk about getting people into formal jobs ask any middle class lower middle class Indian the first question they are asked when they walk into a job is show me the certificate and if they have been in the informal sector using only their skills and working let's say in studying an ITI they never had a certificate to show so for the first time this government said that if you have gotten some skills through an ITI which is in the rural level and you sit for this exam competency exam you will get your 10 standard certification from that ITI you do not have to go and get enrolled we will take into cognizance the amount of years you have spent in the informal sector working so that arrangement that bridge has been given for the first time in the history of our country the only thing is how many people know about it and how many people now use that facility to take themselves forward some great points have been made and I want to we did this Twitter poll World Economic Forum did it and there were two rather simple questions and I want my panellists to sort of ponder a little over the answers and the results we've got so the first question was rather a straightforward one are you optimistic about India's future and 17,000 votes were cast and overwhelming 80% have said they are very optimistic and the majority they say they are not 11% say it's complicated it's complicated the other question what's the biggest challenge for India's leaders in the next five years this is interesting about 3,000 people cast their votes for this one and the response and the final answers and the results show that 37% feel inequality another 37% feel corruption is the biggest challenge 19% feel it's the environment that poses a threat and the leaders should take cognizance off and 7% believe it's digitization interestingly if you could perhaps ponder over this inequality, 37% are you surprised or perhaps that's also been one of the themes how we need to have different pockets I am not surprised because if we don't deal with inequality especially when our the largest pass of population is in the rural areas because the kind of urbanization has its own advantages it builds network it builds ecosystems and even for innovation or networking or even finding jobs and that's why we find there are hubs which happen in the urban environment whether it's a Tirupur in textile because people learn from each other because there is a concentration of people in that the rural area does not have that advantage but the largest number of population live in that part and they feel that they don't have access to that network and when I say network means it's a lot of things it's a very important supporting system sometimes you don't have your own mentors at home but if you are in an urban area you are in a concentrated area you get networked with friends, people around it and you see other people doing a job you learn the same skill and you get into that network so inequality yes, people feel that look these guys are rich they are the same or becoming worse and in my view in some cases it is becoming worse the reality is there so and this problem is not only in India now it's in US we are facing we are all living in the post-spickity world so US is seeing that because there is a huge inequality that is starting to happen because some people have so much advantage in terms of it could be technology, it could be access to capital so I think I'm not surprised and it is true Mrs. Sinha, you want to take this question about the fact that the government has played a huge role in slaying the corruption beast over the last three, three and a half years but somewhere that concern the fears still continues to linger in the minds of the people as the poll suggests I think the term inequality in this particular case probably hides many other meanings and really I think what it is picking up as Hari is saying is this whole idea of haves and have nots of course as far as the organized sector is concerned and people with stable employment are concerned in India that's a very small number of people everybody in this audience probably has expectations or already got stable employment so we don't worry about that but I would say that the vast majority, 90% plus of Indians is much more concerned about stable employment and being a have not and I think that's the whole inequality concern that people have and again as we were discussing earlier we really do have to think very carefully about how is it that we are going to get people out of the anxiety and the stress associated with being a have not and bringing them into secure stable employment looking at the world around us looking at the nature of jobs in the future the nature of organized employment in the future we may very well have a future where there is in fact going to be a very small number of people that have quote-unquote secure stable employment the vast majority of us will be in employment of various kinds it may be that you are a driver at Ola or you are an Amazon delivery person or you are an individual entrepreneur and you are running a beauty parlor and that's going to be the vast majority of people in work when that happens and if that is in fact the future what does that mean for people's aspirations and expectations because coming back to this question of what is it that people want in rural areas do they want to work in a fast food restaurant or if you ask them what is the concept of a job all of them will tell you I want to sit in an office and I want to have an air-conditioned chamber and maybe a computer that is the concept of a job now what is the actual concept of a job which will be able to deliver to them in the next 20 or 25 years that is the anxiety that is the existentialist angst that we are seeing in all societies right now not just in Indian society because we really don't understand with respect to the way in which the global economy is evolving what is going to be the nature of jobs what is going to be the nature of companies going forward and that too is in flux right now so we have to again coming back to preparing people for those futures making sure they are cognitively equipped for all of this understanding the big forces the tectonic forces that are affecting the economic landscape all of that is a very important part of what we have to prepare our young people for maybe if you want to comment on corruption especially because that continues to that is constantly coming up despite all the efforts the government is making to address and as Jayanth has rightfully said that the term in itself is a blanket term used for many issues so if you want to look at inequality and corruption together what is it that has been done in the past three years a very basic thing that for a citizen sitting in a village one of their biggest challenges was getting some money in terms of a subsidy or in terms of some kind of a dole which the government sought to give them and to go to various levels of government and administration try and get that most of the time the very effort would cost more than the money that they were going to receive so they would let it go now this government in the past three years has opened and helped open around 30 crore bank accounts of which kind of citizens citizens who genuinely had no access to a structured formal banking system that is 300 million people that is a catastrophe in terms of numbers of outreach that we have managed to bring formally into the banking system then the government said that well if we have to link we have to give them subsidy or we have to give them financial support why not take it straight from the treasury and give it straight to the bank account imagine we saved over 50,000 crore rupees in that much so when you talk about tackling corruption there has been absolutely no corruption charge about the government in the past three years but how does it affect the common person today the poorest of the poor know that if I need let's say subsidy on two, three issues on which the government said it will come straight from the treasury into my bank account then the first step the government has enabled me opening a bank account and the second step I am seeing that leakages and those people in the middle who had access to my money now have no access because it's coming directly to my bank account the question that one has I mean in the three years that one has possibly not dealt upon is that this is a humongous legacy of years and years of misgovernance that we are trying to correct now that we have reached so far in the past three years I am not saying we are trying to pat ourselves in the back but at least the numbers show the huge effort that has been made that it has been done only in three years of governance never in the history of our country the prime minister stand at the ramparts of the red fort and said let's build toilets for girls who go to school because we see that they drop out after a certain level and he set us a deadline of one year and everybody said this is not a deadline you can meet again we leveraged technology he spoke on the 15th of August 17th of August we had a website and an appeal to every citizen in the country we said the only way you can help us is walk into a government school right next to where you are living and tell us on our sheets your district administration says it works if it doesn't work, tell us they told us we corrected that information and in one year over four lakh toilets in government schools were built and we have seen we tracked those schools and the enrollment of girls have gone up from 15% even in areas like Chopian up to 20% that means change can happen we are delivering a particular amount of system now imagine as I said in the beginning that money is not the problem in education the education problem is focused concentration and approach towards finding solution if a government can help build in conjunction with states and various agencies with the citizen watching four lakh toilets in government schools what all can we do when we all converge our efforts together so when we talk about inequality as a woman yes the government can enable more and more women in board rooms but it's the corporate structure that has to actually come forth and say how many and what kind of women do we want to encourage in our corporate structures if a government says yes I am willing to build toilets and other infrastructures for girls to study it is for parents to decide how many parents even know that in a government organization a school management committee has to comprise 75% of it is made up of parents 50% it's mandatory to have the mothers of the children in that SMC so the constitution gives us the government gives us those rights how many of us use it that is the question that needs to be answered could that be a part of the CSR obligations for the private sector which I think some are already doing yes that is part of it and not only building toilets but even supporting like wherever our factories are we are supporting almost 100 schools in terms of how it can be managed better in terms of support because the amazing part is the huge investment has been made by the government on all the schools it's just that a little bit last mile work needs to be done sometimes create parent teachers association as you rightly said so the school starts functioning and if there are gaps in terms of parent teachers we provide that and I think most important thing is to use the government infrastructure that is hugely available instead of creating new ones let's get the audience involved a bit now so I hope there is a microphone that we can pass it on the audience okay so we'll do a quick like a you know quick poll inside the hall alright simple yes or no questions so I'll tell you and then you raise your hand accordingly please raise your hands okay that's 75% that's a relief and those of you who think it's not those who didn't raise your hands I'm guessing those who think it's not aligned okay great could I have a microphone could one of you please yeah exactly just hold on sir one second sir one second sir so could we again those who think it is not aligned politics is not aligned to the youth could you please raise your hands once again there were a lot many more raising the hands a short while ago but never mind I would urge now one of you to throw some light sir you were raising your hand first just let him answer and then I'll I think it is not reflective of the aspiration of the youth please and identify yourself as well my name is Amit Kasliwal almost for 4,000 years this country Bharat was full of entrepreneurs you know we were special we were our mulbell used to be liked in Europe it was just the period of 190 years of British rule that rogered you know everything in India it rogered our confidence it rogered all the export which used to happen so this is the background which I'm coming from all the IITs all the business school I also passed out from business school when do we think about going back to our roots you know all of us come from small town we study in IIT we study in business schools why just we look up to Walmarts and Ullili words for jobs why can't we take responsibility of our own villages our own towns and go back and so and so forth but why do you think so my sense is you know why we have to look outwards we have to look inwards we have everything we have ancient text books yes but sir why do you think the government is not I'm sorry to put you I mean just since you raised your hand hence I'm asking why do you think the government is not sort of representing the aspirations is there one specific example that you may want to give and I'll throw it open to the others as well then government you know we should look at how we can give real value to our community and he is not feeling confident does he want to continue how do we create ecosystem where we are cottage industries where local entrepreneurship is encouraged all right sir thank you I'll just give a very short response I think one of the biggest challenges in terms of governance has been let's say textiles which encompasses close to four five crore people we were artisans and everybody plus their dependence for the past when we came into office before that at least five years we have seen that out of the 40 schemes 22 schemes were surrendered without spending a single rupee which means that in a sector which impacts the largest amount of employment opportunities more than 50% of the schemes never saw the light of day which means you have five years of gap not only of applying ourselves but the negative impact of it another one or two years so that is a seven year impact which we have to now kind of turn around and bring some kind of a positive change very small thing what is a weaver need today a weaver needs access to some financial support through a bank and no weaver had any collateral to give so the mudra yojana that was started by the honorable prime minister we tweaked it especially for weavers we said that if you like mudra yojana you can't go to a bank we'll get the bank to you after ensuring that the weaver gets the bank support through mudra yojana we did an impact analysis by a third party nothing to do with government and we said tell us how much if any income generation has been you know positively seen in these families we saw that the incomes especially those who are already working went up to 60% so these are the interventions now in the next from 7th to 17th October we are actually going down in the next 10 days to establish clusters in the country we are covering 401 of them in the next 10 days just taking 15 nationalized banks to all these weaving communities and saying start a relationship with your bank they'll give you the loan you are paying back and the beauty of this country is the poorer the person the better they are in terms of their financial responsibilities towards the bank we've had 99% of people weavers and artisans the big plus because banks say your guys we give them the money they atleast have the decency to return it within a particular defined time structure apart from that 2009 2010 there was a census done imagine a big population not having education only 1% of weaving artisan community had access to higher education so through NIOS which is the open school and the open university ignore we have asked weavers why can't you teach us how to pay the fees so the government has decided that 75% of the fee reimbursement will happen by the government if a weaver and their kids enroll themselves for open school and open university so many such things but let it be said at least that we are seized of the challenges that they are facing I think you might have just convinced him by the look on his face very briefly identify yourself please be brief I am an entrepreneur and a blogger and I am also a part of a think tank which Utkar Shamita runs and my point is that firstly I want to compliment the government and the current establishment for everything you people are doing like I remember there were things which were made a joke out of that Rindar Modi comes on teachers day and our children's day and I really enjoyed it I showed the video of Miss Irani introduced Modi to my uncle in my childhood and not just us elites but everybody sees it but I think one place where the government is lacking and it's severely lacking is perceptions and perception management in the sense that recently I was reading about a situation where they are planning to ban tobacco sellers from selling anything else which means that all the grass fruits and shops will get destroyed now it's one thing to know it as a fact but it's another thing that everybody is talking of how much money the government has eaten and how corrupt the government is that they are totally sold so I once went to a barbershop in a Muslim dominated area and the conversation that was happening is something that if I repeated it will seem as if somebody has paid me to speak but the point I'm trying to make is that in spite of all the good you are doing you need to be much more connected to the ground and the government is relatively disruptive but many times they can be really spun around as being campaigns to crush the Dalit or the minority or the man on the ground and sometimes there are consequences in the past governments could afford to be less aware of the consequences but I think in today's world you need to be 100 times more aware because things like tobacco ban is a moral thing it's like a moral crusade but the labourer who smokes who am I to tell him that don't do it and end your day 4 hours earlier when he might be unemployed for the next 10 days and he wants to get as much money as he can so that he can buy atta and make rotis for his children so I think perception management is something which you people have to I think you're absolutely on the dot in terms of perception management and rumour mongering and I think that what is and I would request you the next time you are in respect of the mohalla you are in one of the most fascinating aspects of mudra yujna has been we always presumed and as Jainth had said that sab pade likhe log sirf sheher mein bade gharo mein hain mudra yujna 70% of the beneficiaries are women so imagine in India where the highest amount of the world's illiterate adult population exists you have women going up to a bank giving them their own business plan convincing the manager that this business will give me the money actually getting that loan from the bank and utilising it and paying back imagine that huge kind of a social apart from the economic revolution that is happening in our country and out of the beneficiaries the finance ministry has actually told us and Jainth would be better at explaining that 55% of the beneficiaries actually are from the marginalized communities SC, STs, OVCs that means there is a lot more I mean I'm grateful that you acknowledge what we are doing but in terms of perception messaging we can strengthen but at least I take heart in the fact that as a woman 70% of the beneficiaries in the banking system for mudra, loan without collateral is women that shows the potential truly entrepreneurial potential of Indian women Nusmiti ji of course is the minister for information and broadcasting so you ask the right question to the right person but in fact I'll say something else which is that generally when you read the media we are accused of too much perception management so the very fact that you are saying that we are not doing it tells me that we are kind of in the right spot some people are saying one thing and other people are saying quite the opposite so I think we see I think your perception management is wrongly targeted like I was once targeted on twitter by a specific CJP troll who is followed by the prime minister and he logged in as six different accounts to abuse me using the worst of words and I think I really think that the loose cannons are absolutely having been both Smithi ji and I have been the subject of much troll attack so we are very in fact I've had some people being very Mehraban from the Gandhi family so don't worry so that is something we have to live with in this age of social media hold on we obviously are familiar with that and I think we are kind of where we should be with respect to dealing with communication to the public at large but I want to correct one misimpression that you have been advocating which is that we are cut off from the unfiltered opinions of the people of India that is entirely untrue Smithi ji of course and I as well we tour the country extensively and much more than that we have a lot of people who are representing the general public eye as a Lok Sabha member and so on every day I meet when I am in my constituency thousands of people thousands of people and let me tell you just like you are completely liberated in how you want to express yourself shall we say they are equally liberated and they are equally forthright in their opinion so there is no filtering that is happening we are not closeted away in some bubble we are not talking to social media and through our own personal encounters every day are speaking to thousands and thousands of people and so that does give us a feel for the pulse of the country and you could speak to him directly on it I think he speaks a lot about the fact that we are not closeted somewhere we are engaging I think it helps us as much as it helps you tell us your point of view but as politicians it helps us a lot but talking about trolling I am actually am I not asking about jobs and employment and employability so you know let me throw it open to all my panellists and perhaps if the ministers could take this question first maybe I could start with you again I think we should ask the job creators I will come to the private sector they are the real heroes we are just here to support them but when are the jobs Mr. Sinha we should ask the job creators let's ask our job creators not trolling for yourself and for him I am happy to get started I just want to throw up recently Economic and Political Weekly came out with a study that is one of the cover stories this time where they have said that in terms of absolute numbers there has actually been a decline in employment in the last three three and a half years but the period in question is from FY 2014 and FY 2016 and then the study concludes this is possibly the first time it has happened since independence and I want to understand the government is sort of putting the structures in place the systems in place why is it not translating into more jobs so Anu since I think one of the things we have seen in the last few years has been the rise of the start ups in the country right so we have seen a lot of venture capital going into start ups and all of that now while start ups can generate a certain amount of jobs and I think they are already doing that and I think that is increasing by the day what is important is to be able to build the ecosystem between the larger companies and the start ups and I think once we get that and we get the right in place where you can say that you build these innovative companies and then those technologies are being then acquired by companies within India then I think we are likely to see a bigger use of those technologies for instance so for instance I am giving an example let's say if I am in the genomic space there are lots of companies developing certain kinds of diagnostics today right little amount of money goes into them but in order to make it scalable in order to make it work you need to have access to a very large group of people who can actually go and distribute that so I think one the reality is that innovations will be developed by a smaller group of start ups which are going to be able to create that but in order to really see a scale effect of that I think unless our own ecosystem is developed well enough where the larger companies find value in that I think we will not see what is that reality the second I think is that we are what has happened today is that a lot of people are getting their first jobs becoming a delivery boy or something else how do we get them to actually start moving up the value chain right so we got the call center happened a lot of people started getting into that about 10 years ago and that sort of created a lot of jobs for the industry today have we been able to recreate that for those call center employees and be able to give them something that can then create another set for other people to go in so I think one is to be able to create the right sort of a value chain for these people so that they can continue to go up but at the same time creating that for the other people the third was that I think today I was in a discussion on agriculture and nutrition and one of the biggest challenges and I think Mr Bharti also pointed out that 50% of our population is the most unproductive today in terms of you know if we take productivity per person so if we want to actually change that how do we actually make them technologically much more viable right so how do we get technologies like start-ups in agriculture or in engineering to be able to help these farmers become much more productive how do we move those farmers from doing what they're doing today some of them so if you from 50% want to go 30% how do we get that 20% to go into let's say ocean farming or something else you know something more exciting that they can get into and I think those will be the sort of things that we need to start thinking because we can't just say that it is one person's responsibility or the other we have to constantly we have to develop an ecosystem where each one feeds of the other and I think that is where I look at yeah you know because ma'am textiles today employees were 65 million odd people or perhaps a slightly more and you unveiled the textile policy about a year ago and one of the focus for focal points of that policy was to create more jobs I think one of the perceptions that the gentleman spoke about is absolutely ringing true today on stage we did not announce a textile policy last year we actually announced a 6,000 group package only for the apparel sector and then added additional value for the made up sector and the issue on hand in terms of jobs so seven years as I had said in one of my earlier answers was a period where 50 to 55% of anything related to textiles in terms of governance was absolutely shut down so the 40% or the 45% that persists is something which was only persisting because of industry effort now in the past one one and a half years in textiles the two three things that I have seen which has happened because we've merged our forces with industry India has never ever leveraged its textile and handcraft strength ever under one roof most of our countrymen were going from one country to another at least 120 destinations in the world to take their wares and say well this is what we have to sell and then we had the mercy of whoever's organizing that expo to find one little spot at the end of the expo and say this is what I have made in India and they would say okay fine I would buy something if you sell it to me the cheapest and we said why not then say that if I have a good product give me a good mock up or a good price that confidence to the industry comes especially the small players only when there is enough backing from the government and the 6000 group package that we did and then the industry worldwide saw the government standing shoulder to shoulder with the local industry we've had three times FDI now investment into textiles which is the first in the history of our country such a huge influx of funds only to ensure that the sector expands but how do you create jobs that is a question with which you began now when you look at textiles is it only to concentration on a parallel to a concentration on beginning from the grassroots for the textiles agriculture we are one of the biggest cotton producing countries in the world how do I create extra jobs in cotton let's say I have a hectare which is producing only 500 kilos or the international market is around 1500 so I have to introduce either new technology or new hands to ensure that aspect in terms of enhancing output from a particular set amount of land given is something that we engage in how does that engagement happen by setting up those little labs rural labs that helps that farmer to ensure that we have more output second aspect when you're picking cotton most of the Indian cotton the problem is that they don't get as good a prize as other international suppliers of cotton because we in some way or the other contaminate our cotton while picking so where does the skill set come in you have very small instrument which actually just sucks the cotton out which plucks the cotton manual intervention so you need an additional trainer that will come per farm or a set of four or five farms plus you have that instrument which is possibly designed by it comes around 3000 bucks so the company that makes that instrument plus trainers who come in then once that cotton is totally plucked you need to actually grade it nobody grades it we pick up that cotton we ship it out somebody grades it very well long staple shot staple and sends so these are the efforts and these are the steps in which we create more and more job opportunities when we get into textile in terms of apparel we have a huge capacity right now in spinning but in terms of apparel what is the thing in India that we can leverage we have a huge design capacity we have a huge legacy when it comes to handcraft are we engaging more and more students into that design capacity let's say today if you want to go and buy a handicraft how are packaging when it comes to that handicraft are we up to international standards currently our exports around 37000 crores but can we become better yes because if you package your way if you see a Chinese drum it is much better package so you might feel that my tantura that handheld little thing is as exquisite but we are not packaging it well so where do we get that additional job we get it when we try to inspire people why don't you get you know in the design school that the government pays for and learn new packaging concepts and you have additionality in terms of job at that level so from top down and from bottom up on the top level we are giving subsidy I mean I'm sitting in an institute of technology and I have repeatedly told the industry that the sunrise sector for technology is technical textiles that we call now technical textiles has a subsidy support of capital subsidy of 25% not many takers why because in a parallel it is the best business I say but technical textiles means that you have as much to contribute to ISRO as you would have to making a bridge or an airport so why not look at that aspect why not go into supply of medical textiles why buy medical textiles and import it why don't you do it here so slowly the industry is getting into that aspect the textile is not only about roads that you wear we have had as much a contribution to the industry that is the future IIT Delhi has a textile component somewhere and Dr. Rauran speaking how to bring that together so when we look at a sector there are many layers to that sector that we have to discuss and those are the layers where the jobs are embedded and tapping the untapped potential precisely what you are saying Mr. Bhatia all eyes on you you are the sole representative of the private sector on the panel the most part of the world the real jobs the most job creators are micro small and medium enterprises large enterprises don't create that scale of job and it cannot be done so and how do you and what are micro enterprises they are actually family enterprises so these are entrepreneurship which happens in every parts of the country now how do you create that ecosystem of entrepreneurship what do you need is partly risk capital how banks fund it we talked about interest rate today India is one of the highest interest rate regime right now so if you want to compete with Chinese it's tough because the kind of interest rate a small entrepreneur pays is today as high as 15% how does he compete to remove the inspector Raj how do you remove controls there especially at the lower level when you are a large organization you have an infrastructure to deal with all kinds of regulation but when you are a micro enterprise a startup and I'm not talking about high technology startup I'm talking about small entrepreneurship of any kind services today you can start services and that's how self employment begins so I think entrepreneurs will be the micro starting is micro enterprise which becomes smaller and then medium and then to large so that unless you feed in from the bottom you will not have job creation so what you have to see is if a small guy who has to create an enterprise what are his hindrances and that's where the challenges are the local inspector Raj the constraints that he has and you know the corruption from top has going down there is no corruption at the top but slowly it has to percolate down to the lowest level and say that there is no corruption and I think that will help a lot that will help a lot in terms of how you make it easier like we are talking about prime minister's biggest dream is how to make it easy to do business and I think that is most relevant for a smaller enterprise you know large enterprises have plethora of people who deal with regulation they can deal with it let's not worry about them but let's worry about the real small enterprises where entrepreneurship begins and the last point I want to make is in India we have a fear of failure a guy who fails we just shoot him down in America that's why that's one reason America is successful is if you are a three time failure as a startup you have a great respect because of your experience the fourth time you will be successful in India banks will kill you if the second time you come after failing second time they say you will never ever give you money you put your wife's jewelry your home your everything now how does he start an enterprise I think that's a big challenge so we must failing is part of natural process in our body cells fail and rejuvenate that's where rejuvenation will take place you have been working on changing the education system what has been the experience products of that of this new system that you are trying to create and their employability opportunities India is at the beginning of what they call the fourth industrial revolution if you go back and look at other industrial revolutions first second and third no industrial revolution has led to short-term loss of jobs one of the biggest fears that we have today is that the fourth industrial revolution will lead to short-term loss of jobs and I believe that if you go on and look at research done and in my practical example which I'll refer to right now is that each job which will be replaced in the short term will lead to five new jobs but in different industries cyber security the gig economy and I think that's what we need our workforce to prepare in so we need to do three concrete things in my opinion first is we need to focus also on the village village in India 70% of India is today in the villages I've been a part of the team that's built India's first smart village in Harisal which is now featured in the prime minister's book of innovation when we started work it was infamously referred to as the epicenter of malnutrition today if you go to Harisal and you look at there's internet people use payment apps to transact with each other there is a prevalence of e-commerce telemedicine digital classrooms there are skilling centers and what I notice is that if technology is an enabler rather than an imposition coupled with the aspiration of the village we really can catapult India and India can embrace the fourth industrial revolution equitably and sustainably second there is something called flipped classroom right where a teacher comes in not necessarily to do the traditional role of teaching and going back so I would like to suggest that parts of what the current government is doing very well is what you call flipped governance where in the government makes specific interventions and plays the role of an unblocker so instead of the role of my Bap Sarkar, I think the government three point over the Jan Sena Ji talked about and Spratidiran Ji talked about as well is that government really identifies and has a bottoms up approach and looks at what are the key pain points that people are facing institutions are facing and unblocks them and the third and final point is and you refer to that in the Harvard study, Ruananjir we need also a diversity in the parliament if you look at the average age of India today and the average age of the parliament in India today there is a huge difference so you need to create a context where young people have the ability to be civic entrepreneurs political entrepreneurs and what have you and then you will see this cognitive diversity, the diversity of age religion, region, gender and all reflect that women today contribute just less than 25% of GDP in India imagine the potential we'd unleash if we're able to leveraging these three points of focusing on rural flipped governance and diversity of all kind I think that will be the India is ready for the fourth industrial revolution that will be the India that you need for jobs of the future and that's the India that I personally am excited to live in 2022. If I could bring you back into this conversation talking about jobs Mr Bhartia talked about how India has a very high I mean Indian companies pay a lot of interest on their loans today the reserve bank met and they've kept their repo rates unchanged if I could request again your hat of the minister of state for finance I mean is that bit of a disappointment from the government's perspective because yesterday the announcement gave for a two rupee cut in excise duty on petrol so one thought that will give some room to the monetary policy committee deliberate over a possible rate cut that has not happened. Sure happy to comment on that but before that let me say something to what Utkarsh was saying. I think Hari and I will tell you that youth is simply a state of mind. So we can think young even though we may not look young we can think young. And that is what entrepreneurship is all about which is you have to think different you have to think new ideas you have to think innovations and I think that's really what is key for us in this economy going forward and coming back to jobs and then I will get back to the rate issue which is that you know right now we are going through a paradigm shift in the economy which is what I spoke about earlier also we're going through a fundamental structural transformation of the economy and that's why the jobs numbers which are sort of the traditional way in which we've been measuring jobs are really not a good way to understand the jobs of the future and what the economy is doing to create employment. As Anu was saying we have a lot of entrepreneurship in the numbers we have a lot of micro entrepreneurship happening as Smithi was saying through Mudra where over 8 crore people have got Mudra loans that's not being picked up right now as far as the organized sector is concerned that perhaps is not growing as quickly as it has but again in some ways people are looking at the wrong places every time a new economic cycle starts it's not the old industries that really power it it's the new industries so don't look at IT services that industries maturing look at aviation for example or look at what's happening in renewable energies or in medical technology that's where the new growth is going to come from those are going to be the new industries and the kinds of jobs they're going to create in e-commerce or in aviation are going to be very different from the kinds of jobs we have in the past that's the paradigm shift that's happening and we still don't have a very good way and I speak as a scientist we don't have a very good way to be able to pick that up and understand how that is happening but I think anecdotally and intuitively we can sense that we have to do a better job as government and of course independent agencies in really instrumenting it and picking that up so that is as far as job creation is concerned I'm very hopeful because I think the key drivers are in place whether it's entrepreneurship whether it's cost competitiveness, formalization of the economy, financing in many different ways all those things are in place now we have a very young, vibrant talented population so we I think we will have the entrepreneurial explosion that we need so that's as far as jobs are concerned now coming to a place away from the long term to the short term now obviously as you know that is the prerogative of the RBI I think as far as government is concerned we've had a very consistent position for some time now that we think as far as real interest rates are concerned they should certainly be competitive and exactly as Hari was saying if we have to compete with the rest of the world if our small businesses have to compete with China and other very formidable competitors our inputs have to be appropriately priced and if you look at capital particularly debt capital is a very important input is it priced at the rate which will make us competitive and that's where we have expressed our concerns and I think even if you look empirically at the data the data that real interest rates should be much lower as far as India is concerned but all that being said this is really the prerogative of the Reserve Bank of India they are the ones who are professionally tasked they are responsible for this policy and so we have to leave them into their wisdom and to their judgment as far as monetary policy is concerned Mr. Rani if you could comment on that comment on that hat very elegantly thank you my compliments as you know especially the time when the government is also trying to revitalize the economy one thought that the MPC would sort of have a more sympathetic year so to speak but that is not the case the government is sympathetic let me give you the government's point of view and Jayant has very he has been editor and what the RBI is doing how do I protect let's say my sector and I say my sector my weavers because I find myself very much one of the biggest challenges for weavers was that I don't have money to buy new implements because they're very costly and I won't get easy access to finance with very high interest rates what do I do we put them through a whole training process where you give them the soft skills the packaging skills and once they've gone through their training process we say you pick a machine of your choice you pick a loom of your choice 90% of the money is now given by government of India which means after we pay for it you get it home you use it you tell me this is functioning properly then you pay 10% of it only into your bank account that is how I protect let's say in my ministry the weaving community similarly the artisan community what is it that they need let's say to have more productivity they will say I'll need tools which are the ones which are the most financially challenged those in the minority community marginalized community the Vyangan women BPL families we give them tool kits free of cost that is how I protect that one segment which is under my responsibility so while the RBI does what it does best and Jainth is the best person to comment on it at least as a government we are sympathetic on these issues and given everybody's responsibility we make sure that at least in our co-sectors we try and protect those who are going to be most hard hit by it so even in the mudra scheme there is an intervention which is done predominantly by the textile ministry we also join forces let's say with the minority affairs ministry we have a lot of evers from the minority community they also give them that protection from heavy interest so that we absorb it as government ultimately I think from what Utkash said about flipped governments that is something which we already in part doing the prime minister himself on infrastructural challenges and projects takes a meeting called Prakati where through video conference he is connected to every state in the country and long pending issues are brought to a stable and every state then in conjunction with the central government talks about what is the progress let's say in building a national highway or building infrastructure of national importance what is the stage they are at if there are any challenges with regards to paperwork how can they be solved and the decisions are taken then and there and Prakati is something that he himself hosts so looking at the prime minister for instance I spoke about these 400 clusters in which we are reaching out we've had a conversation with collectors of 288 districts and we've specially spoken to them through video conference that this camp will be held in your district can you please ensure that you take an additional meeting with banks in your district so that the banks are present on that day so that is the level to which in terms of governance Prakati is reaching out and we are hopeful that with this kind of a continuous engagement at the grassroots with administration with the people we will rise up to the expectations Mr Bhate if you could also comment since you are the one who raised the issue of interest in its companies like you who have to pay for high interest rates disappointed with what the RBI did today if I throw it open to the audience I'm a bit disappointed because I'm a businessman I'm not an economist but of course I'm a thoughtful decision but if you look at the real interest rate if I look at inflation and look at the real interest rate in India is quite high because the inflation is in control so at some level easing is required I believe and for everyone for consumers because somebody is doing housing loan or buying a car or buying household goods I think it impacts the overall economy and even the especially the small sector I do believe because the impact is much more felt if you go down because the differential keeps going up could we have some questions then from the audience please be brief because we are really running out of time the lady over there the fact just one second the lady with the... Hi my name is Dhwani picking up this question from something that Mr. Sinha said that the flux of industries is uncertain right now where we will go especially in terms of technology and then there are two schools of thoughts around the world where in one school of thought supported by the likes of Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk say that developments in technology will actually take away the conventional jobs whereas there is another school of thought by say the likes of Peter Thiel who say that these will actually help so my question is how does the government plan to align the skill development according to the requirement when the future is so uncertain like I don't know whether as a doctor I would be expected to do surgeries or assist my robot or help feed data to my robot to do surgeries so how does the government I'll just partly answer that and because in this very institution we started a program called imprint which was dedicated to the nation by the prime minister and the president when I was in HRD imprint for the first time in the history of our country all IIT directors faculty members have gotten together along with all technological institutions across the country they've made a network and we have top 10 topics that were chosen by the faculty members they range from advanced science material science onwards to healthcare to habitat many defense many such purposes have been identified apart from a prediction in terms of what is the advancement that we foresee for the first time we've also complemented it with manpower planning we're still now at least little experience I've had in administration we found that manpower planning with a particular sector was never a part of our agenda at least in educational institutions and hence when you have a significant amount of resources which are concentrated on what kind of manpower and what kind of skill sets they need to have let's say 15 or 10 years down the line or five years down the line those are the parameters that we've already identified for the academicians in our country and the academicians are working in tandem with the industry so it's not only academic work the industry is also part of that because I think your director Mr. Rai is also a part of it I think Manna in IIT Kanpur was housing it so the fact that it goes from water resources to healthcare to housing to defense means the plethora of opportunities for us as a nation is covered under it the manpower planning gives us an opportunity not only to understand let's say what skill sets you need in the future but who are the specialists that you do those also become a part of that study so in terms of preparation for the future academically that is what has already been initiated in the year 2015 we've already done that and I think that out from that document then stems because we have connected every ministry in the government to that exercise so what imprint does is let's say we are predicting something in the petrochemical divisions in our country so imprint the academicians in our country then in tandem with that particular ministry sits down and says we need additional support for that particular segment for instance in open oil fields we never had students go and do research they were never permitted so one of the first MOUs we had with the petroleum ministry is allowing our faculty members and our students to go out and you know operate and do research in oil fields which I mean I was shocked it's never happened so many such thing including affordable housing and other technologies not only normal day to day but advanced sciences also is something that we have kind of worked on under imprint so let me quickly add to that do we as government know what skills are required 10 or 20 years from now absolutely not and I don't think anybody knows because the world is evolving very quickly but as Smithy has comprehensively and brilliantly articulated how to replace the system with the appropriate feedback so the system can keep evolving as we go along the necessary stakeholders are part of the system they are going to be continuously refining and thinking whether it is the scientific areas of inquiry or whether it is the actual HR the human capital that is required to support that that system will start evolving by itself and figuring out in a bottoms up grassroots way what is actually the role of government because we can't solve every single problem what we have to do is empower and facilitate and enable all of you as citizens as business people as scientists as entrepreneurs to go out and solve all the problems that we see so ours is really a role of enablement and facilitation to be able to remove the bottlenecks to expedite what we can but it is really up to you to figure that out absolutely in a VUCA world they say volatile, uncertain and ambiguous it is hard for anybody to predict what the future will be like maybe the guy at the back in the red t-shirt if you could have a microphone pass to him please yeah, yeah this gentleman good afternoon everyone my name is Jaigapal I am a student of 12 standard and my important question is I will be the future job seeker of the country or the job provider of the country so one day I was watching a Ted of Mr. Ernesto Siroli and he said he read something in the Futurist magazine that in the 18th or 19th century there was a discussion of economists and the most influential people of New York that what will draw the city of New York in the 21st 20th century and the panel said the city of New York will not be sustained until then because till that time you will be needing 6 million horses I mean what they wanted to say that we are not having sustainability in our future right now as the IT sector is getting saturation and the leadership which has to be worked upon it is not I mean what I have to say part of the country I mean they are not engaging leadership among the youth I think that I say it is very important what you have said that a gentleman that you saw on Ted read something and that is where the whole the whole issue is if you read how India is leading on issues of sustainable development you will be extremely proud of the what we have done on the international stage in terms of taking responsibility and having a leadership role especially when those so called superpowers left the field I think that is something that every Indian can be proud of but I also feel that the future of business is a business which is focused on sustainability so when we are talking let's say again I will come back to my Prime Love which is Handloom the Prime Minister learnt something called the India Handloom and the reason for starting that Handloom brand was because when internationally we had people or even for that matter Indian retail giants wanting to take up let's say a Handloom product we asked them what is the biggest thing that negates your desire to pick up something Handloom they said the colour bleeds and why the colour bleeds is because they said that you are using all these kind of chemicals and dyes and we have now a consumer base which is very conscientious how do we protect or how do we engage better with them now under the India Handloom brand we had a special segment only for registration of organic dyes and colours specially by people who belong to little you know these clusters or these villages where traditionally that natural dyes were made we have 60 such now registered colours and dyes and the fact that today because of that one brand initiative which we use the Prime Minister as the brand ambassador we had a Pochampalli cluster in Andhra and somebody you have you heard of the brand Biba so we told Biba we said why don't you pick up the cloth directly from the Viva don't have a middle person don't even have government nobody Biba picked up two and a half lakh metres of cloth from them and they made the last festive season clothes out of it so like Jain says that our job is to facilitate that communication between parts of the community and then how the community takes it forward is something that is dependent on certain individuals but on the issues of sustainable development and respect for natural resources I think you as an Indian especially as a young Indian should be very proud of the stand that our country has taken on that issue of you know ecology, complementing economy the red flag has been waved and we really need to wrap up this panel discussion but before we go I want to ask you know maybe I'll start with the minister then Mr Bhatia and each one of you start with Mr Bhatia then come to the minister's last so Mr Bhatia then tell me what I mean you know as a leading industrialist when you know when you look at the future what is that one problem that possibly keeps you awake at night is really jobs and I do worry about jobs because we have a very large number of people coming into the job market especially we have a double pressure population is one and the efficiency of agriculture which I mentioned earlier because that 70% or 50% of the people who are employed in agriculture it's not possible it's not sustainable so how do we absorb them and how do we create jobs to me creating jobs is the biggest challenge that we see when we work together industry, government cannot be left to one agency that's one thing that I worry about Anu so for me I think the biggest and I think both the young doctor and the 12th standard person both of you all raised interesting questions I think that the future we have to do a what if analysis and start thinking how do we get you everyone to start thinking if we can get our youth to start thinking if we can get our people who are already at a certain age to start thinking about what they can how they can tackle a problem how they can read more how they can do all of that right from the beginning to the end I think we would be able to solve any problem that comes our way so whether you will be assisting the robot or the robot will be assisting you I think is only a question of your mind and similarly I think they are going to be tectonic changes and there will be that I think that's a given and one must always constantly think that can I not become slave to technology but let technology be this thing so I think for you all there are a lot of more fundamental questions than we had when we were at your age but the good thing is that you have access to so much information and content that allows you whether it's stead whether it's any other thing but please I hope that the country reads more with cash you know through network capital and through my other initiative through the shape I realize that icky guy is what I'd like to leave everyone with there's this Japanese term which is at the intersection of who you are what you're good at what the world needs and what you can be paid for so this sweet spot is my you know my inspiration or for India 2022 who you are something that the Indian philosophy essentially encourages us to do from we are born we are a reflective what we are good at is something that the other innovation mission and others are trying to create like from a nation of told what to do to a nation that questions to a nation that innovates what the world needs is sustainable development and if you look at India's ranking in sustainable development goals rightly pointed out we've done a lot of work to make that ranking go up but even today we are 116 out of 157 so we still have in for 2022 a very long way to go but thanks to the current efforts we are in the right direction and what you can be paid for is essentially the future of skills which was pointed out the future of skills is there's no everyone knows that the absolute bottom of the pyramid and absolute top it's very hard to automate it's the middle that is at the right of automation so we need to inspire reskilling in continual learning through educational systems and informal systems and peer learning mechanisms to inspire IKEEGuy amongst the youth and amongst everyone Mr. Chan Sinha There are of course many areas for us to work on and I don't have a complicated concept like the one Uttkarsh just gave from Japan, I just have a very simple word which is education that's the one thing we need to work on Because I think if we can educate our people well, train them to be well-equipped for the future, to have the cognitive capacity, the ability to contextually understand the world and the big forces that are shaping our future, then in fact, we will have the innovation, we'll create the jobs, and we'll have a better future for all of us. So for me, the one word is education. Final word? For me, it is connecting the dots, actually. I think the fact that when Hariji speaks about job and he talks about the efficacy of agricultural production today, we all know that only five to six percent of our fruit produce gets processed. That is a huge capacity in terms of job generation, in terms of investment. It may happen at a larger scale, but it'll be more effective if it happens at the smaller scale. The government has provided those kind of mechanisms, be it through loans, be it through other initiatives like startup and stand-up. The idea is just to connect those dots. And when I say connect the dots, it envelopes everything that either Uthkarsh or Mr. Sena or Anu is saying. I think the idea is you cannot say that only this one particular compartment or this one particular silo is where the entire solution rests. I think in a country which is as diverse as ours, which has so many aspirations, people speaking, so many dialects and languages, the idea is to connect the dots, be it at the governance level, be it at the citizens level, be it at the community level, can we afford to let this time go by us? We can't. And that is why I said it's imperative that we all work together. Elections are fought from one year, one five year to another five year. But in between that, it is a time for the people to say that this is my government, which is the outreach that the Prime Minister is doing. One of the biggest successes is the Swachhata Bhyan. And that is not a vote bank. That is actually something that you feel for your own country, your own community. And you help try to keep your own place clean, free of dirt or free of somebody trying to spit at a wall which is freshly painted. That is a mindset. So it has to be connecting the dots, owning up that this is my country. And there are certain things government can help fix, but there are certain things we take along with the government. Swachhata Bhyan is one such aspect. It is not only about formally teaching people to use a toilet. It's also about creating that mindset that this is not a toilet, this is actually a Izzatgar that when you use it, you help give that kind of respect to the women in the family. You help give respect to the fact that they are health challenges which you will face if you do not use these kind of instruments which the society wants you to use. So I think it's ultimately education. It's ultimately also having to upskill ourselves, not only from the hard skills, but also the soft skills that we need, but also to register that there are gaps which can be filled with government invention, but with equal support from citizens at large. So a whole lot of work to be done, but directionally we are on the right track. Thank you very much to all my panelists for taking our time and actually interacting with all of us and a big thank you as well to the audience. Thank you, Ron. Thank you. We are the World Economic Forum CNBC TV. Thank you once again for joining us. Please tweet to us what you thought and give us your comments and we'll make sure that all the panelists, those comments reach them. Thank you very much once again.