| | 8 May 2019HIGHERReviewIN MY VIEWIN MY VIEWINDIA NEEDS A PARADIGM SHIFT FROM STEM TO SSTEEMBy Ashok Bhansali, Professor and Dean, Symbiosis University of Applied Science, IndoreIndia is home of relatively the youngest population across the world and is sitting on the histor-ical opportunity to reap the ben-efits of demographic transition. This phase comes once in the lifetime of a nation and we must make a very sys-tematic all out efforts to transform this demographic dividend into an economic dividend. Realization of demographic dividend is not auto-matic and requires a well thought of policy framework implementation in the field of education, employment, entrepreneurship and essential ser-vices. If we fail to decide and design the right approach at right time, we may not get any benefit out of our de-mographic dividend and, even worse, may end up into demographic disas-ter. In order to fully exploit this lim-ited time window we must train and channelize the youths of our nation in the right direction to create success stories out of `Make in India', ` Skill India', `Digital India',`Startup India' and similar programs.However, if we look at the em-ployment and entrepreneurship statis-tics then the scenario is very dismal.Reports by Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (AS-SOCHAM) and aspire minds suggest that only 20 percent of the five million students who graduate every year get employed and indeed only5 percent engineers and 7 percent MBAs are employable. The International Labour Organization (ILO), in a report, has projected unemployment in India at 18.6 million for 2018, higher than the 18.3 million in 2017. In another report, world bank (WB) has warned India that it must create 8.1 million jobs a year to maintain its employment
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