“Young India wants jobs more than temples… For most of us, a good education was the passport out of poverty into the middle or affluent class. Now, a young person with a college degree is NINE times as likely to be unemployed as her illiterate counterpart, according to an ILO report. This indicates both the quality of degrees as well as the low-end nature of work that is available.”
Ravi Venkatesan, co-founder, Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship on solving India’s unemployment problem (Times of India, June 9)
“Programmes like Atal Tinkering Labs, Start-up India and Stand-up India have helped improve the capacity of youth of the country. It is due to these efforts that today India has become the third largest start-up ecosystem in the world… Earlier, students who studied in Indian languages faced an unfair situation. With the implementation of the new National Education Policy, my government has been able to remove this injustice. Now students can take up engineering courses in Indian languages.”
President Droupadi Murmu in her joint address to the 18th Lok Sabha (PTI, June 27)
“It was agony to watch a befuddled old man struggling to recall words and facts. His inability to land an argument against a weak opponent was dispiriting.”
Editorial on President Biden’s performance in the first presidential debate with Donald Trump (The Economist, July 4)
“In the 2024 summer triumph, all that Labour leader Keir Starmer has had to do is be banal, avoid the curse of a self-goal, and accuse Sunak of being out of touch, which has the merit of being true. Rishi Sunak is out of line, out of reach, out of depth, out of ideas, and by the end of this week will be out of time.”
M.J. Akbar, author-columnist, on the British elections in which Rishi Sunak-led Conservatives lost (Open, July 5)
