How to increase literacy rate among youth?

The best and the most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or seven touched. They must be felt within the heart-Helen Keller.

If it’s spring for the Mother Nature, then she has been kind enough to bestow on us the most beautiful phase of our life, which is often energetically proclaimed as “Youth”. This is the time when we dare to think of even gobbling up the whole Sun with our enviable energy.

This is the ideal time to sow the seeds of our thought. We all see through this stage of life called the teens or adolescence and understand the greater facts of life and gear up for the impending ones.

Our dream weaving looms now define that time has come for the testing of the weaved magic fabric. We blossom into mature citizens of our nation still maintaining the vivaciousness and vigor in our system.

Incidentally, our nation boasts of the largest share of youth in the population of the world. Statistics show that a staggering forty percent of our whopping population comprises of youth. Why do the oldies describe us as the future of the nation? Has anyone spared any thought for that? Any progress our motherland has to make directly or indirectly depends on us.

We are the ones to whom the baton needs to be passed on. What we are is clearly manifested by our knowledge, or rather the literacy quotient. This brings to my mind the wide open question of defining literacy. Am I literate? Is it the degrees we obtain in the college, is it the percentage of marks we score during our academics or in much simpler terms, is it the perception we hold about our society?

Is it the social and cultural and intellectual make up of the individuals? It was said by Winston Churchill that “The first duty of a university is to teach wisdom, not trade; character, not technicalities”. How well literate we are, if we are to grade ourselves? Literacy is the quality of education which we had that now reigns in our thoughts.

It cannot be isolated from our thinking and since we live with our thoughts, it is the way we live. We can be called literate with the manifestations of our daily life. Our perception of the world around us, our understanding of ourselves and most importantly the reason for our existence, if these thoughts are being given birth to and processed in our minds then we are literate.

It is not the years of schooling rat makes us literate; it just lays the foundation for the eternal journey cued knowledge.

True literacy comes into being when we utilize the facts we have timed in our thoughts and then live a life based on the concrete beliefs cemented from our thoughts. Literacy and education are the two inalienable entities for setting off the sail of life.

If literacy has bee: simplified, we shall now explicit how youth and literacy are related. We always kindle the interest in what the future is going to look like, which shows that we are anxious of it. We dream of the future we are going to receive but what is out there is the world of harsh reality.

Someone has rightly said that life is not a bed of roses. How true and sometimes painful it is! True because we are going to face the harsh realities of life and painful because the energy with which we are going to venture out will soon since due to the trammels in the path.

That is where the companionship of education and literacy comes into the picture. If education is our shield then literacy is an unbluntable sword. Ifs the rationalism generated are the two unconquerable arms that help us trudge through this magnificent journey called ‘life’.

This brings us to the indisputable fact that the youth of the nation has to be literate for the progress of the nation in the right direction. Ii the present scenario, our country is striving forward for prosperity but is confronting numerous problems at different fronts.

The baton is in our hands to don the mantle as a vigilant catalyst to this transformation. Our educated minds will help us understand the pros and cons of the ruling government. It cannot hoodwink the intelligent and patriotically fervent citizens.

Such thought processes helping directly or indirectly are our literate souls. What are we without them? God’s simple creation without the power to distinguish the good from the bad. Why biologist C. Linnaeus placed human beings in a higher platform or hierarchy of intelligence was because we had the power to think.

What would have been the shape of this society if we had no such power? A pitiable morbid decadence wonder whether this beautiful world would have existed under the rule of savages.

We have multiple roles to play in the society and the recent developments happening in different walks of life are a testimony to this statement. We have seen a new dawn of energy of the youth in the political machinery. Not to mention sports and business.

The Indian capital market and job territories are bustling with the energy of dynamic entrepreneurs we are everywhere from pioneering the change to supporting and able subordinating the senile backbone. Our nation has been facing in its road towards development, tough challenges like terrorism and corruption to name a few.

Don’t we have this moral responsibility and the sense of duty to act cohesively and fight against this menace by all possible means for the mother is looking towards her empowered sons to restore peace and morality in her? Youth today are not conservative in many ways as they used to be before; they are being swept by the changes of globalization.

Materialism and pomp have conquered their mind. This drastic evolution can lead to mental morbidity, where morality and righteousness will be crucified.

Fanatics from alien nations are hell bent, upon terrorizing us into timid silence while our own men involved in unscrupulous practices in our society are manipulating and exploiting us for their vested interests. In spite of being academically sound, youth are falling prey to the antinational forces and are confused to choose between what is good and what is bad for them and our nation.

Is this what we call the educated progeny, which is supposed to revive our motherland? Definitely not. This is not what we dream of being in life. What want to highlight is the fact that we may divulge into diabolic pathways. The recent terror strikes in Mumbai showed that the grimy hands, which were used to carry out these attacks, were the educated youth who were derailed from their normal course of life.

“They were radicalized and brainwashed by evil perpetrators with the help of money. On the other hand, we have outstanding examples of individuals who became scapegoats and had to lay down their lives sticking to their values and boldly blowing the whistle against rampant corruption.

We still remember those brave soldiers who sacrificed their lives fighting the jihad infiltrators in the Kargil war even before pocketing their first pay as inducted soldiers of the Indian Armed Forces. If we have to salute them for their velour and wisdom, we need to deserve that right.

The world has glorified the spiritual leadership heralded by Swami Vivekananda who ascended to heaven at a young age. The whole world demands Indian talents for accomplishing their tasks. The extraordinary alumni of His and top ranking management professionals from the IIMs have taken the seeds of our outstanding heritage of knowledge, learning and wisdom to far-off corners of the glove and planted them on alien soils with the distinctive strength of their identities.

The recent boom in the economy demonstrates that India is going to see unparalleled growth and unprecedented changes in the coming years and we are going to be the drivers of this change, sitting in the hot seat, changing gears for the unstoppable journey of prosperity. Our whopping youth population is a huge reserve of manpower. However human resource also goes waste, thus people can become asset or a liability.

I want to be an asset for my country, what do you all want to be? Definitely not a liability and I am sure. I am right. Remember Michael Angelo who said, “If it’s to be, ifs up to me”