Today’s rural youth would have to recognise their capabilities, only then they can move forward and become successful leaders in the time to come.

This was stated by Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship and Rashtriya Lok Dal chief Jayant Chaudhary while speaking as the chief guest at a zonal conference on the performance of Jan Shikshan Sansthan (JSS) at Chaudhary Charan Singh University in Meerut on Thursday.

He said youth in the age group of 15-45 years were associated with the JSS institution. “Today, it is very important to provide skill training to the youth at the panchayat level,” he said.

The Union minister said it was not only necessary to get a degree as lifelong learning was also very important. “Today’s rural youth have to recognise their capabilities, only then can they move forward and become successful leaders. Now, new technologies are in play in the agriculture sector, youth should be prepared for it. Today’s youth should be ready for skilling, reskilling and upskilling with a new thinking. Youth should take advantage of the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) at the local level. Our effort is to expand the Jan Shikshan Sansthan rapidly so that more and more people can be connected with it,” he said.

He further said that around 1.40 crore youth across the country had benefited from skill training through the PMKVY. “Not only this, through apprenticeship, today the youth are moving towards a bright future by doing on-the-job training,” he pointed out.

He said Meerut was emerging as an education hub and had the potential to leverage some of its micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) industries to boost job creation. “We hope youth will get benefits of existing schemes in the region and work with reputed skill and academic institutions as per best practices,” he said.

The information about the RLD chief’s programme in Meerut was given by RLD Anupam Mishra.