Wondering whether India can “afford” such happenings, deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia on Wednesday said that incidents like the Jat quota stir or the JNU row are part of an attempt to take the country back by a “century”. Mr Sisodia also urged the industry to consider these issues while thinking about the country’s growth and progress as he underlined the need to inculcate dreams in young minds to prevent them from getting influenced by such forces.
Mr Sisodia, who also holds the education portfolio, was addressing a meet organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry. “The situation that we are creating in the country in the name of reservation and JNU... Through all these, attempts are being made to take the country backward by 100 years. Industry must keep incidents like the Haryana violence in mind when they talk about the country’s progress. Can the country, the industry afford such incidents We have to be concerned about that also. The only solution is to inculcate dreams in our next generation so that unscrupulous elements are unable to take advantage,” he said. In his address, Mr Sisodia stressed on the need to focus on skill development which will ensure employability of students. The AAP government is go-ing to launch 200 skill dev-elopment centres in the co-ming months, he said. He appealed to the audience, comprising predominantly businessmen, to provide their suggestions for the next Delhi Budget which he will be presenting in his capacity as the city’s finance minister.
He urged the corporate world to open its doors to students, especially those undergoing vocational training, and make them interact with the “best officers” of their companies to broaden the horizon of young minds. “Even in education institutions, we lag behind by 20-25 years in terms of emphasis on skill development. We have to make students dream bigger. This is where we lag behind and unscrupulous elements take advantage of that... If you manage to inculcate dreams, then the forces of religion and caste won’t be able to influence young minds,” Mr Sisodia said.
Former chief minister Sheila Dikshit, who also addressed one of the sessions, said that Delhi has developed although it has “not been able to catch up” with the kind of vision associated with the capital of a country.
She flagged the issue of “proliferation” of slums in the city, saying the rate of development of housing facilities for the poor was inadequate. “This is one of the biggest challenges. We had tried to solve it by building housing complexes, but that did not work out as they were located in the outskirts of the city where people did not want to shift as they were far removed from sources of livelihood,” she said.
