Youth Affairs and Sports Minister Vijay Goel has urged NRIs and PIOs to help India in channelising the youth power and create infrastructure.

Delivering keynote address at Youth Pravasi Bharatiya Divas meet at Bengaluru, Goel also sought their help and offered all possible assistance from his ministry for taking up socially relevant projects.

Goel said the initiatives of the government require active involvement and the support of all stakeholders. Huge investments will be necessary. The young Indian diaspora can play an important role in this ambitious task of building a modern and prosperous India.

“The Government has also taken various steps to facilitate this process by simplifying rules and procedures for the Overseas Indians,” he explained.

Indian diaspora has been partially powering the Indian economy in a great way as it had remitted $65 billion in 2016. “Keeping this in mind, currently we have set aside about 15 per cent reservation for NRI children in education institutions and felt that it was less.”

The minister has assured NRIs and PIOs that his ministry would speak to the Union HRD Ministry and in the coming Parliament session, the government would try to increase the quota for NRI children.

The minister said his Government is laying great emphasis on promoting enterprise and innovations to unleash the youth energy and to put India on the path of high rate of economic growth and employment generation.

‘Start up India’ campaign has been launched and a very liberal and attractive policy regime, comprising tax and non-tax incentives, has been created to promote start-ups in India.

Goel said India is one of the youngest nations in the world, with about 65 per cent population under 35 years of age. It is expected that by the year 2020, the population of India would have a median age of 28 years only against 38 years for the US, 42 years for China and 48 years for Japan.

He said the Indian youth have always been highly talented, hard-working and enterprising. A large number of young Indians have moved to various parts of the world and have made valuable contributions, earning a good name for themselves and for the country of their origin.

A sizeable section of Overseas Indian community comprises highly skilled young professionals, who have been extremely successful in their respective spheres of work. Indian IT professionals command respect all over the world.

According to Goel, his ministry plans to engage youth in developing their personality and leadership qualities of the youth by involving them in community service and various nation-building activities.

This is being done, inter-alia, through two youth volunteering organisations, namely, National Service Scheme (NSS) and Nehru Yuva Kendra Sangathan (NYKS).

NYKS currently has 8.6 million youth volunteers enrolled through 3.03 lakh youth clubs with presence in entire rural India and NSS has 3.66 million student volunteers in senior secondary schools and colleges all over the country.

"We also have Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development (RGNIYD), which is our premier institution in the field of youth development,'' he said.

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