The youth who make 65% of the population will make India the driving force of the world economy, but only if they are equipped to grab the opportunities.

The country, however, has not been doing a good job of it so far, Shashi Tharoor, MP, has said.

The programme was organised by the International Foundation for Futuristic Education and Research.

Mr. Tharoor said the country produced 5 lakh graduate engineers a year, but 62% of them ended up in jobs that did not require an engineering degree. The reason was that engineering colleges were not geared towards market needs and the gap between skills needed and those practised was wide. There was need for greater interface between academia and the industry, he said.

Quoting another study, he said that by 2030, 30% of the jobs in the world would be those that did not exist today. Consequently, youth would find themselves looking for jobs that did not exist now. Rather than focus on rote learning, it was imperative to train the mind to deal with unfamiliar problems and facts and find solutions for them. There was a need to be on the cutting edge of technology by utilising the skills and talents of the youth and providing them an ecosystem to make things better and cheaper in the country, he said.

In an interaction with school students, Mr. Tharoor said the study of humanities was indispensable as a dimension of futuristic education as it opened up a broader understanding of the world by exposing one to ideas and thoughts of others, rather than see everything in binaries.

Kuncheria Issac, Vice Chancellor of Hindustan Instituite of Technology and Science, spoke to children about latest technology such as cloud computing, machine translation, immersive virtual reality.

Possibilities of AI

Massive open online courses and like allowed universal access to knowledge and skills, enabled language-neutral content, real-time translation and interpretation, and brought down barriers between curricular, extracurricular, and non-curricular learning, he said.

Roshy John, Global Head, Robotics and Cognitive Systems, Tata Consultancy Services, spoke about the immense possibilities of AI and robotics in keeping pace with the rapidly changing world, be it shopping, filling fuel, or mobile advertising.