Delhi: Rs 5,000 to help students be own bosses

NEW DELHI: The Delhi government will annually give Rs 1,000 to every student in classes XI and XII in its schools and Rs 5,000 to each government college student as seed money under its entrepreneurship curriculum.

The biggest problem in the country is unemployment and it can be resolved by teaching entrepreneurship to students and making them job creators, not job seekers, education minister Manish Sisodia said while announcing the decision on Wednesday.

Accompanied by entrepreneurs like the founder of MDH, Mahashay Dharmapal Gulati, and Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal, the deputy chief minister also said this course would encourage students to start business ventures and teach them how to take risk. “Even if 1% of our students goes on to become entrepreneurs, India will become a superpower,” said Sisodia while addressing hundreds of teachers and principals at Thyagaraj Sports Complex.

The education minister pointed out how foreign delegates often praised the government’s happiness curriculum and spoke about emulating it. The entrepreneurship curriculum will have the same impact, he claimed. “We are giving degrees to students but whenever there is even a clerk’s job, thousands of PhD holders apply for it. This is because we don’t tell them what to do with the knowledge.”

The country’s economy, Sisodia said, has not progressed because there are many job-seekers, but not job-creators. “Often I ask schoolchildren how many of them want to get jobs. Almost all of them say they want to. If all of them search for jobs, who will create jobs? That answer will be solved by our curriculum.”

Praising the entrepreneurs like Bansal, Gulati and Krishna Yadav of Shri Krishna Pickles, the minister said, “When economy is in peril, true patriotism is to create jobs in the country. We need to connect providing jobs with patriotism.” The curriculum will help children let their fear go and do something creative “so that they can eventually create jobs for thousands of people”, Sisodia said at the event, which was streamed live to the 1,100 government schools.

The government will allocate up to Rs 50 crore in the budget in the next financial year so that students can get the seed money to start generating ideas of a business plan.

Education secretary Sandeep Kumar said, “An entrepreneur is one who believes in himself and has the ability to gather resources and solve problems. This curriculum will not focus on any business or job-oriented skill but will equip learners with a mindset to help choose any profession they want.”

Flipkart co-founder Bansal said, “Job creation can be through entrepreneurs. And to create entrepreneurs, we need a change of mindset.”