Harvesting demographic dividend in context of July movement

The sacred spirit of the invincible and indomitable youth and their mindset, the true gems and genies who came forward to safeguard their beloved motherland from the recurring oppression and the persistent fascism – history must recall time and again the charismatic youth spirits and their stellar legacy of protestation. The vehement objection, particularly the inner forced approach that stepped up to confront the bloody atrocities and prevailing autocratic statesmanship conducted over the masses for a series of years gagging on their voice, exacerbating iron-fisted dominance on lives – got momentum and finally came up with flying colors in the form of historical upsurge taken place in the month of July 2024.
The entire world has witnessed the marvelous bravery of the young generation and their unconditional sacrifice to embrace a new commencement, an advertently sought taste of freedom from the neoteric culprits of the present era. The discerning feature of the July uprising was the unblinking involvement of younger gentlefolkirrespective of men and women, boys and girls, and adults. Even the young females and girls participated with equal intensity and substantial valiancy as their male counterparts in the everyday battles bypassing the safety-fluid situations and showcasing a damn attitude in the face of trigger-happy armed policies and other well-weaponized cruel corps. This student-majoritarian frontal movement dimensioned a new phase in their sense of responsibility, equality, confidence, and self-assertion. And the good soul-change agents, the reality-making trailblazers, turned into the last-ditch heroes in the process of the grand emancipation from fascist loyalty and unforeseen subjugation in the guise of dummy democracy.
Since the 5th of August, the fleeing of the choker chief Sheikh Hasina – the clarion calls for renovating the motherland with the commitment to equity, equality, freedom, dignity, prosperity, integrity, social justice, human rights, democracy, transparency, accountability, inclusivity, public ownership, collective interest, solidarity, harmony and peace paying the dues to its citizenry aligning with the glorious vows students have made to serve the nation by erasing condensed dissatisfaction, grave grievance, and deep-rooted frustrations which needs in systemic actions to be in existence step by step. Therefore, the tangible presence of the youth-led spirits, their change-oriented tenacious, resilient mindset, and a can-do attitude to acquaint a paradigm shift in democracy, politics, and economics is a must.
Bangladesh is at the juncture of bagging its demographic dividend, capitalising on the youth resources, ages ranging from 15-29 years and having a significant 36.7 per cent of its total labour force (LFS 2022). However, the country lacks the opportunity to benefit from its demographic dividend, as 40.67 per cent of its total youth force is not in employment, education, or training (NEET). Furthermore, a depressing 14.7 per cent of long-term unemployment (joblessness for two consecutive years or more) is evident among the higher-educated individuals.
In the recent epoch, education has gradually become the utmost source of wealth for a nation and tends to have multi-channeled patterned economic growth. Worldwide, we are experiencing a strong power structure that is approaching the world together interposing human society on every level, and that emerging power structure is “Knowledge.” Hence, we cannot but intervene in forming humans into human capital and transform society into a knowledge-driven society to reap the real upshot of our human heads.
The actual prospect is somehow unmatched and toughest as we are still far behind in education and scientific innovation, and even many starring technologies are still beyond our control and out of reach. There is no magic indeed in thinking of substitutes that create human capital without ensuring quality education and science and technology-enabled up-to-date knowledge structure.
The demographic dividend is the genuine pride of Bangladesh. So, the country’s large youth population must be equipped with the right set of knowledge and skills to make them developmental change agents in the fast-changing human abode. To prepare our young populace as human capital and keep the tempo with a proportionate economic development pathway, knowledge management, and education impartation in a befitting process are both issues of paramount importance.
Bangladesh must not lag behind other nations in today’s knowledge, science, and technology-driven stratum. The competitive ability of the country to survive and thrive in this novel era, and a changing political economy would depend a lot on how good Bangladesh is in educating, training, resource mobilising, and fostering her youth sects in the assorted fields comprising academia, industries, economy, politics, policies, societal experiment and subsequent social changes followed by.
We deeply believe that policymakers, relevant authorities, and state machinery would adopt suitable strategies and adapt time-demanded modality to cater to quality education in line with the industry-academia match and promote knowledge bloom as the striking catalyst for establishing a knowledge economy grounded on human capital for the youth craftsmen. In this regard, our knowledge-imparting mechanism must be redesigned to escalate a well-set foothold and competitive edge in light of sweeping changes taking place globally.
Human capital is an excellent concept that will never be supplanted by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and computer technology-driven aggressive interventions. We might not forget that the true necessitate for a human’s caliber and potential is unique and infinite. Thus, the blueprint of reshaping humans into human capital through knowledge is a substantial issue to address.
This is to note that, in multiple adversities and challenges, our expatriate human powers remain engaged with backbreaking jobs. There is a pressing need to re-evaluate the role of technical and vocational education and training (TVET) schemes to sharpen our manual labour force as technical assets, modernising TVET curricula and strengthening ties with industries beyond the border. The core wing of bagging foreign remittance should be reshaped and must come under specific guidelines, pragmatic policies and practices to incentivise our sincere fin-fighters for the inflated total national income.
Bangladesh is approaching the fourth industrial revolution, which requires a set of unique criteria to confront the multifarious challenges in a bid to cope with global competition and the forthcoming trade war. To embrace the backdrop of becoming a people-oriented state and to keep pace with integrated development, the assembling of national capacity is significant. A comprehensive development drive must be initiated to transform humans into worthy capital, ensuring optimal utilisation of natural resources and strengthening economic capability facilitating inclusivity and shared participation, underscoring collective interest, and safeguarding public ownership and the common good rigorously.