Dear Friend,
In today’s world, the biggest time-waster is the smart phone. While it has enabled the social media economy which drives Industry 4.0, it has also become an addiction for the youth. At a time when you should be focusing on building your career, smart phones are eating into hours of your valuable time every day. The famous author Mr. Chetan Bhagat says, “Common Indians will become poorer and serve the few rich and elite. Yet, the youth is busy with their phones, lost in their cheap 4G data packs, watching silly videos, playing video games and perhaps debating with people over social media all day.”
Mr. Bhagat has hit the nail on the head. This is the time that the country is being buffeted by a ‘triple whammy’ of a record contraction of 23.9% between April to June 2020 followed by a 7.5% contraction in the next quarter officially landing India in a recession, the Number 2 global position in Covid-19 cases, and Chinese troops relentlessly building pressure on India at Ladakh. India is blessed with a young population. It needs the energy of you young people to pull your country out of the morass that it finds itself in. This is not the time to fritter away on your smart phones. Put them away and focus on building your career.
Competition is likely to become more cut-throat as companies continue to shed jobs on account of a sharp drop in aggregate demand. Such unemployment drags the nation down into a vicious cycle of Keynesian Depression. It needs the focused strength of our young men and women to get back to a high growth trajectory. Please remember that the videos that you are enjoying on WhatsApp and Facebook are taking you further from a seat in an IIT or IIM, or a position in the IAS. Do you think that it is a price worth paying?
The severe and strict lockdown seems to have had the effect of flattening the wrong curve—the GDP growth curve and not the Covid-19 curve. If we Indians truly wish to become a rich superpower, buying a few planes or chanting jingoistic slogans are not likely to help us achieve our goal. We need sustained hard work to build a superpower the way the Americans had done after winning independence from the British. Ever since we won independence, we have not put in the kind of hard work that the US and China have done. We should follow the example of our Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi, who has been putting in 14 to 16 hours of hard work every day to take the country forward. Emulating this trait, you should also put in similar hours of hard work on your studies to take your career forward.
An important lesson for you to learn from the experience of building America as a superpower is self-confidence. Americans possessed the ‘Pioneer Spirit.’ They believed that no power in the world—not even the mighty British—could prevent them from emerging as the pre-eminent economic and military power in the world. You need to know that the world respects economic and military power. No country will be taken seriously if it is not rich, no matter how great its history, how wonderful its traditions, or how tasty its food are. You want India to be a superpower? Help India become rich. It is you—the youth of India—who need to step up and stem the fall.
You need to shut your time-wasting devices like your smart phones and build your career. As always, I wish you every success!
Friends, as per the directions of Department of Posts, Government of India to all the Registered Newspapers in India, we have to post the issue in December 2020 scheduled to be posted in December 2020 by printing separate editions or combining multiple editions or by skipping some editions, etc. Hence, the CSR January 2021 issue is being posted on the authorised dates allotted to us in December 2020. CSR December 2020 issue is being incorporated in CSR January 2021 issue. All the regular subscribers will be getting one additional issue of CSR.