By Dr. Gayathri Vasudevan, Founder and Chairperson, Sambhav Foundation
Freedom is often understood as the ability to choose. For India’s young people, that choice increasingly extends to how they learn, where they work, and what kind of livelihood they build. As India marks 80 years of independence, we should ask whether our young people have enough economic choice to shape their own futures, or whether the circumstances they are born into continue to decide what is possible for them.
With one in four people aged 15-29 still outside education, employment or training, the challenge is not simply to prepare more young people for work. It is to ensure that the work they are prepared for is relevant to the economy around them and gives them a viable pathway forward. At Sambhav Foundation, our experience across employment-linked skilling, women’s entrepreneurship and emerging sectors has shown us that sustainable livelihoods are built when training is connected to real market demand and designed around the realities of people’s lives.
As the nature of work changes across digital, gig and green economies, we also need to broaden our definition of economic freedom. It should mean that a young person’s geography does not determine the opportunities available to them; that gender does not narrow their choices; and that circumstances do not permanently define their economic future. The promise of Yuva Shakti is not simply that young people will contribute to India’s growth, but that they will have the agency to decide how they participate in it.
