Jamshedpur: Infusing a sense of empowerment among Tribal youth, the Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus said that education system needs to change and encourage entrepreneurship over seeking job offers, while addressing a house packed with tribal youth, activists and scholars at an event in Jamshedpur, Jharkhand.
"Don't look for jobs but become an entrepreneur," he said to a packed house.
Yunus was addressing the concluding day of Samvaad - Tata Steel's signature event to encourage dialogues and discussions on the essence of being tribal. The event was held in Jamshedpur between November 15 to 19.
For the first time the conclave had international tribal representatives from Australia, Canada, Kenya to attend the four-day event focused on the aspirations of Tribal youth. They had come from 20 states covering different regions of the North-East of India, Central and Western India.
The main speaker of the day, Yunus, was awarded Nobel Peace Prize for founding the Grameen Bank and pioneering the concepts of micro-credit and micro-finance in Bangladesh.
He added, "The economic system, which is based on capitalism assumes that human beings have to work for someone else. But that's not why we were born."
Encouraging the tribal youth to become independent, he said, "The education system is such that it teaches us to become someone's employee. They should be taught about both becoming an employee or an entrepreneur. We wanted to encourage independence and entrepreneurship and that is why we started financial assistance through micro finance. Today Grameen Bank has over 9 million borrowers with 97% of them being women."
For the first time the conclave had international tribal representatives from Australia, Canada, Kenya to attend the four-day event focused on the aspirations of Tribal youth. (Photo: News 18)
He further said, "We need to learn again and think beyond acquiring jobs. Become entrepreneurs. Soon lot of our work will be replaced by artificial intelligence, the work we do will be done by other AI. Large number of people will find themselves losing out on employment."
Highlighting the tools that can help the tribal youth from becoming independent he said that this generation of tribal youths like any other is not isolated and has technology to take forward its goal of entrepreneurship.
He said, "You are not isolated. You have technology; make use of it for thinking big. This way you are different from the past generations of tribals. Use technology for communication. It has great power."
Yunus added that today the combined wealth of just eight people equaled wealth of four billion people on planet.
"We need social businesses to have zero poverty, unemployment and carbon emissions. Capitalist system is based on the premise that all human beings are selfish. This is wrong premise. We have to become change," he added.
In the past four days there was special focus on workshops of livelihood, environment, governance, culture, film, education, mal-nutrition, constitutional and legal rights etc. There were sessions of personal story telling where the tribal youths, some of them entrepreneurs, narrated their success stories.
For the first time, the ground was set for Tribal sports in Jamshedpur's Gopal Maidan. There was 'Sekkor', a game played by the Ho tribe, 'Chakhesang Wrestling' of Nagas, 'Kati' that is a traditional game played in Tribal village of Jharkhand and Odisha, usually during the lean agricultural seasons in their leisure time. 'Hambi' also known as 'Simrit' is used in traditional male youth game called 'Hambi Kepathu'. And Kati, which is a game of quick reflexes and deft footwork, as pioneered by the Santhals. There was tribal food and tribal medicine exhibition as well.
— The Reporter attended Samvaad in Jamshedpur on invitation of the organiser
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