 "Manish Sisodia")
Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia Tuesday launched the Delhi government's 'Business Blasters' programme which aims at developing young entrepreneurs at the school-level by providing students seed money to start a business.
The programme will be implemented in all Delhi government schools under the "Entrepreneurship Mindset Curriculum (EMC)".
"I am proud to launch this Business Blasters programme. It is going to be the foundation stone in the development of the country," Sisodia said at the launch event at the Thyagraj Stadium here.
As part of the programme, which he said was "successful as a pilot project", class 11 and 12 students will be provided seed money of Rs 2,000 to start a business, he said.
"This programme, for the students of classes 11-12, is going to be the basis of the country's progress. Through this, children will not run after jobs, but jobs will come after these children," said Sisodia, who is also Delhi's education minister.
The minister added that the programme is an initiative which, if implemented properly, can take India from being a developing country to a developed one.
"When I was in school, we used to read that India was a developing country. Today, our children are reading that India is still a developing country, but if we don't implement this programme properly, the children of our children will also read that India is still a developing country," he said.
"But, if implemented properly, we will be able to change this history in our textbooks, and say that India is not a developing, but a developed country," Sisodia said.
The minister added that the initiative will also help address the problem of unemployment.
"We say that India is a country of youth but it is a country of educated yet unemployed. EMC will change this picture and make India a country of educated and capable youth. That day is not far when every child coming out of Delhi's schools will not ask for a job but will create a job," he said.
According to him, the biggest drawback of the Indian education system was that while students were being provided education, an entrepreneurial mindset was not being inculcated.
"We are teaching them to work hard, making them talented but have failed to instil in them the courage to become an entrepreneur. These talents of ours were taken away by foreign companies and this benefited the economy of those countries," he said.
Sisodia added that a programme like the EMC was the way forward towards achieving the dream of a USD 5 trillion economy.
Sisodia said that in the coming days, an EMC carnival will be organised with 100 top projects from Business Blasters projects at zonal and district level, which will be rated by renowned successful entrepreneurs and universities.
In this, the children included in the top 10 projects will be directly admitted to the BBA courses in Netaji Subhash Institute of Technology and Delhi Technological University, he said.
The Business Blasters' programme was started at the School of Excellence Khichripur under a pilot project, in which, the government said, nine groups of 41 children were formed and each child was given seed money of Rs 1,000 and they made huge profits.
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