2047 Is Now: Why India’s Youth Cannot Wait Another Generation to Be Empowered

Jayaraman Pillai
15 hours ago
4 min read

As India marches toward its 100th year of independence in 2047, a powerful truth stares us in the face: we cannot afford to wait another generation to empower our youth. The time is now. The mission is urgent. The opportunity is unprecedented.

What we do in the next 5 years will determine whether India becomes a developed, self-reliant nation or squanders its greatest asset: its youth.

The Demographic Moment of Truth

India is the youngest country in the world. Over 65% of our population is under the age of 35. That’s more than 900 million young Indians dreaming, hustling, aspiring, struggling. This is not just a statistic. It’s the single greatest competitive advantage any nation has today. But here’s the uncomfortable truth:

Young India is not asking for jobs. They’re asking for a chance to build their own future.

They want seed funding, mentors, access to global markets, and systems that trust their ideas. They want freedom to fail, space to grow, and support when they rise again. But most importantly, they want it now.

2047 is too far. In a world that’s changing every 3 years, you cannot plan to empower people 20 years later.

India’s Broken Startup Pipeline: A Policy Mismatch

In the past decade, India has created over 110 unicorns startups valued at over $1 billion. But here’s a startling insight that very few talk about:

Nearly 90% of these unicorns were built without incubator support or government seed funds.

This exposes a massive policy mismatch. While public funds are routed through incubators and bureaucratic pipelines, India’s most successful founders have emerged outside the system.

Today, there is no central government scheme that gives direct startup funding to young individuals without routing through institutional gates. This creates a bottleneck that excludes lakhs of brilliant ideas from small towns, colleges, and rural India.

That’s where Viksit Bharat Aatmanirbhar (VBA) comes in.

To correct this gap, Central Ministries particularly the Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship (MSDE), Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sports (MYAS), and the Ministry of Electronics & IT (MeitY) must urgently launch a dedicated grant to support the VBA movement. This grant would enable the Direct-to-Youth Grant Model to be scaled across states using aiVBA’s transparent AI evaluation framework, bypassing red tape and delivering catalytic support directly to the nation’s most promising young entrepreneurs.

Such a partnership would not only align with national priorities like Skill India, Startup India, and Digital India, but also unlock a new phase of youth-led economic transformation from the grassroots.

VBA: A Movement to Unleash the Nation’s Young Energy

The Viksit Bharat Aatmanirbhar campaign is not just a government mission. It is a youth movement. It is the coming together of public social responsibility, innovation, and grassroots empowerment.

At the heart of this movement is a radical belief:

Youth are not the future. Youth are the builders of the future now.

Through VBA, we are creating a national platform to:

Mobilize 1,00,000 volunteers across 800 Indian Cities
Build PSR Campus Hubs in India’s top colleges to champion civic duty
Launch Direct-to-Youth startup grants using our indigenous AI tool, aiVBA
Identify and fund the top 100 startups in every state without the red tape

This is not an idea. It’s already happening.

aiVBA: Trusting Young Talent with AI-Powered Precision

How do we ensure that seed funding reaches the most promising youth-led startups without bias, politics, or inefficiency?

Introducing aiVBA ; India’s first indigenous AI evaluation engine that analyses startups across 15 core parameters, predicts success, flags risks, and shortlists the best ideas with unprecedented accuracy.

With aiVBA, we’re flipping the model. No more waiting for institutional approvals or elite networks.

For the first time, a college student in Bagalkot or Surat can get the same shot at funding as a Stanford grad in Bengaluru.

This is radical inclusion powered by intelligent evaluation.

Every District, Every Dream: The Direct-to-Youth Grant Model

The current system of startup funding is skewed towards urban clusters and elite institutions. But India’s next billion-dollar ideas are not waiting in metros. They’re brewing in taluks, polytechnic colleges, Tier-2 towns, and rural youth groups.

The Direct-to-Youth Grant Model under VBA is designed to:

Bypass middlemen and empower youth directly
Use aiVBA to shortlist top 100 ideas per state
Fund, mentor, and fast-track youth enterprises from the ground up

Even if just 10 unicorns emerge from this model, they could create over 1 lakh jobs and add $15–20 billion to India’s economy.

That is the compounding power of early trust.

Public Social Responsibility: The New National Duty

VBA also introduces a game-changing concept: Public Social Responsibility (PSR).

Unlike CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility), which is legally mandated, PSR is voluntary and driven by citizens, students, employees, and entrepreneurs. It’s about giving back not because you’re required to, but because the nation needs you.

PSR is:

A student raising ₹1,000 for a youth startup fund
An NRI mentoring a tribal innovator in Jharkhand
A company enabling payroll giving through its HR department
A college launching a PSR Campus Hub to engage 500 students

PSR is not charity.

It’s investment in India’s future.

And today’s youth Gen Z and Gen Alpha are hungry for purpose. They are ready to serve, lead, and build. But they need a mission worthy of their fire.

A Call to Action: Don’t Wait for 2047. Build It Today.

It’s easy to say “India will be developed by 2047.”

But who is building that India?

If we don’t empower youth now, there will be nothing left to empower in 2047. The world will have moved on. AI, robotics, climate migration, and geopolitical shifts will redefine global power. India must act now or risk being left behind.

We must: