Youth have a role in eliminating evil social customs: Prez

CHENNAI: The youth have a role to play in addressing social issues, including eliminating evil social customs, the President Pratibha Patil said on Saturday.

"It is incumbent upon the youth of the country to prepare themselves for the responsibilities that lie ahead and to look at the challenges facing the nation," she said, delivering the foundation day lecture at the Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development at Sriperumbudur near here.

The youth have a role in participating in the nation's political life, contributing to economic development, protecting the environment, preserving India's age old traditions and living up to the high standards of India's ideals and values, she said.

"For meeting the future with confidence and fulfilling the dream of a modern India, the youth would have to inculcate in themselves a sense of discipline, a spirit of tolerance, a quest for knowledge, a positive mind and respect for fellow human beings", she said.

The youth of the country are in search of a bright future and are seeking to build a new india. "It is therefore incumbent upon us to provide them the necessary opportunities and facilities as also address the problems facing them".

The President said the average age of India's population today was below 25 years. It was likely that all through the first half of the 21st century India would maintain this exceptionally young demographic profile while all of the developed world and also China were expected to grow older and older, she said.