The Uttar Pradesh edition of the TOI Youth Icons & Summit Awards was held in Lucknow on Tuesday, featuring panel discussions, award ceremonies, and an address by chief minister Yogi Adityanath.The third panel discussion, titled “UP We Live In: Safety, Connectivity and Culture Through Young Eyes,” featured Amrit Abhijat (additional chief secretary for tourism, culture, religious affairs and transport, Yatindra Mishra (author and cultural commentator) and IPS officer Vrinda Shukla.Also Read | TOI Youth Icons Summit: Para-badminton champ Suhas says youth should aim to rank among top 5% in their fieldsOpening the discussion, additional chief secretary Amrit Abhijat linked Uttar Pradesh’s infrastructure development to employment opportunities for young people.“The first major impact that the young generation gets to have is in terms of employment. Whether it is by means of engineers, whether it is architects, whether it is people who are part of backward-forward linkages in terms of providing food, providing mobility. … In all these ways, the growth story of Uttar Pradesh cannot be disengaged with the employment potential,” Abhijat said.The discussion then shifted to law and order in the state, with a focus on the government’s zero-tolerance policy towards crime.Abhijat added, “The young and particularly the women have been able to register themselves to massive growth in terms of participation of women force in operations such as agriculture and in business circles. … I feel that this sort of development sustained for last 10 years or so has given youth a tremendous opportunity to work in the development of the state.”As someone directly involved in ensuring women’s safety, Vrinda Shukla, Superintendent of Police overseeing the UP Police’s women and child security wings, spoke about how the state’s approach to women’s safety had been strengthened.“It’s too late in the day now to invoke challenges that were faced in the previous regime. I think what’s extraordinary about what we are doing in Uttar Pradesh is that the entire spectrum of women safety has been rendered so robust, that that’s the result we are seeing on the ground. So it’s very easy to say that women’s safety has improved, but how it has happened is that our entire spectrum performs, and it delivers,” Shukla said.She identified what she described as a “feudal mindset” as the biggest challenge to women’s safety, adding that it would change over time.The discussion then shifted to what young people can learn from culture, with Yatindra Mishra leading the conversation. Drawing on his experiences of working with legendary artists, he recalled how they would acknowledge the contributions of their seniors whenever he praised them.“In an artform, we don’t say this music is like that or this film is like that. Youth must learn that there will always be someone senior to them,” Mishra said, emphasising the importance of humility and respect for senior artists.The discussion also touched upon other issues concerning Uttar Pradesh’s development, with the panellists sharing further perspectives on the state’s progress and the role of young people in shaping its future.
