Page 27 - Mann ki Baat (English)

Perhaps the most publicly
recognised essayist was
Pratham Brar from Yamuna
Nagar, Haryana, who wrote on
Green and Clean India. His essay
argued that environmental
sustainability and national
prosperity are not competing
goals but the same goal viewed
from different angles — green
India leads to prosperous
India, and prosperous India is
built when every young person
is educated, employed, and
engaged. He proposed that tree youth-led cleanliness drives
planting become a social norm — are neither borrowed nor
at auspicious occasions such abstract. They are rooted.
as birthdays and anniversaries, The MY Bharat Budget Quest
so that individual celebration 2026 Grand Finale witnessed the
becomes collective ecological participation of 750 selected
contribution. On cleanliness,
youth, who actively engaged
Pratham called on youth to form
with experts and policymakers,
teams, organise cleanliness
reinforcing the vision of Viksit
drives, and make public hygiene
Bharat @2047 and showcasing
a matter of civic pride: "When
the energy, ideas, and
every youth will clean his village,
commitment of India's young
his city, then our dream of green
India and developed India will be generation towards nation-
fulfilled." building. India's path to 2047
What is notable about will be shaped by investment,
these essays, taken together, infrastructure, and governance.
is not merely their subject But as the Budget Quest has
matter but their texture. These
demonstrated, it will equally
are young people writing not
be shaped by the quality of its
from the vantage of detached
young citizens' engagement
commentary but from the
with public life. The essays of
ground up — from villages in
Saurabh Baiswar, Sumit Kumar,
Bihar, fields in Barabanki, and
Om Prakash Rath, and Pratham
classrooms in Odisha. Their
proposals — AI in agriculture, Brar are not footnotes to that
traditional water conservation, journey, they are early chapters
tree gifting as cultural practice, of it.
27
27