10 Percent School Students Wants to Adopt Agriculture as Profession in Mumbai

Are we ready for the future! This was the topic of the test in the municipal schools of the Mumbai. World scientists are trying to find out the alternate source of food. In view of the 2030 and 2050 population, where we are standing with the readiness towards providing food and quenching the hunger.

On one hand, the farmers are not happy with the existing system and they are not going to pursue the agriculture as a profession and on the other hand an NGO survey shown the ray of hope for the future.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), in a bid to make the class 9 students ‘ready for future’, partnered with city-based NGO Antarang last year and started providing career counseling to them. “The students were asked about their career orientation and 9.46 percent of them showed interest in the field of agriculture,” the official said. “Even we were quite surprised to know that a big number of students want to be agriculturists, despite the fact that most of them have never been to farms,” he said.

Over 9 percent students of the civic-run schools in the megapolis Mumbai want to take up farming as a profession, followed by defense and police services, says a report of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation.

The result of the survey, conducted by the BMC, is surprising, as such a percentage of students in the country’s financial capital have shown an inclination towards the farming profession, a senior civic official said.

Of the 12,500 students of class 9 surveyed in 210 schools, 9.46 percent say they want to be agriculturists, 7.3 percent aim to join the Armed Forces while 7.25 percent are keen on police services, as per the report of the BMC’s career counseling programme. Besides, 6.99 percent of students want to be paramedics while 4.11 percent want to take up the accountancy as their profession, said the report released on Sunday.

While students of private schools can afford to go to coaching classes for better career guidance, those in civic-run institutions are generally deprived of it because of their poor financial conditions. “Therefore, the BMC thought of asking students about their career plans and planned the counseling session so that we could start working now for their better future. These sessions will help them in career-building,” the official said.

The results of the counseling programme were shared with parents individually, he said. During the counseling, members of the school staff and the NGO developed a rapport with students, interacted with them and then asked which profession they wanted to take up after their class 10 exams.