National Youth Festival: Vilas Shinde and Prateek Khandelwal in Dialogue with the Youth to Overcome Challenges

The second day of the 27th National Youth Festival commenced on Saturday (Day 13) at the Yuvagram Ground, Hanuman Nagar, with a thoughtful speech competition. In the first session, Vilas Shinde, the chairman of Sahyadri Farm from Nashik, and in the second session, Prateek Khandelwal, chairman of Ramp My City, engaged in a dialogue with the youth. They delivered a crucial message about facing any obstacles that may arise in life, preparing for them, and not succumbing to them.

Vilas Shinde highlighted the need for India’s name to be associated with agriculture. To achieve this, he shared his experience of overcoming obstacles in agricultural business. He emphasized the importance of addressing rural issues by starting with the problems faced by villagers. While hard work is essential in farming, it may not always translate into expected success. Globalization competitions often bring challenges to farmers. To overcome this, utilizing natural resources and bringing positive changes through political will is possible. Collective farming ensures the direct reach of agricultural produce to global customers, yielding profits. The use of fresh and organic produce has received positive responses from customers globally.

In the second session, Prateek Khandelwal, Chairman of Ramp My City, discussed his journey, which began in 2004, overcoming physical, mental, financial, and social challenges. Even though some individuals are physically disabled, they reside within their homes; he believes they, too, are disabled. To change this, he began working towards making public places accessible. Starting with building ramps in public areas like footpaths, bus depots, railway stations, government offices, hotels, banks, and more, Ramp My City has made significant progress. To enable easy access to buildings, modifications such as ramps, automatic doors, and table design are necessary, as highlighted by Prateek Khandelwal.