National Service Scheme An Opportunity For Youth To Contribute In Nation Building

The overall aim of National Service Scheme as envisaged earlier, is to give an extension dimension to the higher education system and orient the student youth to community service while they are studying in educational institutions. The concept of making national service a part of university education took about 20 years to evolve from the state of an idea into that of a scheme. The early seeds of it were sown by Dr. S. Radhakrishnan in his Report (1948). National Service Scheme (NSS) was introduced in 1969 with the primary objective of developing the personality and character of the student youth through voluntary community service. Initially it was launched in 37 Universities involving about 40,000 volunteers. However, with the passage of time and as a Pan Indian programme, the number of educational institutions covered under NSS has been increasing year after year. The importance of NSS was underlined in an Evaluation Study conducted through Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS). In their Study Report, TISS concluded that NSS has been a well-intentioned and an ideologically motivated scheme of the Government of India and that NSS is one of the greatest experiments in the field of youth work in the world. This paper also highlights the constraints faced by the NSS, and students in the system and also suggests measure to overcome in order to utilize future generation in positive direction. Key Words: National Service Scheme, Youth, Nation Building Policy