You need a wish for it to come true

Bad news first. Beyond a reasonable doubt, young people today are being handed over a less-than-ideal world. Extremely limited meaningful-work opportunity, hugely malnourished childhood to look after, a world rife with differences — massive income inequality, inequity of gender, race, colour, religion and caste, a deeply hurt nature and environment, governments that are increasingly failing the public, and institutions that have not kept their own sanctity alive. Not to forget everything that brings a ton of anxiety, uncertainty and unpredictability, such as information revolution making ‘intelligence’ artificial.

We did not land up with this by chance. Over the years, there has been a systematic conditioning of the society through a world-order that primarily incentivised wealth-creation, directly or indirectly. Young people were mostly looked at as nothing more than numbered human-resources for private and government employers, and not as individuals with their unique strengths. Educational institutions worked like furnaces to smelt employees or entrepreneurs out of young people.

This world-order severely limited parents’ aspiration for their children and stunted the so-called ‘growing years’. We did not put premium on skills for LIFE. Here are a few examples — we do not build enquiry among very young children by design. Being gender-sensitive or environment-friendly is not considered as an indicator of one intelligence or knowledge. Critical thinking or understanding the constitution has not guaranteed a livelihood. Basically, the markets (mainly employers) manipulated the choices that young people had. This has been a recipe of slow-cooked disaster — in many ways the main cause of the bad news I shared right at the outset.

And then the bubble burst on employability too. From apprentices on the shop-floor to the retail sector, from insurance agents to BPOs, and from doctors to bureaucrats, the low levels of empathy and creative problem-solving is conclusively hindering their success and growth. Perhaps as much as the subject knowledge they need, if not more.

Here’s the good news though. Young people are beginning to take charge, slowly. There is increasing interest and agency amongst youth to imagine the future they would like to live. The hyper-connected world helps them see beyond their own everyday lives. They can see examples of powerful vision (or lack of it) and decision making, from across the world that resulted in a certain quality of life and living. This is fuelling the imagination of young people — as if they have charcoal in hand to sketch the outline of a picture in their minds, waiting to fill in colours.

This is beginning to happen partly because of meaningful work by a handful of people in the civil society, academia, media and government, who believed that the future has be for the future, by the future (young people).

I have been fortunate to be a part of one such effort, vartaLeap, a coalition of 100+ youth-centric organisations that attempted to develop a common minimum definition of youth development in India for maximum possible results. This required answering questions like –

• No matter what the organisation’s (vartaLeap member’s) work is, what would be the ‘principles’ of youth development they would adhere to?
• Why and how skills like critical thinking, working in teams, and understanding of constitutional values are so important to be successful in life?
• What should parents hope for, institutions help develop, and employers ask for, as the right skill set in a young person?
• Should youth have certain Rights to their youthhood? Could certain exposures and experiences be mandatory for every young person in India, regardless of their socio-economic background?

None of this would happen unless leaders and institutions start doing something fundamentally different, or differently, from what they have done in the past.

There is recognition of the fact that parents, society, government, media and markets — each of them influences the choices young people have today. There is no way we can even begin to find answers to the questions above without being mindful of this complexity and inter-dependence. Also, each of these institutions needs to ask the other what they wish the other to commit to so that they remain truly co-invested in youth development.

#Charcha2020 organised by the Nudge Foundation in May 20 offered the first ever opportunity to achieve this. vartaLeap hosted an online charcha with a few hundred young people in conversation with leaders from UNICEF, civil society, government, media, academia and philanthropy to discuss what would each of them wish from the other. It was refreshing to have people from such diverse backgrounds, representing different mandates of their organisations yet meaning to achieve one common good. Highlights of this conversation included those between:

• Media and Philanthropy? — Media wishing that philanthropies help build and support the media for solution-oriented and constructive journalism. They wished that there is room for more dialogue around philanthropy as a good career. In return, philanthropy wished that media amplifies the good work by philanthropy in youth development, create more youth-engaging content and encourage conversations around how regulatory environment is restricting the work of philanthropy and non-profits. Young people participating in the program offered a bunch of good ideas for media and philanthropy, such as, making media literacy essential in secondary and higher education in today’s time of fake news and creating youth activist influencers. They wished philanthropy particularly focuses on well-being and resilience amongst youth.
• UNICEF and Educational Institutions — UNICEF as a key development agency was asked to support active citizenship fellowship program, promote technology enabled volunteering, and help make future of jobs more equitable across social diversity. UNICEF in turn wished that higher education institutions should prioritise bridging the digital divide by engaging young people in opportunities across high tech to low/no tech intensive jobs. Institutions were also asked to focus on building 21st century skills as a part of high education programs. Participants also recommended that UN takes leadership in developing assessments for youth development, supporting the long-term agenda on youth development. One interesting suggestion to the higher education institutions was to promote independent and critical thinking among youth.
• Civil Society and Government — The civil society wishes from the government that there is substantive exchange between youth and other ministries, youth-participation in government decision making about the young, and community service as an essential part of education and growing up. The Government representatives wished that the civil society mobilises youth community to get children back to school post-COVID, set up neighbourhood clubs across socio-economic classes to ensure collaborative problem solving, and develop volunteer groups to support the governments in post-COVID recovery work. Participating young people made some wonderful suggestions such as ‘focusing on empathy and how to learn as against what to learn’ for the government, and ‘encourage youth to run for something, engage in defining laws and regulations’ for the civil society.

A wish-list is a good start, especially if it is received well and honestly deliberated upon. It is heart-warming to see a group swelling into a mission, and hopefully a movement soon. It definitely shows a deeply felt need. So much more critical for a country like India that almost always has youth in its proud introduction regardless of the occasion.

Every young person regardless of their background has a future to look forward to. Just as much as good nutrition in early childhood ensures healthy body and sound mind, agency and opportunity for adolescents ensures becoming a robust, active and awakened citizen — in Hindi, Jagruk Nagrik, or JAGRIK!

Given all the bad news, and the speed with which our problems are increasing, it will not take just a million or two, but perhaps EVERY young person to have an opportunity to be a Jagrik. It might be a better future then, by them, for themselves.

Photo credits:
- Article photo by Papaioannou Kostas on Unsplash
- Charcha2020 picture by The Logical Indian and The Nudge Foundation