How Do the Youth Think Beyond the Privileged Metro Ones? A Narrow but Rare Glimpse - Dipankar Khasnabish

When we grew up, the usual banter among the old was how good the times were when they were young, and how it has deteriorated over time. Over the years, thankfully, the despair of the uncles and aunts has reduced. At least in public. However, there are occasional outbursts of how the young are now self-centered, lazy, and rude. Thankfully such opinions are often challenged, and the chirping recedes. My favorite counter is this, if we have been so great in our times, why has the world turned out to be so bad?

Anyone who cares about life beyond their gastronomical and sensual pleasures today is concerned about the world around us.  Global heating, nuclear threats, wars, AI, and social media had already put us on the edge before of course Donald Trump turned the world upside down.All of us need to address these challenges, but the older ones like me have only so much time left. Our best bet is the next generation. They are our most viable insurance.

What do they think about the planet? We would like to know, but it is very difficult to know. With rapidly evolving social norms and technology making the generation shift fast, all of us struggle to connect with the younger generation. Many of us do not invest in updating and upgrading ourselves on how the drivers around us are changing, and can’t even engage with our children.

The society also does not help. The patriarchy inculcates a very rigid gendered view in the youth, the rote education system does not develop critical thinking (so the parent and child do not shrink significantly to accommodate the adult), and the establishment paints a distorted glorious picture of the future, or an angst-filled past which needs to be redeemed. The idea is distraction so that they neither ask for their rights nor challenge those who are rich and powerful.

But we need to know. Developed countries have always made great efforts to build basic skills for the young so that they are equipped with how to navigate the future. Technology, which can personalize everything and reach everyone with powerful computing at the back end, and terminal devices at the front end, has significantly challenged the model of nurture primarily driven by the school and the family.

The waves created by the Netflix series Adolescence are a representation of the collective unease of the world. It gives a chance to peep in, albeit vicariously, into the minds of the adolescents. There are many other attempts, with mixed results. It is a long and arduous journey.

The most important way is to engage with the youth. At school, at home, at a playground, and on social media, to understand and be understood. Not with an idea to police, but to participate.

Sometime back I was a part of an initiative that gave me some perspectives, and they were interesting. It was an essay competition for the youth.

For a while, I and a few of my friends have been part of a group named 1Bharat (https://www.1bharat.org/). The idea is to work towards a unified, prosperous India. To seed some of the founding thoughts, and also hear from the young about how they look into the future, we organized an essay competition.

First, we did an online survey on an understanding of “Empathy as a term”.

The findings of the survey were analyzed and published. (external link)

https://dipankarkhasnabish.medium.com/the-curious-case-of-empathy-do-we-have-it-do-we-need-it-b480fa006724

We followed this up with an essay competition on the topic “Empathy in political leadership: are we missing it today?”

The competition was open to any Indian citizen in the age group of 18-25, from any educational institute of India. It was in both English and Hindi, with prizes in each category.

The submission was digital, and the winners were announced and awards were given away in a ceremony on Zoom. We did a press release too, and some media carried the story.

We received a great response. It was a learning experience (I evaluated the English submissions), and it allowed me a peek into the youth's mind. The following are some of my takeaways from the exercise:

1.       It is a challenge for us to reach the youth. They have their circles, and that is typically not the educational institutions they are part of. Yes, we can reach the principals of the schools and colleges, but out of the many things they are responsible for, this is a low priority.

The best way to reach the youth is through the youth. They know the lingo, and they enjoy the confidence. Thankfully we at 1 Bharat had a group with many young people, and we used their good offices to create awareness about the competition.

This brings me to the point, are the political parties in India connecting enough to the youth? With the elders holding on to their positions till death, there is little scope for the younger ones to move up and be heard. Look at how the left has destroyed itself by the geriatric. The new Secretary of CPM is 70 to stay with, and we expect him to lead the party in a country with an average age of 29.

2.       The young people are busy. Yes, yes many feel that they are only making and consuming reels, but that is not true for all. There is a very large section of ambitious young people who want to build a life but are not getting enough support to go where they want to go. They are exploring. We got significant responses to the essay competition, with around 200 submissions across Hindi and English. And yes, it was quite a task, believe me (many people I know will struggle to put even one paragraph about something they chirp all day). So yes, there is an appetite to do something new. And if we can also add an award and certificate, it is a great incentive (a proper digital certificate is very important as they can produce it in their CV).

3.       This competition was before the ChatGPT became universal, but plagiarism has always been an issue (now we read that 50% of an arbitration order by an ex-Chief Justice of India is plagiarised, no less).There has been an industry of poorly researched. D.s for a long time. The students plagiarize, the guides and other evaluators (who also possibly plagiarized in their thesis) look away, and a PhD is awarded for a few lakhs. And then these students become faculties and guide new PhD students with the same modus operandi.

However, to our surprise, we found very little plagiarism by the students (we could check online only for the English submissions). Within a tolerance limit, we had to reject only a few (and we communicated that back to them, often that helps to correct going forward).

And yes, the quality of submissions is good.

4.       We picture India almost entirely from the metros and our occasional visits to tourist locations. And our lives are surrounded by gadgets.I was quite surprised when a few wrote that they were typing it out entirely on their phone, and it was difficult. Few rather wrote it down on paper and then sent us images. The output was quite good, by the way.Well, digital India has a long way to go, and before that, we need to break many of our own biases.

5.       The entire event was online. We had clarification sessions on Zoom, then queries answered, submissions, and then an awards ceremony on Zoom. We had guests who came in and spoke. The awardees joined with their families. This was seamless and gave validation that anyone who has an intent, time, and budget can easily organize a similar event. And it is very engaging and rewarding.