Youth should protest beyond social media

by abhay mokashi

Today is International Youth Day and it is a day for the youth of the country to ask themselves what they are doing or what they can do for the betterment of the people of India and also the development of the country.

The country is facing numerous problems like inflation, unemployment, dropping of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), spying on some citizens by the government, the failure of the parliament to allow discussions on issues concerning the nation, gross mismanagement of the COVID 19 pandemic and especially its second wave, the mismanagement of the anti-COVID vaccine distribution, gross shortage of the anti-COVID vaccine, shortage of drugs and oxygen during the second wave of COVID 19, increase in hate speeches, the sufferings of the socially and economically marginalised people have increased, there are crimes against women, religious places have been desecrated in some places, the government has failed to fulfil its promise of bringing back the black money into the country, the demonetisation has been a disaster, the government is ignoring the farmers, who have been protesting on the outskirts of Delhi for nine months, many citizens have been arrested in different Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled states on flimsy grounds, while those making provocative hate speeches go scot-free, these are some of the hundreds of issues before the country and majority of the youth is watching this silently or is oblivious of these problems.

A large section of the youth confines itself to posting a comment or two on the social media or blindly endorsing/forwarding other people’s messages about some of these issues. It is often seen that many of the posts on the social media are more emotional than on studied facts.

The time has come for the youth to wake up and to question. They need to question the elected representatives (whichever party they may represent) on their failure to serve the people the way they should. The youth should make their elected representatives submit half-yearly reports on the work done by them as people’s representatives. Each elected representative must make herself/himself available to the people at least once in a fortnight.

The youth need to contemplate on the issues that are taken up for discussion by the media, especially communal issues and jingoism. The ruling party spokespersons and leaders often make communally provocative statements on the media and on public fora, because they know neither the show anchors nor the people of the country will question them. The youth should stop all political parties from using religion to garner votes.

It is painful to see that often, while speaking on achievements of the government, the BJP spokespersons compare our country to Pakistan; the same is done by many mediapersons. The country’s progress and the quality of life of its people should be compared with the situation in more developed countries, not the underdeveloped countries.

The rights of the tribals and the Dalit are being violated and the youth need to take up their cause to ensure that their Fundamental Rights are not violated.

They should bring pressure on the government to have a dialogue with the farmers, who are protesting against the farm laws. The working class is protesting against the anti-labour laws and the citizens, especially the youth, feel it is not their concern.

The social media addicted youth feel restless when the internet is down even for a few minutes, but they did not question the internet outage in Jammu and Kashmir for over a year. The youth did not question the detention of hundreds of residents of Jammu and Kashmir, because they raised questions that made the Union Government uncomfortable.

It is time for the youth to study the reports of various departments of the government and expose itsfailures.

Independent India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who was a man of letters (the current one has littered the nation with his failures) had referred to Russian author Nikolai Ostrovsky in his book Discovery of India. Ostrovsky wrote in How the Steel was Tempered, “Man's dearest possession is life. It is given to him but once, and he must live it so as to feel no torturing regrets for wasted years, never know the burning shame of a mean and petty past; so live that, dying, he might say: all my life, all my strength were given to the finest cause in all the world──the fight for the Liberation of Mankind.”

This applies to the youth and all citizens, who are concerned about the well-being of every individual in our country and for the generations to come.

The youth should come out of the social media and on the streets. The social media is not bad, but posts without action are meaningless. Revolution cannot come about by social media posts or by writing such opinion pieces, if there is no action. Change can come about when people realise the problems in the society and decide to correct the wrongs.

To silently watch the mistakes of our rulers will be a blunder.