Rising political apathy among the urban Indian youth

Wise men say to question everything… But it seems like the contemporary urban youth has taken a U-turn and rather have chosen to answer everything… They seem to have got the answer to every situation up their sleeves, and here lies the problem. Eavesdrop on any evening adda across the urban Indian colleges and you would get to know the answers to every problem; no matter how big or small they are. Whether it be the foreign policy of India or India's nuclear power; whether it be the billion-dollar scams or how Indian healthcare system has been fighting the pandemic, the youth seems to have the answer to them all. But why is it then that when the question comes to their court and they need to take the task on themselves, that the urban Indian youth takes a step back?

A number of reasons lay behind this political fatigue among the urban Indian youth:

First, over-politicisation of the educational campuses is one of the foremost reasons as to why these youngsters tend to evade politics as a whole. With the mainstream political parties and their cadres teeming up the centres of education and spreading their political agenda vehemently, a handful of students get swayed by peer pressure and end up losing the track of their career as a whole. Politically motivated lynching and vendetta fights have become daily news update for many such institutions, leading to the majority of the youth to be fearful of the outcome in case they side with any one particular political ideology and thus, they more often than not, try to evade taking any political stance as a whole.

Second, the rat-race that rising underemployment has pushed our youth into, has made it imminent for the younger generations to be solely mindful of their personal career and lifestyle, rather than to bother about how a policy implementation or passing of a Bill is affecting the lives of millions in the interior-most villages.

Third, quoting from Ray, "The more they read, the more they know, the lesser they obey" ( ওরা যত বেশি পড়ে, তত বেশি জানে, তত কম মনে). The endless rut of exams, semesters, submissions, projects, presentations and such, have bound the lives of the younger generations in such a loop, that they hardly get the scope to delve into the literature behind the world's political ideologies. Thus, they tend to absorb only the negativities that are so vehemently published and promoted by the media, as bad news sells better. This pushes the youth further away from developing their own ideologies to work and fight for a cause, and they rather tend to be spoon fed about particular 'morphed' ideologies by the seniors, who have their own ulterior motives.

Fourthly, and probably the most important to note is that, it is easier to criticise, than to walk a mile in the shoes of the people who implement the policies.

To end this note, our earnest request to all the youngsters reading this is that, anytime the question appears in your mind, "Why should I get into 'dirty' politics?", watch the scene from Rang De Basanti on a loop: ( https://youtu.be/BxXXVBA-R7k ) "Desh badlega, par jab hum usse badlege", or in the quote that we have written a thousand times in our essays and WhatsApp status, "Be the change you want to see in the world."