Patricia Mukhim
Youth they say is the golden period of life. However, there have to be sufficient reasons why that period of life is termed as golden. Youth spells opportunities; it’s the ability to shift gears quickly without much creaking; to experiment with life (not with drugs and alcohol) and new ventures; to forge ahead and plunge into the icy waters without cringing. That’s youth…full of promise and dreams and more. But youth are also part of a society and what society thinks, says and does is absorbed by the youth. If as a family and society we shy away from risk taking and keep drumming into the ears of our young ones that their only goal in life should be to look for a secure government job then we will have a long queue of job seekers wasting their time waiting indefinitely. Alternatively, some parents will even buy a job for their son/daughter and thereby teach them early in life that corruption pays. A person who gets a job by bribing invariably ends up becoming a corrupt individual because that person has no value system to adhere to. And more often than not that same person will jump into the political bandwagon once he/she retires because that is another opportunity for making the fast buck.
I spend much time with young people and find many of them fascinating. Recently a young lady, Teiskhem Lynrah who lives between Mumbai and Shillong and her friends organised a pop-up dinner at Heritage Hotel. Teiskhem later told me that she and a friend from Uttarakhand have launched a start-up called Meraki Bombay (www.facebook.com/merakibombay and www.instagra.com/meraki_bombay). They were both bankers in Mumbai but quit what was a cushy job to take up what they evidently liked better which is starting a pop-up culture. To the uninitiated a pop-up restaurants are temporary restaurants. That often operate from a private home, former factory or similar space, and during festivals. It’s an exciting experiment with food. For those who enjoy cooking, pop-ups are a good way of earning money. This culture is catching up in Shillong. We have a pop-up restaurant called La Bohemienne run by Tara Goswami at the Malki-Lachumiere junction. Leaving a steady job also means giving up a comfort zone. Only the brave dare to take that fling. Obviously this requires a supportive family.
Indeed we have now come to a point when young people shift from job to job which also means they are multi-talented and have equipped themselves with more than one skill set. These are the kind of young people from whom we can expect change; not the stereotypical, predictable types with bored looks. There are people who have worked for years in some government department without any output. They have drawn salaries but if one were to measure the outcomes from their respective jobs one would not be able to quantify that. This happens in a number of professions, including the teaching profession. Teachers spend at least 30-35 of years of their lives without communicating anything of substance.
Now let me not digress further but come to the point about youth participation in politics which to me is the key driver for change. Youth must be constructively engaged in politics because politics is what drives our lives. Hence I was very fascinated by the recent repartee from members of the NEHU Students’ Union on an article written by a teacher of that University who interrogated the role of the NEHUSU which included their being part of the Selection Committee for admitting students to NEHU. The teacher wondered whether their inclusion undermined the role of the expert members of the Committee. Interestingly, what was also raised by the teacher is whether the members of the NEHUSU are also using their time in the Union to launch themselves into mainstream politics. The repartees were more interesting than the original article. Personally, I feel that educated youth with questioning minds should engage with politics, raise questions and disrupt the status quo. Unless the youth do that we will not have change. The same old faces without the capacity for creative thinking and who cannot envision a new Meghalaya except their own personal welfares will continue to rule the state. Is this what we want in 2018 too? Yet that is the trend we see unless some spirited young people have the courage to form a youth only party and launch into the political jungle of elections. Otherwise it is pointless losing sleep over the government’s acts of omission and commission. Youth engagement in politics leads to civic engagement which is broader than political engagement because it can include service to the community through involvement in many areas of development such as health, education the quality of water supplied to us, the kind of roads that we are walking or driving on now and the reasons for frequent power cuts, amongst others. It’s time the youth get out of the old and clichéd students’ bodies that have ruled the roost for a long time and have more non-students than regular students in their fold. Political engagement is a more targeted aspect of civic engagement and can be expressed through voting, participating in political demonstrations and signing petitions for specific issues. It would be wonderful for instance if our youth start filing PILs in the courts on issues that affect the larger public. Or they can petition the Government after having researched through an issue so that in case they are called for a dialogue they are well armed with facts, figures and solid evidence with which to advance their arguments.
At Silchar I met young medical students from Meghalaya and they wonder why Meghalaya has not been able to come up with a single state university or a medical college when Assam already has six medical colleges with 726 seats. You can sense the frustration in them when you begin discussing the developments in Assam and the status quo in Meghalaya. We cannot afford to let young people slip into cynicism so early in their lives. We have to give them hope but how do we do that in a system that fails to respond adequately to their needs. And what examples do we have to give them that things are indeed moving in Meghalaya. Look at the State Assembly building gutted in 2001. This is 2017. Sixteen years have passed and we are yet to see a new building. Is this development? Is this what the MUA –I and MUA -2 Government is proud of showcasing?
And now, when the state assembly elections are just a few months away we have inaugurations galore of projects that might never see the light of day until several years have passed because in Meghalaya there is no concept of a time line and no contractor is ever penalised for not completing projects on time. Rather contractors are awarded with escalations over their old budgets. This sort of attitude is what has held the state back. If today we have young people who have broken out of the circle of gloom and are doing well for themselves, they have done it despite the government.
And before I end this piece, I must admit that Mr Vincent Pala’s statement recently that he is not interested in state politics because his children are still young and studying in Delhi, is a graphic demonstration that the MP does not have faith in the education system of Meghalaya. He prefers that his children get their education in Delhi and from there perhaps he will pack them off abroad. That’s what all our, “Who’s Who” are doing. Only underprivileged souls continue to educate their children here. But even they would rather see their children in Delhi, Mumbai or Bangalore than waste themselves here. What does this say about our education system in Meghalaya? Don’t we deserve better?
Hence I would enjoin our young professionals and college and university students to join active politics and “Be the change they want to see.”