Politics of youth
As if Omar Abdullah’s contribution alone were not enough, now we have the collective ‘GenNext intervention’ from Delhi on J&K! Right when the country’s youngest chief minister has squandered away, in a matter of a year, the hope and optimism the last two successful Assembly elections and the subsequent political process had generated in J&K, around 40 young members of Parliament, cutting across party lines, issued a joint appeal, urging the agitating Kashmiri youth to join the negotiation table. On the face of it, their resolve indeed is praiseworthy. But the problem lies in an uncomfortable question; about the political and social credentials of these MPs, barring a few exceptions, to be the true representatives of the youth of democratic India and their credibility to command the respect and trust of the country’s aspiring and struggling youngsters, from Kanyakumari to Srinagar.
Before going to the fault-lines in these young MPs’ political makeup, one should look at the backdrop and timing of their ‘peace move’. It took almost two months of agitation and nearly 50 deaths on the streets of Kashmir for Omar to realise the basics of politics and governance; that in a democratic system, the true leaders have to remain constantly in touch with, and reach out to, the people and not remain like a king in an ivory tower especially when outbursts of popular discontent are on display.
It was only after the cultivated ‘bright kid’ image of Omar was razed down, ironically , by the very (stone-throwing) youth of his home state through 24×7 reality TV shows, that he thought it fit to visit a hospital to see the injured. It was exactly on ‘Omar’s day out’ that his young friends in Parliament chose to launch their own ‘peace mission’. It is a different matter it took some experienced political brains in Delhi and the octogenarian Syed Ali Shah Gilani in Srinagar to provide the battered young CM a temporary relief.
In short, in their two-month silent watching of Kashmir crisis and their final decision to venture out, Omar and his young friends put up a perfect display of synchronised reflexes. Did these young MPs snap out of their collective slumber to see their own potential future in Omar’s total disconnect with the youth of his state?
The plot only thickens when you consider that these so-called young turks had neither been shaken nor stirred by a series of recent events that had special significance for India’s youth. Many young couples are being hounded or hacked to death in the name of ‘honour killings’ or ‘upholding the caste pride’ by hoodlums. But none of us had the privilege of seeing these young MPs, supposedly champions of India’s youth, issue an appeal for reason or launch a movement against caste authority. Instead, one of them vowed to take ‘the khap panchayat cause’ to the PMO!
We recently saw a young Dalit girl being made to wash toilet at the school where she studied, leading to her suicide, and how a social boycott forced the Uttar Pradesh government to abandon its plans to employ Dalit cooks in schools. But none of this pricked the conscience of these ‘young and progressive’ MPs.
The nation is also witnessing an animated debate on how to tackle the Maoist problem, especially when many young men and women of the neglected social sections are joining the radicals’ bloody war against the state. Have you heard our Gen-Next MPs air their views on the matter? They also suffer no bout of collective anger when the Commonwealth Games, meant to boost the spirit of Indian’s sporting youth, has turned out to be a mega show of corruption and mismanagement.
But, then, it is no accident that these young MPs who display their collective agony over their friend Omar falling flat on his GenNext nose, remain indifferent to the real issues and causes of the Indian youth. Because, they, like Omar, owe nothing to India’s youth, or their aspirations for becoming what they are; MPs, ministers, chief minister and tomorrow’s rulers. They have made it big not because they have risen from a genuine youth movement or political process or by charming the voters with some exceptional talent.
They owe their rise to just two factors: the powerful political families to which they belong to, and the way they systematically and collectively degenerated our democratic system into hereditary rules that ambush the genuine youth activists, snuff out their political careers and leave voters with no genuine choices.
And the fact that most of the national and regional parties, including those that harp against the ‘dynastic Congress’, have started accepting family raj and started churning out their own Hereditary Turks is posing amajor threat to the democratic process.
As Srinagar revealed the disconnect between Omar and the youth on the street, no wonder his true cohorts in Parliament too felt the heat.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/comments--analysis/The-agony-of-the-hereditary-turks/articleshow/6278871.cms
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