On March 7, 1965, James Reeb made a choice. That day, a group of black nonviolent demonstrators were brutally beaten up by state troopers near Selma, Alabama, for demanding voting rights that they had been denied hitherto by white supremacist administrations, through various voter suppression tactics including intimidation and violence. One of the activists, Amelia Boynton, had been beaten senseless on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where the rally was dispersed with batons and tear gas.
Nobel Prize-winning, legendary civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke out against this act of racist police brutality (which continues to be a problem in the country), thereby giving this incident a national audience. He called on everyone who believed in the foundational ideals of the USA, especially white people, to join him in a march from the town of Selma to Montgomery, Alabama’s capital, two days later.
Reeb, a white Unitarian Universalist minister based in Boston and a firm believer in racial equality, was one of the few white people who had heeded Dr. King’s call, and travelled cross-country to Selma to show his commitment to the cause. Later on the night of 9th March, Reeb was brutally attacked by a group of white racist thugs outside a restaurant, giving him severe head injuries that resulted in his death two days later. His killers were never convicted. Reeb was just 38 at the time of his death, and a father of four. He was a young man with a young family. He personally had much to lose, and almost nothing to gain materially from attending the rally. But he decided to choose to act. Dr. King, a young man himself, had a dream, black Americans and white egalitarians like Reeb had the same dream, and the latter’s sacrifice was meant to help realize that dream.
Individual Choices And Personality Traits
Young people make decisions. Decisions involve choices. Some of these choices, like that of Reeb, are significant. Choices are typically determined by one’s personality type. Reeb’s personality meant that he would have stood up against racism no matter what. He had devoted himself to working with poor black children and helping them live lives of dignity. These were ‘smaller’ choices that he made throughout his rather short life, but ones that prepared him to make the big decision when it mattered. Research by Farizo et al have shown that environmental choices made by individuals depend on their personality traits. For example, what kind of environmental policy one would support and contribute their resources to depends on how rational, agreeable, open to new ideas and sociable they are.
Research by Keller and Siegrist shows that one’s personality traits are associated with one’s food habits. So, if you are a conscientious person, it’s likely that you choose to say no to the temptation of hors d’ouevre and sweet mozzarella cheese rolls. A study done in Saudi Arabia found that medical graduate students who chose surgery as their speciality scored the highest on “impulsive sensation-seeking” and “aggression-hostility”. Male students, not unsurprisingly, scored higher on impulsive sensation-seeking than females. Moral of the story? Never tick off a surgeon. If you do that, it’s a choice you are making – probably makes you masochistic. No really.
Significant choices that young people make often determine the course of history. Think of a young Muhammad Ali refusing to be drafted for the Vietnam War, convinced that it was an unjust war fuelled by empty exceptionalist nationalism. Think of a young Bezwada Wilson, who overcame depression upon learning that his parents were manual scavengers to start the Safai Karmachari Andolan in 1994, with a commitment to rid Indian society of this inhuman and discriminatory practice. Or think of Edward Snowden, who risked his life to alert the world of the dark and invisible tentacles that the government he had been serving had spread to surveil it, enlightening us in the process.
Young People Are Always The Driving Force For Change
By “young” I don’t mean those who are merely physically young, but those who are intellectually open-minded, curious, sceptical of oppressive authority and yearning to be free. They are the ones who take decisions that turn out to be momentous. They go against the flow and upset the status quo. They can bring about changes on a cultural level. All this shows that if young people are given freedom of choice, they have great potential to bring about positive changes. Indeed, societies that give their youth freedom are societies that thrive intellectually and materially.
As my post is likely to be a non-event sandwiched between the International Youth Day on 12th August and India’s Independence Day on 15th August, I have a question to ask: how much freedom does the Indian youth have today to make choices? In many cases, the choice seems clear: either your life or your life partner. You can’t have both together.
They call it “honour” killing. That’s a rather tasty term for what is basically a hate crime. Any number of excuses can be made to hate-murder your own child – she married the wrong caste, or the wrong religion, or someone other than the dowry-lover you chose for her (it’d seem that patriarchy makes people sadomasochistic). When the root cause is misogyny and the idea that a man controls all of a woman’s choices, then she might be killed for even taking the wrong kind of bus to college – provided she is allowed to go to college.
That aside, in conservative India, you don’t marry individuals, you marry castes or religions. Your caste or religion is believed to be etched into your “blood”, which in turn is deemed “superior” or “inferior” based on artificial hierarchizations of caste and even religion. Hence the obsession with purity. The female body is seen as a repository of caste or religious “purity” – again a byproduct of toxic patriarchy and misogyny – and thus “honour” of the family is seen to reside in her body. Conveniently enough, this honour doesn’t die with the death of the woman. It would seem that the “honour” is in curbing individual choice, in an almost oppressively collectivist society.
Youth And Employability
India is said to have already entered its demographic dividend phase, which is the stage in a country’s life when, due to demographic transition led by declining fertility, its working-age population (15-59 / 64 years) becomes greater than its dependent population. This is seen as a potentially advantageous phase where the country will be at the peak of its productivity. This is the part of a country’s life where it ought to “make hay” and maximize its potential. Once the demographic dividend is attained, the per capita income and savings rise, so do standards of living. There is greater capital formation, meaning the economy thrives. But this maximization will not happen passively merely on account of there being more producers than consumers in an economy.
Policy and planning geared towards maximisation are of utmost importance if a demographic dividend has to be realized. A population’s health outcomes, education levels, ability and freedom in decision-making (the extent to which democracy is deepened, in other words) – all determine whether or not an economy at the cusp of a demographic dividend will be able to realize the same. Lutz et al have demonstrated in their study that it is a population’s education profile, rather than age profile, that determines whether or not there will be a demographic dividend. India’s “demographic dividend window” has been estimated to be a period of 37 years from 2018 to 2055.
A review of India’s education policy, conducted a decade ago, when India’s demographic transition was being anticipated, by Chandrashekhar, Ghosh and Roychowdhury concluded that there was poor absorption of Indian youth into the labour force, which was “perhaps due to the poor employability of the workforce, which is severely affected by a deficit in educational attainment and health”.
We often see reports on how privilege plays a definitive role in shaping the futures of children in India. More privileged kids, who also have more educated parents, have more choices in life than less privileged ones. A recent ASSOCHAM report presents a grim picture regarding the employability of Indian youth – only 20 percent of the nearly 5 million people who graduate each year are deemed to possess skills required in the job market. The Central government has sought to address the yawning skill deficit in graduates through the Skill India Mission, which has been a failure. The focus of Skill Indian Mission has largely been on short-term skill courses, which has resulted in low placements. The Mission itself was launched keeping short-term goals in mind – to win a State Assembly election.
The government has also seemingly responded to the call for innovation to be nurtured at the grassroots, in order to vitalize a start-up ecosystem, by launching the Atal Innovation Mission. Sadly, this too has failed, given there are no controls on spending under the scheme. Further, another question that comes out of the whole idea of demographic dividend is: what after the heady phase is over?
Experts talk about a “second demographic dividend”. Demographic transition of a population reaping the first demographic dividend leads to its fertility eventually falling below replacement levels. After the window for the first demographic dividend is over, the number of producers in the economy will again lag the number of consumers. This will lead to a fall in savings, but standards of living having already reached high enough, betraying a shortfall in labour.
The second demographic dividend involves taking steps to make capital formation and high per capital income permanent. Developed countries, like Japan, are addressing their shortfall in local labour by inviting global labour. But this becomes a challenge – since the high-skilled labour shortfall is to be addressed by loaning from the Global South, which doesn’t have adequate resources or political will to make its labour force skilled enough. People who become highly skilled in the Global South typically shift to greener pastures, and the productivity of the Global South stays low. The second demographic dividend of developed countries, thus, poses a threat to India’s first demographic dividend. India’s current surgical strike “nationalism” epidemic notwithstanding, what choices are India’s young people making? Data from 2017 show that there has been a 143% rise in the number of emigrant Indians since 1990 – up from 7 million in 1990 to 17 million in 2017. The number of unskilled emigrants has fallen from 637,000 in 2011 to 391,000 in 2017. The math is left for the reader as an exercise.
What About The Disabled Youth?
We now have a new patronizing term for them – “Divyangjan”. It is almost as if these euphemisms are compulsively invented to hide a cultural disdain for disability rights. There is an inability (disability?), as it were, among most able-bodied Indians to view disabled people as human beings with ambitions, desires, beliefs, emotions – just like them. Even so, let us take a look at the choices disabled youth in India have.
Reports suggest that only 36 percent of all disabled people are employed. This might sound as if the disabled people are having it better, given that only 20 percent of their able-bodied counterparts are considered employable. But here is the problem – 90 percent of all the disabled people who are employed work in the unorganised sector – where labour rights are always treated with contempt, and disability rights, even more so. Effectively, then, just around 3 percent of all disabled people work in the organized sector. Not only does that mean lower productivity for the economy as a whole, but it exposes the overwhelming majority of disabled people to potential abuse and violation of their rights.
This is merely a small illustrative list highlighting the socioeconomic divisions that exist in India. One could talk at length about the paucity of choices Dalit youth, Muslim youth, Adivasi youth, transgender youth, poor youth, female youth, northeastern youth, gender-nonconforming youth etc. have to deal with. Most young people who can afford a decent education and are willing to stay back in India are faced with limited career choices. Most of them have to take up jobs that are dissonant with their aptitude.
Why Are Attempts To Inject Innovative Spirit Among Indian Youth Failing?
As it is, unemployment levels are at a 45-year high. Frustration and insecurity are, therefore, rife. Conditions are ripe for a misinformation/delusion economy to take over. Insecure youth take refuge in the myth that India is propelling itself to greatness under a great leader. Social media is being gamed to prioritize fake news and rumours. Here is where choices become crucial again. Do we, as young Indians, choose to believe everything we see “forwarded” or “retweeted” to us, especially when they align perfectly with our political beliefs and prejudices? Can it be a legitimate excuse for young people who are frustrated to fall for propaganda, falsehoods and nonsense? Or do we stay on our guard at all times, fact-checking every piece of information that is presented to us?
After all, there is no dearth of fact-checking websites on the internet, only of willingness to fact-check. It also pays to wait for legacy media to corroborate information selling like hot cakes on social media. It would seem that a sufficient number of people, however, are falling for misinformation and are happy being deluded about their country’s supposed greatness. Why are attempts to inject innovative spirit among Indian youth failing? Because, along with resources, freedom to ask for evidence, to question authority, tradition and status quo are necessary in order to give space to the innovative spirit.
These are what provide youth with the freedom to choose their calling. Far from providing that space, the current political climate in the country is becoming increasingly anti-intellectual. Mythology is being made to pass for science and a mark of India’s “greatness”. Two-bit, semi-literate, power-hungry, attention-seeking hate-preachers are now using a compliant mainstream media as their klaxon to air their hatred of intellectuals. Intellectuals are in fact being arrested for dubious reasons and smeared with facetious slurs like “urban Naxal”.
The UAPA is being amended to allow the government to label anyone a terrorist without being questioned. Very few of us are even asking what is happening with the NRC exercise in Assam – to the apex court, it’s just about deadlines to be met. “Illegal immigrants” are not seen as people. The landmark RTI Act is sought to be diluted to keep the pesky questions at bay. After all, fascism is scared of those who think independently, and want to silence them through intimidation and violence. It’s all about limiting choices for the people, especially young people.
Is it any surprise, then, that many young Indians don’t understand the meaning of choice?
Article 370: How Much Do We Really Know About Kashmir?
It is, frankly, appalling to see the number of Indians – the majority of them upper caste, “educated”, urban and middle class – hailing the government’s decision to abrogate Article 370 of the Constitution. No questions are being asked about why this sudden secret coup on a sacred treaty was imposed upon a people perennially under siege.
Instead, people barely educated about Kashmir and its history are dishing out ‘reasons’ why they think the subterfuge was a good idea: “it will put a curb on terrorism, it has put Pakistan out of the picture, it will bring in investment and development in the valley etc”.
It is being suggested by privileged Indian youth, who have never seen Kashmir (or perhaps even a Kashmiri), that this will be “good” for Kashmiri youth. Not one of these people has bothered to ask Kashmiris themselves what they think. Even though we do have some idea about Kashmiri youth feel about this, despite the clampdown on communication from the besieged valley, these views have been conveniently ignored by both the government and the supporters of its decision. Some people are happy with the revocation of Article 370 as it will “benefit Kashmiris”, but worried sick about the valley’s fate once the greedy corporate ghouls invade it!
Truth is, few of us have been taught anything substantial about Kashmir. We have mostly been trained to think of Kashmir as “ours”, while Kashmiris have been seen as terrorists, ungrateful or troublemakers otherwise. Kashmir has been seen as an India-Pakistan match, one which we must win. Kashmiri people – as people – have hardly ever featured in our dinner table conversations about Kashmir, unless we have been lamenting the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits due to terrorist violence against them in the 80s and 90s.
Truth is, we haven’t even learned to understand the plight of the Pandits. We haven’t learned to tell Islamist hate-preachers and terrorists apart from majority innocent Kashmiris who either had nothing to do with it or even actively opposed it. We haven’t learned to sympathize with Kashmiri Muslims who were also displaced during the violence. We haven’t understood the violence underlying the heavy militarisation of the valley, where people have been experiencing lockdowns and curfews for decades. We have chosen to stay oblivious to the pain of those families who have lost their loved ones – who have been “encountered” or “disappeared”, or of those Kashmiri women who have been living with the trauma of having been gang-raped by members of the AFSPA-drunk armed forces, or of children who have lost their eyes to the fury of pellet guns, and are yet to get justice.
We haven’t learned to understand those Kashmiris who want no piece of India, Pakistan or China, but to be an independent country. And some of us choose not to understand the deliberate victimisation and humiliation by Hindutva forces of the only Muslim majority ex-State in India. Nor do we understand that Kashmiri youth don’t have much freedom to choose. They are stuck between a rock and a hard place. If they come to mainland India, they are treated as “others”, and physically attacked when “nationalist” sentiments are high. If they stay in their valley, they have to deal with the oppressive 24X7 presence of heavily armed, sometimes malicious military and paramilitary forces. Protesters are deemed “anti-national” or “terrorist” and immediately brought down with force.
None of us had to fight for the freedoms we enjoy today. Maybe that’s why we don’t understand freedom, having taken it for granted forever. This 15th of August, it would be a good idea for all of us who don’t understand Kashmir and Kashmiris, to take advantage of “freedom sale” offers, and pick up books on the subject. We might yet learn that in a democracy we have the right to ask questions and to know the truth. And that that’s exactly what Kashmiris are fighting for at this very moment, but are deprived of answers.
If and only if we collectively exercise our right to ask questions, it becomes a power in our hands. And we are empowered to make ourselves powerful, and by extension, we can empower Kashmiris, who we have so far seen nominally as “our people”. It might not be too late yet to realize that our stubborn statist sentiments end up hurting Kashmiris – which, if we want to be proud of being a democracy, should avoid doing. As the legendary Toni Morrison, who passed away recently, once said, “If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else.”
This Independence Day, let us choose to speak out against misogyny, homophobia, Islamophobia, racism, casteism and transphobia. This Independence Day, let us actually be independent, let us be like James Reeb, let us give ourselves the freedom to choose what is right. This Independence Day, let us reassert the value of intellectuals, and reject anti-intellectualism and a growing culture of violent stupidity. This Independence Day, let us not allow violent fascists to take away our democratic right to criticize our own country. To paraphrase the great James Baldwin, “I love India more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”