What the Youth Can Do (Part VII)

‘I remember my youth and the feeling that
will never come back any more-the
feeling that I could last for ever, outlast
the sea, the earth, and all men; the
deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to
perils, to love, to vain effort- to death; the
triumphant conviction of strength, the
heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow
in the heart that with every year grows
dim, grows cold, grows small, and
expires – and expires, too soon, too soon-
before life itself.

Joseph Conrad: Youth, 1902

Youth is generally speaking assigned to the age group 16 to 35 years. Now whoever comes within this age group is youth: the males and females, the students and the non-students, the educated and the uneducated, the city dwellers and the rustics and not only those here but hose who live abroad have to be taken into account while dealing with such a problem. Yes the focus has to be on the student as they constitute the bulk of the youth population.

In the context of India youth have always played a decisive role in almost every socio-politico-cultural development. This is a particular mission in which active youth power is required.

I am a youth but still I can say there is a problem with the youth of India, especially those in the metros like Delhi that they are too much self-centred, too much fascinated about everything western and cynical about most of what is Indian. So the solution mostly they look for has its root in the west. The problem is not west. Western model is not always wrong, but they definitely have a very different socio-cultural set up than ours. The solution has to be as per Indian requirements. For example, years ago the government was promoting eucalyptus plantation in India. There can be nothing wrong with a tree at the conceptual level but it was not something that India required. It had to be later withdrawn as it sucked huge amount of water and would fell even in weak storms. This was something an overpopulated country with so much pressure on land can’t afford.

What we need is to exploit culture and traditional beliefs, modern science, and current requirement. To quote Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, culture is tradition and tradition is memory. Only one deeply steeped in the past and robust imagination of the future can efficiently handle present.

The problem of making sustainable development a practice is far from being simple. It requires sustained effort for it asks shaking very fundamentals and ideals of today’s lifestyle.

T. S. Eliot wrote in ‘Murder in the Cathedral’, “Clear the air! clean the sky! wash the wind!
Is Delhi listening?