Challenges of Developing Youth

The children of developing world are struggling. Some succeed while others succumb. Many die in the course of struggle. Few dies because of malnutrition, accidents, suicide, natural disasters and bomb blasts, and rest struggle to survive. Many students succumb to societal pressure to opt for trivial jobs. Few join mafia net. Many studious and hard working individuals commit suicide. Approximately 4000 students commit suicide annually. This amounts to 148 per 1, 00,000 in developing world compared to 2.1 in UK. Everyday news papers are full of these incidences. People are forced to read these fearful events. The overall wisdom lacks severely in the society to handle such situations. This becomes serious because most of these people have less access to genuine information. They are engulfed with poverty and deprivation. Normal people remain clueless about these complexities.
National administrative systems and HRD ministry are busy in their trivial ideas and missions. Mostly, they too remain clueless because of detached approach. They remain ignorant because of their forced distances from wisdom sources. They do not like to give weightage to knowledge sources. As such, they have nothing to loose till the time they have to work for one individual. Nation suffers. Farmers commit suicide. Families die in bulk. The crumbling infrastructure halts life. Students feel orphan. Parents remain confused. System is unable to provide wisdom and guidance. Confusions prevail. I owe these confusions to our inability in general to unlearn things. This occurs at individual, society and national level. Shall we stop judging new situations in old backgrounds?
In the midst of all these confusions, leadership is moving ahead and convincing people to take hard decisions. Leaders are telling people to move ahead. They are preaching people to dream big. They are compelling people to drive hard. They are guiding people towards impossibilities. Instead of working themselves and taking hard decisions for the betterment of children, they are telling citizen to work hard. I termed these situations as they are misguiding people towards chaos. These generate contradictions in the mind of youth. This generates frustrations among farmers, workers and families. The contradictions are created in the mind. Wrong aspirations are developed. I call them fatal aspirations.
In due course of time, a family and its members rear so many contradictions in their existence that they make their own life miserable. I would like to explain the prevailing confusions through a simple narrative. This is the true story of a high rising individual in this country. Once I met a person in a train journey. He narrated his life some thing like this -

“I am working in Delhi Police. I am staying in one of the posh area of Delhi. I have four children. The eldest daughter stays in village and studies in school in Otava near Agra so that she can learn the old culture of our society for which we Indians are very proud. I have put my one son and one daughter in DPS RK Puram. They are learning all the latest developments of society. They are learning things very fast. They speak in English. They are studying in English. It is a different story that we never speak English at home. My wife joins sometime at my Delhi residence. She continues staying at village to look after farming with another youngest son of three years of age. I have my two brothers and four sisters staying in the village. They are staying in the joint family except my eldest brother who stays separately in the same village. He and his wife are teachers and they have two children. They are studying in the same school where my brother and sister-in-law are teaching. I am the only advanced and most literate one who could get a service outside the village and working in Delhi. I am staying outside and seeing the advanced world but, you see sir, I have not forgotten the village and my ancient culture. I am so proud of my traditions. I still remember when my father refused to allow me to marry a daughter of my senior with whom I fell in love. We saw few movies together. I took her few times to famous Lodi Garden to understand each other in a better way. Sir, Lodi Garden is really a nice place to take your not so knowledgeable girlfriend to learn few basics of a loving life. There are many live examples there to show to your girlfriend. But after all these, finally I married as per my father’s wishes with a girl of nearby village. My wife is not very literate. She has passed her sixth class from her village school. When she got involved with a boy of tenth class, her father refused to send her to school so that she should not learn bad things of society. Over and above, it is so difficult to get our prestige intact if our daughter gets involved in some love affairs. My father-in-law that way was very strict and discipline. My wife is very hard working and sincere. She takes care of my entire house. She gets up at 4 o’clock and sleeps at 12 o’clock in the night after everybody sleeps. She never complaints to me for anything.
I am very proud of my achievements. In life, you have to sacrifice a bit to get some prestige. I am very sure that I shall always try to teach all these ‘cultural richness’ of my ancestors to my children. Once in a year, I bring my son and daughter studying in DPS, R K Puram, to village for two months during their summer vacation. I leave them in the village with their mother so that they can learn the basics of the ‘sound culture’ of our village. They do not get chance to speak in English in the village but I am hopeful that the sound culture which they learn during vacations will be useful in the long run compare to those who send their children to “Your’s Kid Our Kids” for summer camp and learn salsa, painting, acting, modeling, horse riding or instrumental music etc.
I want to educate my children with the best of education available so that they can become good officers in some Government department and earn a lot of money and prestige. Officers in Government department get lots of prestige and money too from all the public. At the same time, I want to maintain the village set up so that after retirement I or even my children could get settled there and live a good life in old age. I know there are lots of problems in the village like poor electricity, no medical facilities, no good school or college, no road, no communication and so on but at least I am very proud of my village. My grandfathers have taught me that I should not sell or dispose off my ancestor property. I shall not do it at least during my time. I am not sure of my children especially who are studying in DPS. Sometime, their talks give shivers to me.”

During the whole journey, my mind kept on delving on voluminous contradictions in the life of a common man. How an educated person can marry an uneducated wife? How the wife of a middle class urban society would be forced to live a miserable life in village between 4 o’clock in the morning to 12 o’clock in the night? How the people have been taught about the ‘cultural richness’ or ‘sound culture’? Is living in scarcity, indicates a sound culture? How the message of good living and sound culture should be spread in such a vast and contradictory population of south Asian in general and Indian in particular? You force your children to study English and modernity in one hand and on the other hand you ensure, they learn poverty, deprivation, scarcity and misery. What do we want from a child of nine? Is it not a criminal offence to force your nine-year old son or daughter in such a ‘contradictory microwave oven’? Do children of developing world have much choice?
It is ironic that most of the poor children are still being taught in regional language. There are no good writings available in any regional languages. But Government is unable to take any hard decision. Students study in regional languages and subsequently if get opportunities to go for higher education, they have to switch over to English by force. Some are able to adjust while few go for suicide. Other becomes Naxals or terrorists. It is criminal in the part of democratic leadership. Poor are unable to understand the actual need. Children as well as parents are puzzled. We have to avoid these existing anomalies in life. It remains a challenge.
Finance Minister P Chidambaram at the function on 25th year’s celebration of only MNC of India M/S Infosys at Mysore says, ‘India is not poor country. India has poor people.’ I say that India has poor leaders. These leaders speak during functions to tell individual to be strong. Why can not they become strong? Why not they take hard decisions to take this moving country ahead? Why they succumb to pity pressure to keep their chair? The similar thing was told by Prime Minister during an award ceremony in Delhi. We have taken fifteen long years to reach to this level after globalization. Are we going to take another fifteen years to have basic infrastructure? These are challenges. They contradict our existence. Children become frustrated. They are unable to digest this apathy.
The country is proud of educated youth. The country is prospering because of English speaking people. The better future is reserved for the people who are educated in English. Why should we waste our time in reservation for higher studies when basic education is not available? The education system needs to be revolutionized. The bad leadership is forcing children to commit suicide.
Every individual has to understand these anomalies in the system of developing society. The future of the nation depends on its youth. They are being readied today. They must concentrate on big issues. Their parents, teachers and well wishers must focus on real issues. They have to learn to unlearn. They have to ignore contradictions. They have to avoid fatal aspirations.