Youth Unrest

Youth unrest in a way is a most natural phenomenon. Unrest is a part of the youth. Youth, as observed by Will Durant, is as confident and improvident as a god. It loves excitement and adventure. It loves the superlative, the exaggerated, the limitless, because it has abounding energy and frets to liberate its strength. It loves new and dangerous thing, a man is as young as the risk he takes. Youth bears law and order grudgingly. It is asked to be quiet, when noise is its medium, it is asked to be passive when it longs for action, it is asked to be sober and judicious, when its very blood makes youth a continuous intoxication. It is the age of abandon and its motto is 'nothing succeeds like excess'. It is never tired; it lives in the present, regrets no yesterday and dreads no to- morrow. It is the age of sensation and unchilled desire, for experience yet is not soured with disillusionment. Every moment is loved for itself. For the majority of us it is the only period of life when we live. Most men after forty are but a reminiscence, the burnt out ashes of what was once a flame. The tragedy of life is that it gives us wisdom only when it has stolen the youth. Â We are not, however, concerned in this article with youth unrest in its above-mentioned wider aspect. What we are concerned with is youth unrest when it takes the form of an aberration, an outward and visible manifestation of the frustrations, disillusionments and disappointments of the young men and women. On occasions such manifestations impinge upon the state of law and order and affect the life of rest of the community. Our purpose essentially has to be to focus attention on this aspect. Â Youth unrest in India is to some extent a regional manifestation of the wave of youth unrest which is sweeping all over the world. There is ferment in the minds of the young people. The gods we worshipped till yesterday have been dethroned from the minds of people and the new ones have yet to take their place. This has resulted in a void within ourselves, a vacuum in our mental processes. To many this state of affairs represents a twilight of uncertainty. It is not surprising that on some occasions we are gripped by a feeling of ennui and on others by a sense of getting lost like those in a boat on the high seas, rudderless and without a chart. Institutions like those of religion which provided anchorage in the past to the troubled minds have ceased to do so. Deities who gave us spiritual and mental support have fallen prey to the mood of iconoclasm which sways the mental processes of the educated youth. A spirit of scepticism stalks our spiritual landscape. Lights have gone dim and in the enveloping atmosphere of darkness we feel like wayfarers in No Man's Land. As the goal recedes and the quest for the holy grail proves elusive, the irritation born of frustration makes us wayward and takes our thoughts to unconventional channels and often leads to simmering discontent and unrest amongst the youth. Â It would, however, be not correct to look upon youth unrest in India as merely a part of the global phenomenon of youth unrest. There are other causes some of them of our own making, which have made significant contribution in this respect and given large dimensions to the problem of youth unrest in India. It would be necessary to locate and enumerate, those causes in our effort to seek a solution and find a way out. Â The problem of unemployment that stares our young students is one of the prime causes for the student unrest. Most of our students are in the grip of the consciousness that after they comlete their school and college education, they would have to face a world wherein there are much fewer avenues of employment compared to the large number of those seeking them. Compared to the vast numbers of those getting degrees every year, there are very few jobs to absorb them. It is no secret that many parents have to spend their life earnings on the education of their children. When those children leave the portals of the universities, they are confronted with a situation wherein despite all their ardour they find no prospect of gainful employment. They are then seized by the complex and fear that they would be adding to the already large hordes of unemployed persons. This inevitably dampens their spirits. It should surprise no one if in such situation the thoughts of the youth turn to dangerous channels. University degrees invites scorn if they cannot provide reasonable opportunities for gainful employment. No one can deny that the IQ of an average Indian student is very high and in no way lower than the IQ of the youth in the other advanced countries of the world. This is amply proved by the "mark the Indian students have made in foreign universities. Despite that we find that not only the educated youth, but even engineers and technocrats are unemployed and without jobs in India. This is so at a time when so much needs to be done by engineers and technocrats to change the economic face of the country and to take us out of the quagmire of poverty and privation. Â In the face of the mounting unemployment, we must not forget that frustration and mood to rebel are the natural offsprings of a situation wherein the cultural emphasis is upon pecuniary success but where there is little access to conventional and legitimate means for becoming successful. Â Another cause of youth unrest in our country is that university campuses are becoming hot beds of intrigues and machinations of professional politicians who want to exploit the volatile youth for their selfish ends. Today, the professional politicians are infiltrating into the precincts of educational institutions and disturbing the academic calm which was normally associated with these institutions. With a view to exploit the students for partisan ends, the politicians play upon their passions, excite their frenzy and prompt them, if necessary, to break the rules of the Institutions and disobey the teachers. This necessarily affects the discipline among the students and has also the effect of distracting their studies. All this makes the task of teachers most difficult. Some time ago I ventured to observe; "how hazardous is it to be a teacher". The more I have given further thought to the matter, the far more firmly I believe that unless the sanctity of our educational institutions is preserved and protected against the intrusion of politicians trying to make them subserve their partisan ends, it would be difficult to bring about much change in the prevailing atmosphere of indiscipline amongst the students. To repeat what I said a few weeks earlier, indiscipline leads to needless defiance and insolence; indiscipline carried to the extreme can result in violence and lawlessness. Instances are not unknown of students intimidating and making physical assault on their teachers. It is obvious that such incidents would create some kind of fear complex in the minds of at least some of the teachers. It is further plain that a teacher working under that complex would not be able to impart the best to his students; he would neither be able to point out their mistakes, nor be able to reprimand them for their lapses. He would also be not in a position to express his opinions freely and to appraise the performance of the students without some kind of inner constraint. When fear stalks the corridors of educational institutions, there can be neither proper education nor effective teaching. More than 2000 years ago Plato warned of a situation wherein temperance was rejected as unmanliness and insolence was mistaken for good breeding, anarchy masqueraded as liberty, waste posed as munificence and impudence was paraded as courage. In such situation, he said, father gets accustomed to descend to the level of his son and to fear him and the son gets on the level of his father having no shame or fear of his parents, the teacher fears and flatters his pupils and the pupils despite their masters and teachers, the old do not like to be considered morose and authoritative and therefore they imitate the young, and the citizens chafe at the least touch of authority and cease to care even for law. We face real danger of the emergence of somewhat similar situation. Â The fall in the standards and the quality of our political life cannot avoid being noticed by our young men and women with their perceptive, and at the same time, impressionable minds. They feel so much disillusioned and disenchanted with what is happening all around that the advice of the older people sounds nothing more than hollow pontification. Such advice seems to have within it a tinge of hypocrisy, an echo of pretense and sham, for have the youth not seen a wise gulf between what those in the older generation say and preach and what they do and act upon. Â Normally it is the leaders of the nation who set the tone of public and private morality. It is they who lay the example for others to emulate and follow. Not much heart searching is needed to find out as to how far our recent leadership has stood the test in this respect. We must remember that evil habits percolate and once a person at the top gets seized of them, the evil habits are bound to flow down and become ubiquitous. Â There can be no doubt that in dealing with the youth and finding a solution for their problems, we need to bring about a sympathetic approach. The law enforcement agencies cannot afford to be oblivious of that. At the same time I want to invite attention to one vital aspect. Indiscipline when carried to extreme can result in lawlessness and create serious law and order problems. Somehow an impression has been sought to be fostered that students, especially when acting in groups, can with impunity act in defiance of law and even commit serious crimes and that the law enforcement agencies would turn a blind eye to such lapses and deviations, A grave danger lurks in such situation. No society can allow any section of population to entertain the feeling that it enjoys immunity from the reach of criminal processes. Those who encourage this attitude should not be oblivious of the fact that such an attitude contains within itself germs of lawlessness and anarchy which no civilised polity can countenance and put up with. Criminal law cannot and should never be made to forsake its function of being the most potent and vital instrument of social defence. Let not any section of the population, be it the students, the other youth or the older people harbour any feeling, that they are beyond the reach of legal processes. Once criminal law forsakes that function, we would be reverting to a state of jungle, wherein the law of tooth and claw shall prevail and brute force shall take the place of rule of law and right shall have to give way to might. All of us have to bear in mind that ours is already a poor country. Road transport and other means of public utility are already not in good shape. If few buses that we have for transport are set on fire or other public property is destroyed for some wrong, genuine or fancied, the loss that is caused is to the nation and not the petty official against whose conduct those setting fire to buses and destroying public property want to express their resentment. Â The task of the law enforcement agencies in dealing with the young students is most difficult and calls for high degree of tact and sagacity. This is so irrespective of the fact whether they are dealing with group of students or individuals amongst them. Instances are not unknown when some incident involving individual student has led to group action by the students. What attitude should the law enforcement agencies adopt when the students or other organised groups go on rampage. What should be the measure of force to deal with them, the quantum of sternness which may prove effective and yet not sound harsh. Too little done at the initial stages may invite criticism of inadequacy of the measures. Too much done at that stage may also invite criticism of over-reaction, disproportionate to situation. We have also to bear in mind that police officers and other representatives of law enforcement agencies are often confronted with piquant situations which develop all of a sudden. Such situations arise when some one in the group makes a show of his temper or suddenly resorts to stone throwing. It is difficult to expect those in that situation to retain their coolness and composure or to weigh things in a golden scale. Â There is also a tendency to shove off all blame to the police. It provides a convenient alibi for the lapses of all others. The police has also no rapport with the general public. The result is that there is a general tendency to denounce the police whenever things go wrong in any encounter between it and a group. This has, to some extent, a demoralising effect on the police. It also results in the stiffening of the attitude of some of them and coarsening of the sensitivities of others. Either of these is an unhealthy development. If excessive harshness and sternness of police force poses a threat to decent and civilised way of life, an undue timidity and softness on the part of police creates a sense of insecurity and vulnerability of which an advantage is bound to be taken by anti-social elements. It would, therefore, be necessary to strike a judicious balance. At the same time I want to emphasise that it would be an extremely shortsighted and myopic view of things to look upon the question of youth unrest as a problem of law and order or as one for which solution may be provided by law enforcement agencies. The problem needs a willingness to tackle it at grass roots, an endeavour to deal with the basic causes, and a concerted effort to find, not a momentary way out of the impasse or ad hoc remedy, but a reasonably permanent and abiding solution. The problem calls for vision and sympathetic approach. Those dealing with the problem have to synthesise within themselves the qualities of a social scientist, an economist, a planner, a psychologist, an educationist and a statesman. In order to understand the problem, we must get in tune with the youth, understand their feelings and appreciate their difficulties. Pontification and sermonising to them would cut no ice, it would only exacerbate their feelings. Those who keep themselves at some distance from the youth can hardly be in a position to know what feelings and emotions pulsate within them. To really know it all, you have to become one of them. Â The future of the country in the final analysis is linked with the youth of the country. It is their mental processes which would govern the future destiny of the country. The youth are also the repositories of nation's ideals and the custodian of its hopes and aspirations. It is necessary to ensure that the springs of idealism amongst the youth do not get dried up. Likewise, it is essential to see that the hopes and aspirations of the youth do not turn into despondency and gloom. The older generations has had its innings but it owes it to the country and the mother-land to see that it leaves a befitting legacy to the younger generations. Â The youth force of the country has immense potentialities. Used for nation-building, it can work wonders and transform the national scene within a short period. Exploited for partisan ends and group interests, it can pose a real threat to the even flow of the life of the community. Blessed are the times and fortunate is the leadership which can galvanise the youth force for constructive ends and for the task of nation-building. History tells us that it is in the hour of crisis that the real character of a nation is put to test and the qualities which lie dormant come to the surface. It is for some master spirit like the trinity of Gandhi, Nehru and Patel to bring out and harness those qualities. Â Only a few days ago, we, the people of India, took part in a gigantic process of political action through what were the biggest elections in the world. It has rightly been described to be an act of faith in which millions over millions all over the country exercised their choice regarding the future rulers of the country. It was some thing unique, a fascinating sight for all including those who are members of no political party, to see the people, the mass of them, recording their verdict on the achievements and failures of politicians and political parties. The elections have revealed that there is no office more important than that of a voter in a democracy and that no one should take him for granted. Likewise I would say that there is no age more important for the future of the country than that of youth and that no one should take them for granted. The youth have a reservoir of goodwill and earnestness. It is the rich treasure of the nation. Let no one draw upon it too heavily or dissipate it for personal, partisan or other ignoble ends.

Author Name: Hon’ble Justice H R Khanna