Column

Sometimes, we miss the wood for trees. Our columnists and commentators have latched on to the anti-pub culture remarks of BS Yeddyurappa, Ashok Gehlot and Anbumani Ramadoss to score semantic points. One critic pointed out the double-standards behind targeting pub culture — what’s okay for men is not okay for women. Others have lampooned politicians for targeting minor vices like pub culture when horrendous evils like corruption and street violence go unchecked.

There’s no two ways about it: goons taking the law into their hands is simply not on. But are we missing the larger picture here? What we are seeing is something more worrisome: a demography-driven upsurge of angst and violence involving youth.

In any country, in any culture, when the proportion of 15-29 year-olds swells beyond 20 per cent, all hell breaks loose. It is tempting to see the Mangalore outrage as a Sangh Parivar plot to take us back to the Stone Age, but it is only one manifestation of the million mutinies — to use Naipaul’s evocative phrase — erupting everywhere.

Youth is in turmoil all over India. In Mangalore, they may have targeted vulnerable women; elsewhere they are on the rampage for other reasons.

No state or community has been spared. In Maharashtra, we have seen MNS youths bashing up Biharis. In Karnataka, the young have worked up a froth over Kannada signboards and the Belgaum dispute. In Tamil Nadu, as DMK’s Karunanidhi ages, Vaiko’s MDMK is moving in for the kill by recruiting youth to the cause of Sri Lankan Tamils.

Even if the Gujarat carnage of 2002 had not happened, organisations like Simi and the Tabligh-e-Jamaat would have harvested Muslim youth in droves for various causes. In Kerala, Muslim youths have been enticed to contribute to jihad in faraway Kashmir.

Elsewhere, Sangh Parivar affiliates and/or renegades — Sri Ram Sene, Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, Abhinav Bharat, and such — have been radicalising the youth for various causes. Christian evangelical groups have been targeting youth with their own aggressive conversion strategies. A colleague informs me that the bulk of the conversions are from Catholic to evangelical groups — not Hindu to Christian.

In Kashmir, we have seen Hindu and Muslim youth brigades driving the Amarnath Yatra and secessionist agendas. In Singur and Nandigram, radicals have ousted the Tatas and the CPI(M) gerontocracy. In several states, Naxals have recruited youth for revolution. The people fighting the Naxals — the Salwa Judums — also find recruits in the same age catchment. In Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, caste armies find recruits in the same demographic cluster. And it’s not all about violent causes either. Young cricket fans burn the effigies of cricketers when we lose Test matches.

From the above examples, it is obvious that the young are cause-agnostic. The late Samuel Huntington, author of The Clash Of Civilizations, had this to say. “Young people are the protagonists of protest, instability, reform and revolution.” The European Protestant revolution was the result of a youth movement.

Much evil can also come from frustrated youth cohorts. Huntington points out that as the “proportions of youth rose ... in the 1920s” it provided “recruits to fascist and other extremist movements. Four decades later, the post-World War II baby boom generation made its mark politically in the demonstrations and protests of the 1960s.”

India’s angry young men and women are cannon fodder for wild-eyed politicians and leaders of extreme movements for the same demographic reason. Between now and all the way upto 2020 and beyond, the proportion of young people in the 15-29 age group — the early working-age population — will be rising at the rate of 1-2 per cent annually. Many of them will find gainful employment, but many more will be boiling over, frustrated, angry. They will be available for any cause.

If we are to stop young people from heading towards destructive ideologies, we need to get two basic things right. One, we have to stand firm against violence of any kind. We cannot distinguish between one kind of violence and another. This will call for depoliticising the police force, something no state government has warmed up to so far. Second, we need to follow sensible economic policies that enable inclusive growth while spreading the social safety net as far as possible.

Feeding the young is easy; keeping them engaged so that their energies are used constructively is tougher. It will call for great leadership — something not in abundant supply right now.

If we mess up, we are left with only one alternative: grin and bear it. By 2025, the demographic surge will begin to subside. But we won’t know what kind of country we will be left with by then.