Youth and Politics

Youth is the only section of the society who is able to fight with today’s serious issues like poverty,illiteracy,sanitation, starvation, social inequalities like unaccountability, extremism etc.Most of the youngsters have liberal thinking and they can work for nation’s welfare instead of working for a particular caste,religion, region or ethnicity. They are the only people who can work for the disruption of mentioned issues. They have more potential,new ideas, are aware and they are more creative hence they hold the capacity to do a lot of social and political task .

All the barriers to nation’s development are discussed and tried to be solved in our Parliament and state legislative. But unfortunately most of the seats in these houses are occupied by the traditional old people who just try to lead the nation on 1000 years old path which is not only slow but also not compatible with today’s developing era.As i mentioned earlier, youth is motivated and long to do well in every sphere,has always been ignored in political field. They could be a very important aspect in politics but they are not given a chance.

When we talk about the existing 16th Loksabha then we see Abhishek Banerjee-an MP from Howrah (28 years),Tez Partap Yadav MP from Mainpuri (28 years), Mrs Aprupa Poddar MP from Arambagh (29 years), Akshay Yadav MP from Firozabad (29 years), Priyanka Singh Rawat an MP from Barawanki (30 years),Ram Mohan Naidu an MP from Kadapa (31 years), Anupriya Patel an MP from Mirzapur(31 years ),Dr Uma Sharkh an MP from Jhargham(31 years), Firoz Varun Gandhi an MP from Sultanpur(35 years) etc are some of the youngest MP.But out of these, only two i.e Mrs Aparupa Poddar and Dr Uma Sharkh have won on their own and rest are the kids are from well settled political families of India including Gandhi,Yadav,Naidu,Rawat,YSR,Banerjee,Patel and Paswan family. Kids from these family manages to win on the name of their forefather not due to their own qualities. They got inherited political background and not the created one which is not a good sign and it can make youth politics only a puppet. However instead of participation of youth from well settled political family which aimed dynasty politics, if chance is give to those who deserve, the things can be changed.

Young people have different perspective and are a host of different ideas. By allowing them to voice their opinion, we could be opening and moving the political world forward. It is not only important but also necessary for the betterment of our society. If we do not involve them in politics then there would be many issues with our political establishment in trying to keep policies fair and sustainable for future generation.
An important example of youth participation is these days equal rights for women is necessary. This required many young women to engage with the issues at hand. Why?Because they have strong feelings for their issues.
To increase the participation,our government should establish Youth Parliament as already existing in UK where every youth aged between 11 years to 18 years is a member. The age for contesting elections should be decreased from 25 years to 20 years or 18 years. UK allows a citizen aged 18 years or above to contest election for the House of Commons and in the last general election held there a 20 years youth have managed to won the election and become a member of the House of Commons.But in our country a youngest member is 28 years old.
For a fair future this matter must be taken into consideration.

(Contributor: Ehteshamuddin )

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