Every month 60 to 70 high school students come to Universal Solidarity Movement (USM) Indore for one-week residential leadership training. At the outset of the training participants are asked to share their vision or what they want to become in future. Majority of the students dream of becoming doctors, engineers, chartered accountants, army/Airforce officers etc. Very rarely students say that they want to enter politics.

In August-September 2023, 162 students from 5 schools participated in the leadership training in five batches. None of them mentioned joining politics. If the best of young people is reluctant to enter politics, are they not leaving the destiny of the nation in the hands of incompetent persons of dubious character?

India is predominantly a young country with more than 50% of the 1.4 billion population of India below the age of 25 and more than 65% below 35.  Are they proportionately represented in the parliament and legislative assemblies? If we analyse the 17th Lok Sabha, elected in 2019, the average age of an MP is 54 years. Of 543 seats, only 12% MPs are below 40. The first Lok Sabha had 26% of MPs under the age of 40; since then, slowly, the share of young MPs decreased.

Often the old guards in all political parties are reluctant to accommodate young bloods. Although the BJP took a policy in 2014 not to give the post of ministers to those who have crossed 75 years of age, later it made exceptions.  Some of the chief ministers like Pinaray Vijayan of Kerala, Ashok Gehlot of Rajasthan and Siddaramaiah of Karnataka are in their 70’s.

82-year-old Sharad Pawar and Mallikarjun Karge of the same age are the heads of their respective political parties, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Congress. Sachin Pilot, a young Congress leader from Rajasthan has been struggling for a decade to become the chief minister, but the old generation is not willing to vacate the seat.

Most of the brilliant young people with good character think that politics is not their cup of tea. Their main concern is to get a job and ensure their future with good income. Many of them have the misconception that politics is dirty and corrupt.

What the young people read and hear in the media is politicians accusing each other of corruption and even abusing each other. The present-day politicians are responsible to a great extent for creating a bad image about politics and politicians in the imagination of young people. Practically every day the media flash news of the investigation agencies like CBI, ED, NIA raiding political leaders, especially opposition leaders and filing corruption cases against them.

While talented young people are reluctant to join politics, political parties make use of unemployed youths, most whom are school or college dropouts, as their foot soldiers. They are being used in protests and communal violence.
As many young people are not helped to develop critical thinking as part of education, they blindly follow their political masters, and political parties make use of them for achieving their narrow goals.

Factors Discouraging Youth from Entering Politics

What could be the factors that pull back brilliant young people from choosing politics as a career option? First of all, there is a lot of unpredictability in the field of politics. There is no guarantee that a person will be selected to be a candidate in the assembly or Lok Sabha election. Winning an election is another huge challenge. Risk factor in politics is far greater than in many other professions. Many brilliant young people do not want to take such a huge risk.

Secondly, there is fierce competition and nepotism. Often the sons or daughters of politicians are promoted to become leaders, even though there are many individuals who are more talented and capable than the son or daughter of a leader in a political party. The BJP, especially prime minister Narendra Modi, always criticizes the Congress for Parivar Vad, but this phenomenon is prevalent in almost all political parties, including the BJP. The difference is only in the degree of nepotism. Nepotism discourages talented young people from joining political parties.

Thirdly, fighting elections is becoming prohibitively expensive for candidates. Although the amount allowed by the Election Commission for a Lok Sabha candidate is Rs. 95 lakhs and for a candidate of assembly election is 40 lakhs, actual expenditure could be many times more than what is allowed.

According to a report by the Centre for Media Studies, the total cost of 2019 Lok Sabha election was around Rs. 55,000 cores. Out of this, about 20% is calculated to be the formal expenditure by the election commission. The remaining expenses were incurred for campaign/publicity (35%), directly to voters (25%), logistics (10%) and miscellaneous (10%).

Even though a large chunk of money is spent by the concerned political parties, the candidates also will have to shell out a huge amount. In this backdrop, many young people are afraid of fighting elections.

Criminalization of politics is another reason that demotivates brilliant young people from entering politics. Out of the 763 members of Parliament, 306 (40%) have declared cases registered against them, according to a report released by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and National Election Watch (NEW) on September 12, 2023. Around 194 (25%) MPs have declared serious criminal cases like murder, attempt to murder, kidnapping, crimes against women etc.

Ways and Means to Encourage the Youth Join Politics

a) Holistic Education: First of all, education should focus on the holistic development of children. Currently the main focus of education in India appears to be preparing students for a career. Career orientation cannot be neglected; at the same time the main focus should be building responsible citizens with a broad, inclusive and lasting vision.

India being a secular democracy, education also should focus on inculcating in the students democratic and Indian constitutional values so that the students are introduced to the functioning of government and the role of political parties and leaders in governing the nation and deciding its destiny.

b) Inculcation of Indian Constitutional Values: Neglect of educating people, especially students, on the Constitution of India is the main reason for the weakening of democracy in India. Professor Gyan Prakash, a historian and Dayton-Stockton Profession of History at Princeton University in a recent interview given to The Wire said, “Modi government may say that India is the 'mother of democracy', but is turning India into a graveyard of democracy.”

c) Motivating Young People to Become Visionaries: Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam while addressing young people used to say, “Dream big because dreaming small is a crime”.  Big dream refers to a vision that is broad and inclusive. He was motivating young people to become visionaries.

While an ambitious person is self-centred, a visionary person is altruistic. Her/his dream includes herself, family, nation and the whole world. For example, becoming a doctor to make money and amassing wealth is an ambition.

On the other hand, becoming a doctor to devise a health care system in which all can get health care at an affordable cost is vision. Becoming an engineer for going abroad and getting fabulously rich is ambition, whereas evolving a technology by which houses with basic facilities can be constructed for all, especially the poor, is vision. Young people with vision will have an inclination to serve people by joining politics.

d) Promoting Study of Humanities: Encouraging study of humanities can give birth to leaders with critical thinking, broad and inclusive vision. Many CBSE schools in India do not have provision for humanities in class XI and XII. The school management holds the view that there are no takers for humanities. Most of the students of these schools opt for either science stream or commerce.

Study of humanities can broaden the views of students and help them to analyse socio-political processes. “The sciences are the ‘how,’ and the humanities are the ‘why’—why are we here, why do we believe in the things we believe in. I don’t think you can have the ‘how’ without the ‘why,’” said “Star Wars” director George Lucas.

Study of humanities helps students to develop various skills like critical thinking (capacity to receive and analyse knowledge and to develop creativity and innovation), communication, team work and personal and social responsibility. These skills are very much needed for a leader.

e) Leadership Training for Young People: Leadership training for students, especially when they are in high school, focusing on building leaders with character and competence, is found to be an effective means to create interest in students to be concerned about society/nation/humanity. After taking part in the one-week residential leadership training in the Universal Solidarity Movement (USM) Indore, most of the students are convinced that they have to make a unique contribution to society. They are also convinced that they cannot be indifferent and insensitive to what is happening around them. They are helped to analyse the socio-economic structure and motivated to make interventions as students.

The leadership training also helps the participating students to enhance their self-confidence, thinking and speaking and writing skills. In short, they are motivated to play a leadership role in the field in which they are. Naturally some of them will enter into politics because they realize that politics is ultimately governance and politics decides most of the aspects of social life.

f) Children’s Parliament: Some NGOs in India have successfully experimented forming Children’s Parliament as part of their social interventions in view of involving children in governance. This is mostly done in the slums and villages as part of development/empowerment projects. Children of the project area are organized electing representatives from different streets/wards. A cabinet with the prime minister and council of ministers is formed and they are given different portfolios like, education, health, sanitation, law and order etc. The concerned child-ministers take initiative by meeting or giving applications to the Municipal ward member, Municipal Chairperson, Station Officer of the Police Department, officer in charge of education, sanitation etc. to solve problems facing children. Sometimes children themselves find solutions to the problems with the support of the local people.

As a result of the functioning of the children's parliament, children come to know the functioning of democratic and administrative system at the grassroot level. This experiment is a practical training in democratic governance. It creates an interest in the children in public affairs. Gradually, at least some of the children will be motivated to enter politics, starting with local bodies like Gram Panchayats and Municipalities.

g) Active Students’ Union in Universities and Colleges: Universities and colleges can play a significant role in preparing students to enter politics by involving students’ union in the administration. Some prominent political leaders in India emerged through the students' union. Some of them are the late Arun Jaitly, Lalu Yadav and Mamta Banerjee. At the same time, linking students’ unions with political parties has resulted in politicization of education leading to indiscipline and a decline in the academic performance of students. Hence, delinking students’ unions from political parties and allowing them to play an active role could be a good strategy.

h) Promotion by Political Parties: Political parties also have to play an important role to motivate young people to join politics by reserving a particular percentage of seats for the youth in the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections as well as in the distribution of various offices within the party. It is not necessary for the parliament to pass a law for allocating a particular percentage of seats for young people. Only by involving the youth political parties can grow and become vibrant and dynamic. It is to be appreciated that the Congress party has given tickets to 65 persons below the age of 50 out of the 144 seats for which candidates have been declared for the forthcoming assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh.

The future of liberal democracy in any country depends to a great extent on the involvement of talented young people with good character in politics. If the world is lacking great leaders today, the leaders of the previous generation are also responsible because of their failure to groom young leaders. Building and strengthening youth organizations like Seva Dal in the Congress party is a very good strategy to motivate young people to join politics. If political parties that believe in secular and liberal democracy do not organize the youth, the right-wing communal political parties will brainwash the youth and mobilize them to capture power.

If India is sliding backward on liberal democracy today and being converted into an electoral autocracy and a totalitarian state, as highlighted by some rating agencies in their reports, the Congress party that ruled the country many years is also responsible because of its failure to groom young leaders who are committed to liberal democracy as envisaged in the Constitution of India.