Students are obviously a problem

Young protesters seek the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar at Shivaji Park last week. PIC/SAYYED SAMEER ABEDI

I believe I am one of many Indians today who are starting to have serious questions about how young people behave. I say this as a GenX individual who has watched India's rise over the past decade in awe. When I was little, no one outside India knew how great we were as a nation, or how intelligent our politicians really were. They assumed we were villagers with our heads in the sand, incapable of building great things.

Today, despite the fact that few countries are pleased when too many Indians arrive on their shores, it is impossible to dismiss the jealousy with which they view our many accomplishments. They look at our leaders with shameless adulation and create new awards for them every other week. If this sort of thing continues, it isn't hard to foresee a time when every other nation on Earth will try and replicate the India model of growth and limitless prosperity. The only thing that stands in the way is, to my mind, the annoying habits of young Indians. They seem to be a lot more noticeable these days. In my time, young people kept their heads down and followed a predictable path. They went to school, then college, then a job. Today, none of those things seems to matter. They just appear to have a lot of demands, which is worrying.

Consider the past few weeks, for example, and see how the youth have been blocking streets and creating a nuisance just because they think the government is involved in vote fraud. Just because there may be an error in the electoral rolls, and a mere 130 million names have allegedly been deleted from voter lists, young people have started to believe that someone must be held accountable. They claim to be saving democracy, forgetting that India is more democratic today than at any other point in its history, notwithstanding what the World Press Freedom Index or much of the developed world says.

Everyone knows that these missing voters are a minor issue, given the larger problems we ought to address, and yet, that hasn't stopped young people from seeking the resignation of a top election official. They fail to consider that if we start removing government officials whenever they are accused of corruption or incompetence, there will be no one left to manage the country within a few months. It sounds incredibly selfish to me and makes me wonder if all these young people are really citizens or foreigners being funded by our enemies.

This isn't the first such instance either. I'm sure we all remember the noise they made a couple of months ago just because examinations weren't being conducted in transparency. They took to the streets in large numbers demanding the resignation of a minister no less, while complaining about the absence of jobs and uncertainty about their future. What they conveniently forgot was the future of everyone else in the country. Yes, job security no longer exists and there has been absolutely no plan to address this, but that doesn't mean we should all pay a price. I often cite the state of Gujarat as an example of people who have been let down by their government on all fronts for decades but still support it because they are patriots. Why can't all young Indians be as pliable as the people of Gujarat?

Here's another thing they fail to understand: Everyone knows that countries do well only when they are managed by old men. The older they are, the better they understand what their people really need. Take America, where an octogenarian has been working tirelessly for a couple of hours each day to make that country great again. Old men know what to focus on, and ignore chatter about inflation, food, housing, or the environment. India is lucky to have an intelligent septuagenarian in charge, and young people just don't seem to appreciate this fact.

My hope is that the government does what it has been doing so well over the past decade by pretending this problem doesn't exist. When young people are ignored like millions of minorities, women, Dalits, farmers, and poor Indians routinely are, they will finally get the message that chaos is not a solution to anything. When that happens and they go back to where they came from, the old men in Parliament can take control and everything will be right and amazing in this country again, the way it has been since 2014.

When he isn't ranting about all things Mumbai, Lindsay Pereira can be almost sweet. He can be contacted at www.lindsaypereira.com
Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.