Growing young

Today, 15 years later, the Congress (and the Nehru-Gandhi family) has, for the fourth time since Independence, given India another young leader. Sonia Gandhi is 57 years of age and would have joined this group had she chosen to assume the same office.

Sonia Gandhi is at the helm of the only national party that is beginning to mirror the current Indian demographic. India is a nation with a young population—in 2005, India is projected to have an estimated median population of 24.7 years. The Congress, more so than other parties across the political spectrum, reflects this rejuvenating population. The party is making an effort to steadily grow younger. The conscious effort was clearly discernible and unmistakable in the recent election campaign spearheaded by Sonia Gandhi.

Friedrich Nietzsche was quite wrong when he wrote, ‘‘Youth is a disagreeable time, for it is neither possible then nor prudent to be productive in any sense whatsoever.’’ A hallmark of this Congress victory is the ascendancy of young members of Parliament to the 14th Lok Sabha. To me, as a young Indian, their involvement and presence in taking long-term decisions is a source of comfort, reassurance and hope. India desperately needs fresh and unsullied minds taking bold neww decisions to energetically shape and implement policy.

Today the Congress has a solid and inimitable group of new, young leaders. Franklin D. Roosevelt said: ‘‘We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.’’ Milind Deora, Sandeep Dikshit, Rahul Gandhi, Sachin Pilot, Jitin Prasad and Jyotiraditya Scindia, amongst others, are symbolic that the Congress is beginning to endorse and empower new and some very young leaders. This is a trend that resonates today with the vast majority of India’s voters. India is a polity that has outgrown the grey-hair syndrome.

Mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said: ‘‘The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.’’ However, the young leaders who have emerged as new and potent prospects for the Congress do not fit the straightjacket of this definition. Many of these promising leaders have suffered profound personal losses and tragedies that could have numbed them. Instead this has impelled them into action and brought out the will, bravery and conviction to lead.

There is also a desire to apply, in governance, a skill set which is imparted today in schools and at universities and in the rough and tumble world of private business corporations, something that was absent a decade or two heretofore. There exists a maturity that makes this a very special and sensitive group.

Contesting a Lok Sabha election in India, with all its trials and tribulations, is a crash course in the realities of Bharat. It brings you face to face with real people and their intractable pain. It humbles you in the face of the enormity of the task ahead.

There are new tragedies that our young leaders must be sensitised to. They inherit an educational system polluted by the infusion of propoganda. They inherit an economy plagued by jobless growth. They inherit an electoral dynamic where casteism and communalism have been firmly established as the lowest common denominators. They inherit a system of governance where the government accepts that it will not be able to deliver to the sizeable majority and, therefore, anti-incumbency is the only truth.

Each of these must be seperately analysed and addressed. Each one must be capably and permanently erased to ensure that the young of the next generation inherit a better and more progressive India.

J K Rowling wrote in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, ‘‘Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.’’ The departing NDA government was a government of and for the old and middle-aged. It was far removed from the youth of this country and their problems, unemployment being the prime example. They had forgotten what it was to be young. It was slothfully shepherded by ancient, even obsolete, leaders who were uninspiring to young Indians. The NDA leadership under Messrs Vajpayee and Advani, despite repeated and desperate attempts, did not infuse the Indian youth with a sense of purpose, belonging or cheer.

Even today, Indians under the age of 40, who comprise 74 per cent of our population, are represented in the newly formed Lok Sabha by a mere 15 per cent of the members of the Lower House.

The Lok Sabha has aged since Independence. The average age of the current Lok Sabha (2004) is 52.7 years, down from 55.5 years in the last Lok Sabha (1999), the oldest Lower House since Independence. However, the first five Lok Sabhas (constituted post-Independence, 1952-1971) had members with an average age in the 40s. In the period between Indian Independence and the year 2000, the median age in India remained relatively flat, hovering in the early 20s. However, the median age will have rapidly risen by more than half from 24.7 years in 2005 to 37.2 years in 2050.

This is a sharp contrast to the world’s second largest democracy, the United States. Here the projected median age (as of 2005), 36.3 years, is plateaueing and is expected to roughly maintain this level or only rise marginally over the next 50 years. The current United States Congress, the 108th, has Representatives with an average age of 53.9 years. The difference between the median age of the populace and the average age of their elected representatives in India (approximately 28 years), regrettably, far outstrips that in the United States (approximately 18 years).

India’s population will age considerably in the coming decades. As life expectancy rises and the population growth rate slows, this is inevitable. The opportunity to harness India’s greatest natural resource, its young and versatile human talent, is now. The human resource talent pool of young Indians must be engaged, heeded, and embraced.

There is an Irish proverb, ‘‘praise youth and it will prosper’’. India’s new leadership must articulate a vision. Young India must be at the heart and core of this vision. A young Rajiv Gandhi used to dream for this country. The Congress party must not forget this.

(Kanishka Singh, a former investment banker, worked for the Congress on the December 2003 assembly election in Delhi and the 2004 Lok Sabha election)