Utilising the talent of youth
Ownership and awareness of the democratic processes is essential for Pakistan to move on from the ‘transition phase’ to the ‘developed democracy’ stage. Having confidence and faith in Pakistan’s evolving democracy is of sheer importance. However, the fact that the youth of the country is especially disillusioned with the fruitfulness of snail’s pace of evolving democracy makes it rather harder. The disillusionment is visible through the brain drain phenomenon. Every year, a number of young students and labourers leave the country for good. The Ministry of Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development classifies our human resource into various categories including professional, non-professional, skilled and un-skilled. There are a host of reasons responsible for the increasing brain drain trend. However, the major underlying reason is this disillusionment and lack of confidence in the continuity and fruitfulness of Pakistan’s democracy.
The thinking that there is a lack of opportunities, the elite has captured the economy and that we have no stakes in the country because the things are never going to work right; all of it feeds into the feeling of disillusionment. And thus the only non-terrorist and viable solution left with these disillusioned people is to leave the country.
Well, honestly, running away from the problem may not be a solution at all. Instead, ownership of the problem, its diagnosis and working for its solution with confidence and wholehearted efforts may well raise the prospect of the solution.
After all, the real problem remains for those who are disillusioned and also cannot afford to run away. So they are left with only limited opportunities in the country. The dilemma is already when there is a paucity of opportunities for youth in the country, the limited opportunities and initiatives nonetheless are also not celebrated and appreciated much.
One commendable initiative was taken by Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT). The idea of Youth Parliament Pakistan (YPP) was conceived in 2007 when its first batch was launched. To materialise the ownership and awareness of the democratic processes, as talked about earlier, this is the platform. The format of Youth Parliament is such that it selects aspiring candidates from across the country through a highly rigorous selection procedure- submission of Expression of Interest (EoI) followed by an interview. There have been seven sessions of YPP so far (seventh session underway currently). Besides other benefits, it is a tremendous opportunity for all those who aspire to take part in practical politics, hone their debating skills and learn how the actual Parliament works.
One gets a real flavour of practical politics when one gets to lobby for votes and have to convince others and create a consensus among people with divergent viewpoints. Talking about the first session of the seventh batch, sixty members were divided into four standing committees on Political and Electoral Reforms, National Security and Foreign Affairs, Governance and Finance. One gets an opportunity to meet and listen to people from Gilgit-Baltistan, Balochistan, Azad Kashmir, FATA, KP, Sindh, Islamabad and Punjab. Every standing committee was entrusted with a task to work on their respective topics. They study the existing policies of the government, do an in-depth comparative analysis and come up with policy recommendations later to be presented before a panel of experts.
This is what ownership and awareness entails. Ayesha Jalal, famous Pakistani-American historian, recently remarked, “Even as Pakistan’s future looks bleak to the world, its youth are bursting with promise and optimism just like any other neighbor in South Asia. The world should engage with it and invest in it”. Granted that, the sad truth is that the bursting promise and optimism would, in general, not want to stay and own Pakistan’s future.
I am sure there would be many other opportunities and success stories like YPP which deserve attention and need to be highlighted. It is only through appreciation and celebration of success stories like these that we may be able to project a better image of our society and overcome the feeling of disillusionment in our youth. We need constant doses of optimism. We need to be a part of the process. We have to come forward to own it. Let’s all celebrate and highlight our little successes and give appreciation where it’s due. In this way, we Pakistanis should be able to realise our potential and celebrate the diversity as well. And may be, in the long run, we should be able to make a convincing case against the ongoing brain drain growing out of proportion as well.
The untapped potential of our youth cannot be emphasised more here. When there are not many opportunities for the youth in the country (feeding into brain drain and disillusionment), any effort in the right direction deserves appreciation. I would like to urge the youth of our country to explore the opportunities here or come forward to create the opportunities themselves with the aid of positive thinking.
