Leader Writer: Ksh Sopen
The youths are becoming disengaged from social lives. Their relationship with at the neighborhood level is not good and they watch more television than ever. In general, they do not care about their immediate environment.
Social engagement relates to a wide range of ways in which youths can engage in their community. Volunteerism to community social services, attending public meetings, or writing a letter to a public official or to an editor of the newspapers of the state expressing the grievances of the community concerned etc are all ways among other that we typically think of to be socially engaged.
A broad scanning to various location of the state in this regard reveals that these activities are happening less and less in today’s society. Moreover, the local clubs are not working to its full potentials due to lack of support from the youths of the locality other than the club functionaries. The youths are sitting idle under the shadow of a tree or other convenient places of their locality while gallons of water of the various rivers of the state are streaming down towards its destination by serving the people.
Broadly speaking, youths have a lot of potential. That is why various thinkers and policy makers said that the future of a country lies in the hand of the youths. In this regard, Swami Vivekananda once termed the youths as untouched and non smelling flowers. These untouched and non smelling flowers should be explored. This exploration definitely necessitates a well planning and necessary budget of the union government of India.
Coming to the reality of the situation in the state of Manipur, let us discuss on the issues and what are the factors responsible for disengaging the youths from social life?
It reportedly said that one important factor which encourages the youths of the state socially disengaged is the presence of militarization of both state and non-state actors. In that situation, the youths begun consuming drugs and intoxicate items so as to avoid themselves from the view of the security forces that are empowered by Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1958 by withdrawing from social engagement and other related youth activities.
And another factor which reportedly fueled to it is the emergence of private schools which are mushrooming and its consequent weathering of government schools in the state. As the government schools are functioning in name sake, parents opted to admit their wards to the private schools of reputation.
The private schools enroll as maximum as possible students considering their profit and future expansion of school building without considering the teacher student ratio and necessary space for each and every students. One report said that a student needs three square feet of space in the classroom.
The respective school authorities across the state, considering their board exam performance, unselect the week students in the school exams in a time the students become adolescence. This situation provides a chance to the students withdrawing from school education. These sections of students later establish among themselves a habit of disengaged from the society.
In order to contend the rising situation, an academic research by competent authority or university should be made as, according to 2011 census, India exceeds 1.21 billion populations and the country has more than 50% of its population below the age of 25 and more than 65% below the age of 35. It is expected that, in 2020, the average age of an Indian will be 29 years, compared to 37 for China and 48 for Japan.