I look around myself and observe the society I live in. I am full of questions for myself and for the world. I suppress those questions until I cannot. What is it that young India needs? I ask myself again and again. It reminds me of the time when I was 13, a decade ago when a similar question came to my life in the form of the book “What Young India Wants” by Chetan Bhagat.
Such questions arise when I observe a pool of people fighting or struggling in public spaces or communities such as hostels with well-educated students. Irrespective of the nature of the shared space, there is a sense of fear of losing out the resources, space, or opportunity. Buses, metros, markets, colleges, etc each of these spaces reflect the same story at the foundational level: a crowded society with ‘a grave lack’ and the urge to ‘survive’ the battle. It is a real challenge to trace any possibility of ethical practice in a social set-up that reeks of multiple battles and question marks. To have a structured ethical identity is a non-negotiable component of one’s quest to define oneself and the same goes for a country. The basic idea of this ethical identity is what appears to be right or wrong to one’s conscience and how to act accordingly.
When I try addressing the question ‘What young India needs?’ I also acknowledge that there is a huge difference between the words need and want. A need is not equivalent to desire always, rather it is the answer to a persisting problem which in India’s case is the lack of an instrumental ethic. By the term instrumental ethic, I mean an ethical code that is intentional and prescriptive to the extent that the people identify it as a part of the shared culture and can look up to it during moments of cultural, social, political, and economic crisis. It is a code which is practiced to an extent that it becomes synonymous with the national identity. It can, however, be never imposed by any authority or sanctioned constitutionally. It can only be acquired by a shared understanding of belongingness to the shared space and the country.
The reason I use the term ‘instrumental’ is because only the ethical codes that are designed to transform reality for good must be considered else there lies a danger of repeating the historical blunder of abstracting the theories to an extent that we leave the reality behind. The ethical fabric of India has been tarnished at several levels to the extent that othering has almost become second nature. And I do not mean this at socio-political levels only, rather at the level of the ‘daily-ness’ of life, a mind-numbing routine of waking up, doing the tasks, and going back to sleep. But the question is should it be an issue of national concern? And in my humble opinion, it must be. Ethics at the local level is only a mirror of what the national ethical fabric looks like. The more the sense of distrust and bitterness at the ground level, the more the lack of rightness and wrongness at the policy level. Currently, there is a huge gap between what is and what ought to be and our reality is defined by what is, which is, harrowing to say the least.
For a country with the largest population in the world, there is more to be addressed than the policies formulated in alienated cubicles, a few numbers predicting growth rates, and newspaper headlines that never make it to the daylight. As scientists recently stated that the earth is a breathing and living organ, and so is a country. And what young India direly needs is to breathe the fresh air of ethical understanding into its conscience. Such a living organ that shelters over 1.5 billion people in the world, requires an instrumental ethic that guides it to the right end via the right means.
The term young India stands for not only the country that has crossed a 75-year landmark but also a country that houses innumerable aspirations, and dreams to overcome personal and professional battles. Students at the school level must be taught such ethical values that not only make them better students but better citizens, more than the feeling of competitiveness they must be imbued with a sense of shared responsibility.
It remains a fact that no one grows in isolation, a country grows as its citizen grow and vice-versa. A national set-up driven completely by capital can only function on fear and a society that runs on fear can never reach holistic prosperity. The India of today stands at the crossroads where it has been bestowed with the opportunity to define its course, once again. There is a lot to choose from and the danger to get a lot on its plate. What India must remember is that a healthy appetite is ensured by being intentional while making a choice and the root of any intentional choice lies in the absolute clarity of one’s goal.