The Challenge of Change for Pakistani Youth

The talk of youth bulge calls for con­sid­er­ing two pos­si­bil­i­ties; whether it is a boon or bane. Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing a high­er num­ber of youth means increased work­force and hence an immense prospect for devel­op­ment. The prece­dent comes from coun­tries such as Chi­na and India. But need­less to say the poten­tial of har­ness­ing this poten­tial is heav­i­ly depen­dent on the over­all sit­u­a­tion of politi­co-eco­nom­ic real­i­ties. In case of Pak­istan, the favor­able vari­ables in this respect are rel­a­tive­ly few­er.

Accord­ing to UNDP, 32% of Pak­istani youth is illit­er­ate, about 10% unem­ployed, and less than 6% have acquired tech­ni­cal skills. While there is abun­dant talk on the need for more edu­ca­tion, the actu­al steps tak­en are very mea­ger. The state of the cor­re­spond­ing job mar­ket being worse ren­ders the cur­so­ry efforts for edu­ca­tion more redun­dant. This also paves the way for brain drain of high­ly skilled grad­u­ates. The result is increas­ing frus­tra­tion among youth of all back­grounds.

This is not only the prospect of employ­ment that trou­bles a young edu­cat­ed Pak­istani. He seems deeply con­cerned at a greater scale about the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion and future of Pak­istan as fed to him large­ly by the increas­ing expo­sure to media, both domes­tic and glob­al. Issues like cor­rup­tion, ter­ror­ism, polit­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty, inter­na­tion­al inter­ven­tions and Pakistan’s inter­na­tion­al image are felt quite per­son­al­ly, their impact some­times sur­pass­ing the prob­lems of edu­ca­tion and employ­ment. The inter­con­nect­ed­ness of these prob­lems has right­ly sen­si­tized the youth to look for holis­tic ‘change’.

The pop­u­lar­iz­ing slo­gans for such change include change of gov­ern­ment, end of cor­rup­tion, dis­con­nec­tion from War on Ter­ror, eco­nom­ic revival etc. Before con­sid­er­ing the nature and impli­ca­tions of ‘change’ desired by the Pak­istani youth it would be impor­tant to look into the gen­e­sis and con­sti­tut­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics of such youth.

The demo­graph­ic pat­terns of Pak­istani youth are as uneven and diverse as Pak­istan itself. It is divid­ed along geo­graph­i­cal, edu­ca­tion­al, occu­pa­tion­al and most impor­tant­ly ide­o­log­i­cal lines. Nonethe­less there are some com­mon­al­i­ties which have an over­ar­ch­ing influ­ence. Most of what con­sti­tutes Pak­istani youth has been brought up in Zia-ul-Haq or post-Zia’s time. This has been the time when after restrain­ing the free­doms of thought, expres­sion and assem­bly, the pub­lic space in Pak­istan was ori­ent­ed along Jiha­di, sec­tar­i­an, eth­nic and author­i­tar­i­an lines. The indoc­tri­na­tion has been so thor­ough that from mosque to school, no insti­tu­tion of edu­ca­tion has escaped it. To add to the mis­ery, the sit­u­a­tion has not changed much since, rather aggra­vat­ed.

The Jiha­di and sec­tar­i­an out­fits have kept on oper­at­ing under offi­cial poli­ty from 90s up till now. The Islamist ele­ments in media and edu­ca­tion sec­tors have been inflat­ing. The open­ing up of pri­vate chan­nels and inter­net, against com­mon per­cep­tion, has by and large fit into the grand stream of the Islamist nar­ra­tive. Most of the cur­rent great opin­ion mak­ers, both in print and elec­tron­ic media, have gained their cred­i­bil­i­ty and pop­u­lar­i­ty by tow­ing the lines allowed by the appre­hen­sions and incen­tives from the jun­ta and the mil­i­tants.

The de-politi­ciza­tion of soci­ety ini­ti­at­ed by Zia reached its zenith in 90s and the first half decade of the 21^st cen­tu­ry. This in turn reflects into the pol­i­tics of 90s when regimes changed one after the oth­er with­out much uproar from the peo­ple. The new gen­er­a­tion, unlike the old­er one who had seen vibrant times of 60s and 70s, was left per­ma­nent­ly dis­abled under these cir­cum­stances. The grow­ing enter­tain­ment media and con­sumer cul­ture of neo-lib­er­al econ­o­my pro­vid­ed alter­na­tive to the healthy polit­i­cal cul­ture. Such was the con­text in which the world­view of the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of youth has been man­u­fac­tured.

Since pol­i­tics proved inevitable under the increas­ing nation­al crises, the late peri­od of Musharraf’s regime sparked a moti­va­tion for new demo­c­ra­t­ic set­up. It was after about three decades that var­i­ous pro­fes­sion­al groups, mass­es and stu­dents active­ly assert­ed for their demo­c­ra­t­ic rights at such a mas­sive scale. The years fol­low­ing the last gen­er­al elec­tion have wit­nessed an increased youth involve­ment into the pol­i­tics. This involve­ment has most­ly trans­lat­ed into wide­spread desire and mobi­liza­tion for ‘change’.

The ripe fruit of change is most­ly being har­vest­ed by the pop­u­lar Imran Khan, with some oth­er voic­es dis­sem­i­nat­ing here and there both towards right and left. The ques­tion remains whether Imran Khan would be able to dri­ve this ide­o­log­i­cal con­fused and polit­i­cal­ly imma­ture gen­er­a­tion towards a coher­ent and for­ward look­ing future. The fact that he is already appeal­ing to the same indoc­tri­nat­ed sen­ti­ments and half baked ideas which the youth has grown up with hints to half fail­ure. He appears to decide his slo­gans from pop­u­lar sur­veys, which is not symp­to­matic of a leader with a ‘change’. More­over a few set­backs such as co-opt­ing with the cronies of pre­vi­ous estab­lish­ments, though a prag­mat­ic choice for realpoli­tik, are already pre­ma­ture­ly expos­ing his lack of poten­tial for a change. Such com­pro­mis­es are expect­ed to increase in the tougher sit­u­a­tions to come.

In the pres­ence of oth­er major par­ties and a great num­ber of their secured con­stituen­cies, Imran’s vic­to­ry is nev­er going to be sweep­ing which is pre­con­di­tion for bring­ing any whole­sale reform. The expect­ed frus­tra­tion for youth will have unfore­see­able reper­cus­sions, depend­ing most­ly on which side of the polit­i­cal spec­trum major­i­ty of them decides to lie. The worse will come if the ide­o­log­i­cal and polit­i­cal divi­sions among youth are not reduced to a gen­er­al con­sen­sus on fun­da­men­tal ten­ants of democ­ra­cy.

The nature of this dan­ger­ous divi­sion is reflect­ed into a sur­vey back in 2009. At that time when, despite many fol­lies, most of the world thought Pak­istan mov­ing in the right direc­tion i.e. a demo­c­ra­t­ic dis­pen­sa­tion, around 80% of edu­cat­ed Pak­istani youth thought oth­er­wise. Sim­i­lar to it is the fact that in many recent sur­veys the per­cent­age of those rely­ing most on army is around two third. About an equal num­ber thinks US as the pri­ma­ry ene­my of Pak­istan. Apart from unend­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries on such obvi­ous atroc­i­ties as attack on Malala Yousafzai, this mind­set is hatch­ing xeno­pho­bia to an unprece­dent­ed scale. This dan­ger­ous lev­el of rad­i­cal­iza­tion is being ignored both by the rul­ing and oppo­si­tion polit­i­cal par­ties. The lat­ter like PTI are on the con­trary fuel­ing such igno­rance by fram­ing their slo­gans to appease these con­fused minds.

The rul­ing PPP is hard­ly in a posi­tion to affect great num­ber of youth on these lines. It is mere­ly striv­ing to revive it stu­dent and youth wings in small pock­ets. The PML‑N on the oth­er hand, per­haps after real­iz­ing that youth vote is slip­ping out of their hands to PTI, has launched many cam­paigns for attract­ing youth. In heav­i­ly adver­tised cam­paigns, they have dis­trib­uted lap­tops to uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents, staged some sports galas and for­mu­lat­ed dis­trict wise youth coun­cils meant to deliv­er skills train­ing and social work. These thin­ly cloaked bribes meant pri­mar­i­ly to attract votes fail to address the core issue men­tioned above. Oth­er par­ties with their region­al out­reach are unable to affect the nation­al sce­nario.

Who else can be expect­ed for such a huge task? Unfor­tu­nate­ly, no one. The mass media is being her­ald­ed as such an agent of change but first­ly it can only be a vehi­cle not an engine of change, sec­ond­ly it itself is under mas­sive pres­sures and inter­ests hence divid­ed on the same lines as youth in gen­er­al. The shal­low per­cep­tion of free­dom attained by attack­ing weak gov­ern­ment would not sus­tain dic­tates of the estab­lish­ment or threats of the Tal­iban. Its role in politi­ciz­ing youth is only par­tial­ly true because simul­ta­ne­ous­ly it acts as depoliti­ciz­ing agent through spread­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and by invari­ably sen­sa­tion­al­iz­ing the news and then mix­ing it with enter­tain­ment. That is why Pak­istan is one of the few­er coun­tries in the world where news and polit­i­cal talk shows are more famous than the enter­tain­ment.

Amid the wide­ly watched 24/7 break­ing sto­ries on news chan­nels, the rad­i­cal­iza­tion thrives unchecked. Accord­ing to a study con­duct­ed by Pak­istan Insti­tute of Peace Stud­ies, about half of edu­cat­ed Pak­istani youth con­sid­ers Shari­ah as a source of a law, among oth­er sources while about one third think it as the only source of law. This implies not only a wrong set of expec­ta­tions of change for youth but also a seep­ing accep­tance for Tal­iban­iza­tion. And if any oth­er ver­sion of change fails to take root, which is very like­ly, the Tal­iban­iza­tion of state and soci­ety would be hard to resist.

Con­sid­er­ing that exist­ing efforts by the major par­ties to lead youth towards a change in this sit­u­a­tion as mis­di­rec­tion or insuf­fi­cient, there is an urgent need to review these approach­es. The polit­i­cal nurs­eries at the grass­roots must be revived to undo the mis-edu­ca­tion of tra­di­tion­al school­ing as well as news media and to pro­vide ideals of democ­ra­cy as alter­nate. Sim­i­lar­ly the youth, espe­cial­ly the edu­cat­ed ones, need an intro­spec­tion of their ideals for change before it is too late.

—Writ­ten By Rab Nawaz

(Pub­lished in The Laal­tain — Issue 6)