No country for young people

Young people who would have made beneficial contributions to society wither away drowning in their sense of stagnation

In Pakistan, there are broadly two mental modes held by an arguably heterogenous group that often gets collectivised together as “the youth”. The first of these sees everything that has happened or is about to happen through a lens of despondency. For this group of youth, which has its roots predominantly in the urban and rural poor, all this lost and there is little hope, no proverbial light at the end of the unceasing tunnel. The system has failed them and their loved ones far too many times, imbuing them with the perennial angst that the game is rigged, and definitely not in their favour.

Any measure that the government has taken or plans to take — be it in infrastructure, education, health, or good jobs and employment — does little to change their mind. The timeless viral meme, bik gaye gormint, is perhaps emblematic of this worldview. Their lived experiences have made them very skeptical of promises, especially those of a better, brighter future. And why should they not be wary? If you are not lucky to be born into the “right” family with the right set of endowments, what are your prospects of upward socio-economic mobility? Bleak, at best.

Consequently, many young people who would have otherwise made beneficial contributions to society wither away, drowning in their sense of stagnation. Thronging this realm with them are many others, with fatalism perhaps their only friend in this crowd of unrealised potential and vitality. Reflecting on the drudgery of the life so far, and of the lives to come, this mental model often misconstrues aspects of religion to serve as palliatives. Who can blame them for doing so, and for not embarking on the much arduous journey of developing a sense of khudi?

Some may try to silver-line this and argue that it is not really that bad for young people in the country. Do we not know of the gentleman from small-town Bhakkar who ended up becoming an engineer at UET, navigated the H1-B labyrinth, and ended up living the seemingly idyllic life in sub-urban America as an employee at a big-tech firm? Or what about the lady from Naushahro Feroze, the one who matriculated at DOW, cleared the USMLE, and went on to do wonders as a physician in the US? And the silver-lining goes on and on without admitting that these individuals achieved whatever self-actualisation they did despite the systematic barriers facing them, not because of them.

Either way, the fact remains that these exceptions prove the norm. For every one person who “made it”, there are innumerable others who plow the dusty roads of the Arabian Gulf as taxi and truck drivers, toiling away as construction workers on Dubai’s sweltering skyscrapers, as delivery riders for “game-changing” e-commerce startups, panting for breath between their drop-offs, or perhaps as part of the over-staffed cadre of clerical workers and peons in government offices. The list is endless, as are the unfulfilled dreams. There is nothing unadmirable or undignified about earning a livelihood by the sweat of one’s brow, so long as individuals have an opportunity to make those choices of their own volition, instead of being cornered and coerced into these through a hand dealt to them by a rigged system.

One has to be living under a rock to not sense the growing sense of despondency within Pakistan’s youth, an ominous feeling gnawing away at them that their country is sinking ever deeper into an abyss. Thoughts of self-preservation immediately follow, of anxieties voiced and unvoiced, about the right time and set of opportunities to abandon a sinking ship. So you either wither away, or jump ship for greener pastures and not look back.

The second of the two mental modes is perhaps a response to the first one. It takes the vagaries of life in a precarious time and place like Pakistan as the default given, and endeavors to impose order and certainty on individual prospects through the establishment of socially desirable vocational hierarchies. Voila, the holy trinity of the doctor, engineer, and government officer (civil and military) comes to life. This trinity has perhaps resulted in the single biggest misallocation of labor, of dreams and passions, of talents and skills, of what the country needed and what it eventually received. This phenomenon is by no means unique to Pakistan; it is present to varying degrees in most societies, especially post-colonial ones, but Pakistan takes it and puts it on steroids. Many bright people are siphoned off into professional trajectories that are not compatible with their aptitudes or passions, depriving them and the country of opportunities where their talents could have made a tangible impact.

All the while, people who are way past their prime in both their age and grasp of the world reign supreme, hell-bent on clinging onto their positions of authority. This authority allows them to decide paternalistically for 64% of the population under 30, making choices whose consequences they do not have to live with. Is there anyone to short this “sub-prime” old guard which has been infantilising the country’s youth for far too long to mask its own insecurities? This is not an ageist critique, but a call to reflect on all that masquerades as experience and expertise in the country.

Perhaps the greatest disservice that a society can do to itself is to rob its youth of their ability to dream and aspire, and to pawn this desire and capacity to explore unchartered vistas for the comfort and security of the known, the predictable, and the socially valued. We commit intellectual genocide when we circumscribe the realm of what is possible and desirable for our young people, curating their imaginations to serve notions of social prestige and power that are vestiges of an era that we can no longer afford to reside in.

But we should not forget that nothing that is worthwhile is ever easy, certain, or valued at first. Perhaps it is then time that we stop bartering our future as a thriving and cohesive society for a present that works for a select few, and for all the wrong reasons. This is as much a socio-cultural issue as it is a policy one. It is time to pull the rug on this growing malaise before tragedy turns into farce.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, March 31^st, 2022.

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