Government planning & today’s youth

That so many young people want to work in govt shows that youth, perhaps, wants to bring change from within the system

In just a few days, the Planning Commission will welcome the second batch of Young Development Fellows (YDF) to work in the government for a period of one year. The YDF programme, a flagship project of the Planning Commission, has become the foremost entry point for young professionals and recent graduates into the government. As the coordinator of the YDF programme, interviewing over 200 shortlisted applicants, it was a counter-intuitive experience, raising hopes for a bright future of the country for many different reasons.

First and the foremost was that most candidates who qualified on merit were females. A clear ratio of 65:35 in favour of females, meaning that more and more females are getting higher education, studying abroad in top schools through Fulbright and other scholarships, and also returning to Pakistan to contribute. Also refreshing to witness is that more and more families are now allowing females to work, which is why for every male CV, we had two or more CVs from female candidates.

What does this mean? Put simply, Pakistan’s future is equally, if not more, in hands of its female population, and providing this population with the right training and direction can really add value and growth to the economy.

The second interesting revelation has been the quality of those appearing for the interview. One would expect a major difference between foreign and local educated students. However, positively surprising was the trifling difference between the qualities of candidates from NUST and LUMS in relation to any top school in the US or the UK. In fact, many of the top students at good local universities were far better in quality than students studying at first or second tier universities in the UK and the US. Perhaps, this was because these students couldn’t afford foreign education and stayed back at universities in Pakistan but had the urge to excel.

Third, out of the 10,500 applicants, there were roughly 1,000 of those with at least one degree from abroad. While there was a good representation from British, Australian and European Universities, top US universities and colleges, including Harvard, Columbia and UT Austin were also represented. This in itself is evidence against the notion of brain drain. I have noticed that top university graduates returning to Pakistan and doing phenomenal work across all sectors, and the trend is picking up.

Despite the growing instability and crisis in the country, a lot of students and professionals are returning to contribute and play their part for the betterment of Pakistan. Several candidates mentioned ‘opportunity in crisis’ as the key reason why they came back to the country — the optimism was just refreshing; especially given how politicians and activists in the media keep painting the youth as a disgruntled lot who are yearning for revolution.

The fact that so many young people want to work in the government goes on to show that the youth, perhaps, wants to bring about a change from within the system, through evolution and not protests or revolutions. It forms 60 per cent of the population of Pakistan and is the future of this country. There are millions of young people graduating from local universities and thousands who are coming from top universities abroad.

Most are lost without guidance because of the lack of career counselling and mentorship at the university level. Tapping into the talent of these people, and guiding them in the right direction is perhaps going to define the future of this country, and the Planning Commission has taken the lead on this issue. What remains to be seen, however, is how political instability and perpetual crisis in the country will allow the youth to pave its way to the top. More importantly, what sort of youth will this turn out to be: the one protesting on the streets, or the one sitting in the labs busy creating patents and cutting edge research. A lot may depend on how the government is able to carry out this mega social engineering project through feeding the right narrative, and creating the right opportunity for the youth so that it could be steered on the path of progress.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 7^th,  2015.

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