Rahul Gandhi argued that youth unemployment has been a key driver of lynchings in India.
In March 2010, I was sitting on the steps of a degree college in Meerut, Haryana, and chatting with a friend named Yashpal, a Dalit in his late 20s.
He had BA, BCom, MCom and BEd degrees, and applied for over 40 government jobs. “I have tried so hard, but nothing has happened,” he said.
“So how do you spend your time?” I asked. “Kuch nahin. Kuch nahin (nothing, nothing),” he replied. “Bas, main timepass kar raha hoon. (Mostly, I just do timepass).”
Addressing a summer school in Germany Wednesday, Rahul Gandhi highlighted the problem of youth unemployment in India and the particular struggles of tribals, Dalits, and minorities. There is a real risk, he said, “of excluding a large number of people from the development process”.
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One in 10 people in the world is an Indian youth under 30. India’s much-vaunted economic reforms in the early 1990s brought new prosperity to the upper middle classes but it did not create enough jobs. Many young people invested in the dream of upward mobility but have been unable to acquire the small number of well-paid, secure jobs.
But Rahul argued that youth unemployment has been a key driver of lynchings in India. More than that, he saw joblessness as a precursor of future terrorism. Rahul cited the example of jobless Iraqis joining an insurgency, which “entered the empty space in Iraq and in Syria and connected with… a horrific idea called ISIS”.
Over the past 20 years, I have been studying the social lives of unemployed youth. But I have seen surprisingly little evidence of their involvement in organised violence.
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To be sure, there is much melancholy. Timepass is common and it involves a feeling of being left behind, detachment with everyday life, and being mired in ennui. Avoiding negative introspection can become a job in itself.
It is true, too, that youth unemployment or underemployment and associated cultures of male loitering have led to urban unrest, gender violence, and fuelled illegal practice in many cities and rural areas in India.
Many underemployed youth are becoming involved in illegal land sales, corruption in the management of government contracts, and shadow markets in educational services – the latter especially damaging because they effectively reproduce the system that produced unemployed youth.
But youth unemployment or underemployment is also productive. It is productive of relationships. It would be dangerous to take Yashpal’s statements at face value.
Timepass was not ‘nothing’, I found during my study in India. Timepass was actually the basis for vibrant youth cultures. It served as a type of social solvent, dissolving antagonisms based on religion and caste.
While doing timepass, young men from Dalit and higher caste backgrounds shared cigarettes, bought each other chai, stood around on bus stops with their arms draped around each other’s shoulders. A type of youth culture flickered into life – we’re all stuck as underemployed youth in lousy provincial degree colleges, so we might as well get along with each other and make do.
Timepass also led to social service. Young people across class, caste, religion and gender campaigned against corruption in the university administration, lobbied for students to obtain scholarships, and worked to address problems of police harassment. They tried to increase public understanding of the struggles of unemployed youth, worked to improve standards of tuition in the city, and even went back to rural areas to advise younger youth.
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On the whole, the timepass generation said they had the time, motivation, and knowledge to do social service (samaj seva), and helped younger youth in particular.
Indeed, a type of positive feedback was at work here. Educated underemployed youth were concerned that the generation coming after them should not have to suffer the same indignities.
Rahul Gandhi is right to raise the spectre of mass unemployment, but wrong to assume that it will inevitably lead to violent action.
Craig Jeffrey is Director of the Australia India Institute and Professor of Human Geography, University of Melbourne. He is the author of Timepass: Youth, Class, and the Politics of Waiting in India
The author’s claim of studying social lives of unemployed youth appears to be time pass and not a serious vocation. He forgot to link unemployment to the inability to have the minimum daily expenses of drinking even a cup of tea. He also forgot about the suicide bombers who work against the promise of their family being taken care of.
This article is such a time pass that makes “The Print” a time pass news magazine and makes Shekhar Kapoor look like a shallow editor.
Unemployment, or a lack of an ecosystem which essentially puts all citizens specially the youth to work to kill their time, to work to learn newer things, to work to have a comfortable income, is sure to create angst and frustration. They would latch on to an idea that may be detrimental to the progress and unity of the society. For a youth without a job, it is easy to feel exploited. It is easy to experience injustice. Every society has a percentage of exploitation and injustice and they are felt maximum by the youth without any work to do. They amplify it to feel part of it and revolt against it in different ways.
Northeast of India has seen serious insurgencies because of unemployment due to lack of development initiatives. Even today there is no industrial/agricultural/economic policy direction in the region. There is no vision by the legitimate leadership and so the youth are taking up to those who is offering them a vision.
Anyways, I request The Print to be more selective about putting up opinions that have some weight.
Unemployment was an important reason for insurgency in Assam and still is in the North Eastern States of India. Mr Jeffrey should not make light of the unemployment issue by linking it to ‘timepass’ . Timepass also breeds idleness and an idle mind is a devil’s workshop.
Unemployed youth ending up as terrorists is a stretch, but the potential for petty crime, lawbreaking, occasional violence cannot be discounted. When I saw the Maratha agitations which began two years ago, completely peaceful and orderly, the thought struck me, How long will it remain thus. Similar agitations in Gujarat and Haryana saw sporadic violence, now in Maharashtra as well.
Is Mr Jeffrey serious?
Fear mongering is the key skill learnt by politicians, and wannabe politician Rahul Gandhi is turning out to be no exception. Good for him that he is learning the tricks of the trade. He knows that such rhetoric is the best bet when there is no vision.