Nepali Youth: The Policy Makers
The Nepali Youth is out on the streets. The youth of
Nepal is burning tyres and shouting slogans. It is on Facebook pages, “liking”
Miss Nepal Shristi Shrestha and contributing to the country’s growing cyber
presence. It is creating events to support charities. The Youth of Nepal is
undoubtedly the most effective tool to propagate social and political agendas.
They are the force behind political parties to perpetuate violence. It is the
Youth that bears the scars of “latthi
charges”.
But what is missing in youth participation is their
involvement in the policy-making structure.
There is more to youth than just physical strength and impulsive
ambitions. There is the power in the youth to work at a policy level if guided
in the right way. It is the country’s responsibility to not only to use them a
perpetrators of change. The youth needs to create the change they are a part
of. There are reservations for women and other minorities in politics. Maybe it
is time to create effective policies that invest similar provisions for the
youth so that they can actively become a part of the policy-making sector.
They have to play an
important role, not only in implementing decisions; they need to be mobilized
to take those decisions themselves.
Becoming The Youth
of Nepal:
There are three major parts that needs to be kept in mind, in case of
youths and preparing them to be active in bringing about reforms. The first one
involves preparing young adolescents for their roles as tomorrow’s youths.
Making them look forward to becoming the change. Encouraging them with incentives and
inserting community building and social responsibility much more rigorously in
the mainstream curriculum. They need to
be groomed into becoming resourceful
and impactful. And this does not start at the onset of their 18th
year. It should start as soon as they are old enough to understand that the
power of tomorrow lies in their hands.
Nine and tenth graders are warned of the pending “iron
gate” they have to pass in the next few years. A fifteen year old spends an
entire year, locked up in a room rotting a science syllabus and the time he/she
manages to come out of that room is usually instances where he is surrounded by
relatives questioning him/her why are they not in that room.
That fifteen-year-old is missing out on community service
on debates, on discussions. There is a dire need to chalk out a plan that
balances the schoolwork and community work. Because their hard work and participation, contributes to the greater
good of the community. So why not start at the very beginning of this symbiotic
cycle?
The bottom line is there needs to be platforms or 12, 13,
14, 15 year olds to make them realize that tomorrow
the world is theirs, and they need to start by getting involved today.
The National Youth Policy 2010 mentions
that it aims “To support individual and social development including education,
employment and career of the youths who are in the course of imparting
education and in the sensitive stage of establishing their identity in the society”
Molding children from a young age and
preparing them to become the youth of tomorrow is the first step in the
game. Establishing institutions where
these children can learn of their opportunities and possibilities and shaping
them to become critical thinkers of the
national building process and making
them into champions of reform should start from the very beginning of an
individual’s learning graph.
Another crucial factor in preparing
young adults is connecting youths from different parts of the country. The urban iPhone
Generation is as Nepali as the farmer’s kid in a remote village of Nepal. One example:
Establishing a Pen-pal system in schools across the country. Making the
pen-pal system a compulsory part of social studies, where a child from two
different places in Nepal are allowed to connect. If such initiatives are
inculcated into children from a very young age then we could be successful in
fostering understanding and oneness between children from two different
backgrounds, who share a similar culture and national identity.
Nepali Youth: The
Policy-maker:
Second is youth participation in policy level. What this
country needs is policy level intervention in ensuring that youths are not only
agents of change, but also the change themselves. The National Youth Policy (Nepal) 2010 states
that:
The State has to pursue a concrete policy in
order to institutionalize federal democratic republic in consonance with the
inclusive, proportional and equal development principles, to maintain national
independence and sovereignty of Nepal, materialize the potentiality of youth
leadership in the economic, social, political and cultural transformation and
ensure the active participation of the youths in each and every process of
state functionality. (2010)
Well- prepared youth can contribute effectually to the
policy-making process. And policy-makers
are obliged to enable the youth to do so.
The government needs to set up watch-dogs to inquire and investigate to
see if the objectives of the National Youth Policy 2010 are met or not. For the National Youth Policy to recognize
its goal, it should reflect on the feedback from the youth, and employ the youths themselves to follow the progress chart.
Inculcating
youth leaders from different strata of the Nepalese society into contributing
to policy-making, and teaming those youth leaders with counterparts who might
not share their leadership quality, but have the intellect and are potential
social experts, will churn into a valuable policy-making concoction
indeed! Not every body is a leader and
not everybody is a policy-maker. But if teamed together they hold the power to
identify the changes needed and mobilize fellow youths. This pool of youth potential is the country’s
strongest uphold. Including them as board members of corporation, electing them
as direct members of various civil society organizations is a perfect chance to
involve them in nation building. Putting youth leaders in the policy-making
forefront sends a message to millions of youths across Nepal. Creating examples, gives the young leaders
of tomorrow some one to look up to. Bringing out young decision-makers to
deliberate policies on youths will mark Nepal’s development and an overall
positive change in attitude. Most importantly,
youth leaders should be trained and encouraged to mobilize the generation
younger than them as well.If political
leaders, lawyers doctors are mentors of
the youth who want to follow their footsteps, then those youths should be
mentors of a younger generation, so that
they can derive inspiration and look
forward to becoming champions of Reform.
The
World Movement for Democracy (a global
network of democrats, including activists, practitioners, academics, policy
makers and funder) in its “Youth in
Policy Making” section in the website talks about projects and groups that
promote youth involvement. It lists, “Some of the skills,
taught on- and offline, include: organizing coalitions, running an issues-based
campaign, writing effective letters to elected officials, and using the
internet to engage in policy debates.” These activities if facilitated by the
youths themselves who are involved in policy-making would be effective in
creating concrete change at policy level.
Youth is not only a
Youth:
Take a hypothetical
instance; we are making a policy to make the “environment cleaner.” Here we have a 60-year-old professor who has
more than 30 years of experience in the field.
And we have a 27-year-old post-graduate student, who also has a degree
in environmental science from a (hypothetical) college in Norway. This
27-year-old was the president of the environment club in her university and
successfully organized and designed campaigns in her university, which involved
mobilizing each and every staff, old and young in making the camps
cleaner. How valuable would that team of
60-year-old expert and 27-year-old youth expert be in developing strategies to
launch a nation-wide campaign to mobilize?
Where experience of an expert meets the
zeal of Newcomer, there blossoms a mentor and a student who can build dreams
together, where the experience can leave behind the legacy, knowing the
newcomer will carry the torch forward.
Involving
the youth in areas beyond youth issues is a way of letting them know that there
are more responsibilities they have to take up.
One of the objectives of The National Youth Policy of Nepal 2010 reads,
“To develop and expand the role and potentiality of the
youths in the nation building and national development.”
While involving the youth in policy-making, the government and
non-government actors should mobilize the talent into using them to deliberate
policies outside the youth. The Youth Factor of policy making should be implied
on environment and climate change policies, on other social issues of concern,
the unemployment scenario etc. In a nutshell, the youth of Nepal should not be
limited to being youth; they need to be actively integrated into nation
building as a whole.
Let me insert
a perfect example here: Youth Senate program by the International Foundation in
cooperation with the Haitian Parliament, the Haitian Ministry of Education, the
Parliament of Quebec, and Associates in Rural Development:
Students were selected though and essay competition to become youth
senators who then spent several days in Port-au-Prince learning about policy
making process in Haiti and participated in a mock parliament. They proposed
and debated a number of laws, and passed laws mandating to increase
environmental protection and improve.
And, speaking about youth participation
in environmental issues, here is a shout out to the Nepali Youth Task Force which participated in the Rio +20 Summit. The team has been organizing different activities in
rural and urban area. Their involvement in mobilizing the youth and
participating in the summit is a perfect example of youth-power mobilized to
participate in solution-discussion and utilization of their potential into
mobilizing their generational counterparts.
There are many other instances of youth-led organizations in Nepal that
are organizing interaction programs and discussion. There needs to be a state
mechanism to hand pick such efforts, glorify their importance and effectively
set examples for those who inspire to follow footsteps and even start a legacy
of their own.
Encouraging more and more activities that
recognize the youth’s effort, motivates young entrepreneurs. Government should
stet up incentives to felicitate youths who have become champions in various
sectors of society, including business, online-activism, non-profit and
sports. Different types of talents
should be used to encourage youths to actively participate and contribute in
one way or the other.
Fostering youths to
become champions of reform is like practicing for a tennis game. Both sides
wont become perfect until this partnership is synchronized and there is an
understanding between the two. The Nepali Youth has shown its potential and
energy in Modern Nepal. Now it is up to the government and non-government
actors to correctly utilize them, insert provision to allow the youth to become
successful leaders of tomorrow and provide them a platform to voice their concerns and offer solutions to
the country’s problems.
As post-conflict Nepal
struggles to establish new policies and principles, the role of youth has
become even more profound. The youth played an extremely important role in
ushering in the revolutions that started the dawn of a New Nepal. As the
country transitions into nation building, integrating the youth into making
policies-both youth oriented and other issues is important. Youth feedback is
important to establish effective policies. Stakeholders need to keep in mind
two important thing while mobilizing the power of youth to make them champions
of reform: Promoting adolescents and preparing them to become leaders of
tomorrow and innovating youths in the policymaking structure.
Listening to the youth and their solution to the problem, not only expecting
the youth to follow orders because,
youth is the nation’s strongest army.
