Youthfulness has many good and bad faces. Its good faces range from the energy to start new initiatives to the amazing flexibility to learn from mistakes. A sharp rise in the learning curve of individuals is often associated with their young age. Yet, the risks involved during this phase of life are also high.
A tendency to opt for high risk, high return investments makes youthfulness all the more interesting. Apparently, such a regime of choice is associated with a shortfall in decision making experience. It all goes like a bartering of energy with hope.
Yet, all places on Earth are not equally conducive to the release of the potential of youth. Instead, the favourability of nations to allow the youth to achieve their dreams varies with their state of economic and political development.
For the youth in the United States and Europe, debates over basic needs are not applicable. Centuries of systemic evolution have created a strong institutional setting that is able to deliver the basic needs without much pressure. The delivery has reached a universal level, such that debates over access are far-off.
What seems to matter the most for the youth in these developed regions is the structural arrangement of the system. The system, being biased as it is, is overly controlled by a generation of old guards. It has little flexibility to embrace the youth in its leadership. In countries, such as Italy, the case goes as far as creating an exodus of highly skilled youth to relatively open nations in North America, Europe and even Asia.
Apparently, it all happens in an environment where democracy is practiced to its fullest. Where the bias seems to rest is in the strong relationship between politics and resources. Directly proportional, the two elements grow together and eventually hijack key institutions, determining their operational dealings. Having limited resources to deploy in its interest, the youth is often left to surrender to the choices of the older generations.
Asia, with most of its government being hegemonic, has an all the more different setup. Many things on the continent operate through ascription. Hence, there is a clear division within the youth.
On the one hand, there are princelings, who have access to resources, power, technology and information. For them, life is less about basic needs and more about better deals in power. Their ascription to the top percentile of the pyramid guarantees that their fate will be nothing less than the running of a business empire or one of the state offices.
On the other hand, a large mass of the young Asian population live at the bottom end of the pyramid. Its ascription to the mass denies it access to the best schools, health care services, employment and infrastructure. As a result of its limited access, a majority of this section of the continent’s youth live each day struggling to make ends meet.
It all would be forgiven if there was just a little hope of change within the institutional setups of the state apparatus. Yet, little hope exists, as most states on the continent are led by parasitically evolving ruling parties.
Dissent is not tolerated. Creativity is allowed only if it is not transformative. Thus, dreams are defined by parochial political institutions. Even in democratic nations, such as India, youthful aspirations are capped by rigid social institutions, such as temples, which, by virtue of interest, usually promote the status quo.
If there is one place where being young could be considered a nuisance, it is most certainly Africa. Our continent treats its youth so disadvantageously that it has increasingly become inhabitable to them. Poverty provides African youth with the disproportionate burden of having to fight to ensure survival.
Hence, African youth live much of their life dreaming about meeting their basic needs. Such basic needs, taken for granted in other regions, include basic education, primary health care, three meals a day, gainful employment, freedom of expression and security of life.
There seems to be little to be desired within African economic and political institutions that could help to change these realities. Incompetence, parochialism, clientelism and short-sightedness overwhelm the institutions to the extent that a majority of the continent’s youth population live an unfulfilled life.
Political spheres on the continent are filled with outrageous dictators, hegemonic ruling parties, opportunistically elected statesmen, and even conservative monarchs. Institutions do not yet have a clear and defined shape. Even those inherited from colonial powers are left to rot under abysmal passivity.
The African dream has almost become solely about escaping Africa. It is so definitive and fixated that an economic growth of seven years did not help to change even a tiny of it.
Of course, the case for the global youth is not all bleak. Increasing adoption of technological instruments, such as the Internet, and democratic institutional settings, may well infuse some hope into our lives. But, we seem to have to accept that it all takes time to change and, too, it has a price tag.
What we need to do is continue dreaming about change, regardless of the hurdles that attempt to push us in another direction.
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