Where are the young ones?

According to a report released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Pakistan’s youth forms 64 per cent of the country’s total population. Unfortunately, only six per cent of them get higher education while 29 per cent have got no education at all. In a letter to political parties earlier this month, the president of the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency’s (PILDAT) urged them to pick greater number of young candidates for the upcoming election as the “apathy of young voters may lead to serious consequences as they may be attracted to non-democratic radical ideologies”. 

The letter said that young voters must be engaged in the electoral process by fielding “greater numbers of young candidates for national and provincial assembly elections in 2024”. Now PPP leader Farhatullah Babar has stated that there are more than five crore young voters in the country and it is important that political parties assign seats to people between the ages of 18 and 35.

These suggestions should be at the top of considerations for all political parties (except perhaps one): how to include young people in the electoral process? Right now, we are seeing the state only isolating young people. How? By limiting their choices. When so many young people seem to have already decided that the upcoming general elections are skewed, will they even turn up on Election Day? When the state decides to turn nanny and disrupt social media platforms for hours because of a virtual rally, how does it hope to interest the young voter into voting? Are both government and most mainstream political parties completely blind to the demographic shift in the country and what issues move our young?

The answer to that would be a resounding yes. What really are the ‘issues’ for the youth? The foremost is the economy. The economic disparity and lack of employment avenues for the younger generation while inflation is reaching new heights have made our younger populations more angry and more frustrated. This is not a ‘settled’ generation, having had to navigate a tough world and an even tougher country. They care about social issues and human rights. They care about climate change. And yet where do these subjects stand when it comes to our mainstream ‘leaders’? And, while the older generation didn’t much care about Pakistan’s international standing, this generation is different. They are connected to the world through social media platforms like TikTok, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and are forced to compare themselves to the rest of the world. While older politicians are trying to tell us that an AI speech in a jalsa is bad, the younger generation laps up new technology. When we see ‘boomers’ heading youth wings in political parties, it shows how disconnected these older parties are from the youth as their vision for the youth is extremely skewed.

The younger generation is politicized in many ways, even if that is due to a form of forced politicization. One of the reasons NOTA (none of the above) gained currency over the years is because of the apathy among the younger population to what is on offer politically. Political observers have noted that the choice the young have is: populism or apoliticalisation. The PTI’s young voter chose populism, understandably so. Does that mean that the younger voter should be ignored? The answer to that should be a resounding no. Our political parties need to engage the youth, field younger candidates in elections, have local bodies elections so the young contest the polls and are actively involved in politics. Unfortunately, these political parties have not even unveiled their manifestos yet. We hope that not only will we see their manifestos soon but that population planning – a huge issue for the youth – is included in all political parties’ manifestos. Let the youth decide and let them have faith in the democratic process rather than alienating them through ironfist tactics.