The Ocean in a Drop

A Perspective on Youth Development: Creating

Ownership of Common Spaces
 Have you put your drop in the
ocean today?

 “You must do your bit for society”

 But the truth is that despite all our efforts,

the ocean only looks further depleted
 India growth story …

 The Government talks of a 8 -9 percent GDP

growth year on year for the last three years

 We are the second fastest growing large economy

in the world

 We withstood the 2008 meltdown remarkably well

 We have the second highest number of billionaires

in the world on paper

Transform yourself and the world

 But are things as rosy as they
look?
Depends on the lens you wear….

 Our development indicators show a downward trend

 As a result a million mutinies rage in different parts of

the country and the constitution is under daily threat.

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 How do we interpret this
dichotomy?

 The origin of the two divergent stories of India,

we believe, lies in the lenses we have viewed
youth with in the past

 Once upon a time in the 1940’s…

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How were youth viewed during the
independence movement?
 Sample this: A 40 year young Jawahar Lal Nehru was
chosen to head the Congress Party in Lahore in
1929. Gandhi said…

 People heard Gandhi’s call and society not only

legitimized but actively promoted young people’s
participation in the movement
 How were youth viewed during
independence?
 Our primary and secondary research has shown
there was a thriving youth scene in the 40’s

 The huge context of the freedom movement

played a critical role in drawing in young people
 How many youth showed up to
sail the new ship?
 Youth (between 25 and 40 years) in the Lower
house of parliament ( Lok Sabha) were as
many as:
• 26% in the first Lok Sabha in 1951;
• 32% in the second Lok Sabha in 1956

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 When did we turn the youth into
passengers rather than crew?
 Slowly the number of youth participating in civic
affairs began to dwindle

 So much so that in the 2009 Lok Sabha youth (25

to 40) representation had drastically reduced to
6.3 % from a high of 36% in the 2nd Lok Sabha in
1956
Click here to view graph
 Other indicators too show a decline of
participation of youth in the democratic process
and common spaces

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 Age wise representation in Parliament
60

50

40
%
30

20

10

0
I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV
25-40 41-55 56-70 71-100

BACK Lok Sabha number

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 What happened? When did we
drown out the youth voices?
Our research gave us some insights:

Representation of youth in the 40s was high but

youth were kept out of governance right from the
beginning

As a result the average age of the first cabinet (

the governance team) after independence was 54
years! Remember 26 % of the Members of
Parliament were between 25 to 40 years

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 What happened? When did we
drown out the youth voices?

.. And by 2009 the average age of the cabinet had gone
up to 62.7 years !

 The current Minister of Sports and Youth Affairs is 73

years. The Prime minister 78 years...

They are highly competent, still it’s something to reflect

upon...and compare with narratives of other countries

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Country Head of State Age Avg age of Avg age of
cabinet population

India Manmohan Singh 78 64 26

USA Barack Obama 49 58 37

UK David Cameron 43 50 40

China Wen Jiabao 68 61 35

Japan Naoto Kan 64 59 45

Italy Silvio Berlusconi 74 54 44

France Nicholas Sarkozy 55 56 40

BACK Transform yourself and the world

If you approach the ocean with a spoon, won’t it appear to be
a drop?

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Isn’t it the ocean in the drop we should
have focused on?

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 So, where is the youth narrative headed?
The economistic lens:
 By 2020, India is slated to become the youngest nation
(average age 29 years). We are poised to reap a
demographic dividend

 If this increased cadre of youth were productively

employed and they displayed good consumer behavior,
it’s true our GDP could see an unprecedented jump, as
been seen before in the case of Canada, Ireland among
others

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 The economistic lens:

 Youth through the economistic lens : ‘lets build skills to

make them productive workers and good consumers’

National Skills Commission

Booming Livelihoods sector
Education policy

 According to this view youth are poised to write a new

glorious chapter in India’s growth story

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 So, where is the youth narrative headed?
The “Problem Solver” lens:

 Youth are clients for development interventions: ‘they

have problems that we need to address’

 Youth are seen as prime abusers of drugs, sexual misconduct,

or engaged in other delinquencies

 Many narrators lament the declining values and increasing

self centeredness of youth

 Others claim there is a type of youth who do engage with the world
but their actions are misled and their energy destructively focused

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 So, where is the youth narrative headed?
The “Instruments of Social Change” lens:

 Youth for development: ‘They have resources (time,

energy, skills) that we can use to achieve development
goals’

 Many religious organizations feel youth can become

their core cardre for spreading the message

 Political organizations expect youth wings to assist in

elections and governance processes

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The “Instruments of Social
Change” lens:

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 So, where is the youth narrative headed?
The “Youth Development” lens:
 Youth for youth’s sake: What do youth in India want?
What are their needs, intentions and desires? What
are their hopes, fears, and futilities?

• Let’s develop processes that are youth centred and

focus on developing their leadership potential

• Let’s make waves in the ocean in their heads and

hearts

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The “Youth Development” lens:

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 How do we program a youth for
youth’s sake strategy?
For that we need to know which spaces do youth typically occupy
or hang out it either by their own volition or due to societal
pressures

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What are the spaces that society
legitimizes for youth today ?

Family 5th
Space

Career
and career
related
Friends
studies Leisure
and
lifestyle

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 What is the Fifth space?
 Pravah began talking of a fifth space instead of active
citizenship to denote a space that connected the self to
society

 Our greatest insight was about the word ‘to’ viz. the
connection of the private self to the larger world and the
learning obtained in exploring this connect

 It’s probably the most critical question that human kind

needs to answer – ‘The foot feels the foot when it hits the
ground’
 Still the fifth space lies on the margins of societal awareness
with its potential of transforming the self and society largely
unexplored
 We seem to have forgotten the lessons of the
independence movement when the Fifth Space was in the
centre
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 How do we mainstream the 5th
space now?
 To be a good human being you have to be an
active citizen, but it need not be true the other
way around” – Aristotle

 The focus should be on self transformation as

much as on transforming society

 Build on three key aspects of:

 ‘Self’ ,
 ‘Relationship and leadership skills’ and
 ‘Society’

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How do we mainstream the 5th
space now?
Family

Career
and
5th career
related
Friends Space studies

Leisure
and
lifestyle

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 Inward Bound: Me-Self inventories and Who Am I sessions
Youth Adda Cafe
1. Catalysts: Action Research and Volunteering 2. Alchemists: Youth clubs

4. Learners: Workshops on Self, Conflict 3. Advocates: Campus events

Positive, Leadership

Orientation
A visit to a
5th Space 5. Internships: with hinterland, national,
experimen international NGO’s/ movements
t-
The Pravah
SMILE
program Feedback

“Refl-action” Workshops

Facilitators for 5th space

 1. Catalysts

A call for volunteers

Volunteering

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 2. Alchemists

Music club in action - Music

for Harmony Annual Festival

Street Theater Club in action


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 3. Advocates:
Campus Events

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 4. Learners

 Transform yourself and the world

 5. Internships

SMILers at Beej Bachao Andolan Utrakhand

VSO YFD volunteers in Manthan
Jharkhand

VSO GX volunteers in SWRC Tilonia

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 Series of postcards from SMILE Interns used as posters
 Ban the Bulb Campaign
Ban the Bulb campaign
6. Social Entrepreneurs

Grassroot media facilitators

Grassroot start up organization on youth dev

 Transform yourself and the world

 What are the principles that will
nourish the 5th space?
 Co create the design, ownership is the key

 Put well practiced un-biased facilitators in charge who

support the young to reflect and act

 Take young people from what they know to what they

don’t

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 What are the principles that will
nourish the 5th space?
 Action is required to be taken to learn about the self
and the world and in the best traditions of experiential
learning reflection must precede and succeed action.
We call this process – ‘Reflaction’.

 Pay attention to the ‘sifat’ the characteristics of the

space
 Encourage trust
 Enable young people to ‘hang out’
 Enhance entrepreneurship and connect them to sustainable
market models and processes.
 Provide opportunities for ‘cross border’ engagements
 Make it fun, joyful AND transformatory

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 What are the principles that will
nourish the 5th space?
 The voyage is long and we need to recognize that..
we shouldn’t think of these as short term projects
with well defined goals as society has become used
to doing.

 SMART goals are particularly difficult to identify but

all the same we need proper markers, without them
we can get lost. Since this work, by its very nature,
has elusive destinations, qualitative impact and
frequent set-backs, …measures we must have.. For
ourselves, all stakeholders and mostly for youth to
assess for themselves their development and their
contribution to social change at the same time.

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The Ocean in a Drop

 The last geographical frontier

on earth today is the deep
ocean..

 It’s a good metaphor for the

ocean in a young persons
mind..it’s time this
exploration is undertaken
with greater depth

 To transform ourselves and

the world
Let’s heed what the youth of every
generation tell us
 Share Credits
 All of Pravah personnel, youth and partners
over the years.
 Key Concept developers : Arjun Shekhar,
Meenu Venkateswaran, Kamini Prakash
 Illustrations : Smita
 Thank you Brian, for vauable time and energy
for contextual inputs for this conference
 Oxfam India for it’s partnership in the research
project
 SRTT, VSO, The Ford Foundation,
Misereor,Asha, Global Fund for Children, CWS.
Current supporters of our youth program