Liberation or confusion?

Where does the present young generation stand? What is their criterion of success and who molds their value system? Parents, society, education and media play a major role in shaping up the young minds. But do they also require moral policing?.

The dilemma:
IN THE everyday-improving world where human beings’ quest for making life today more comfortable than yesterday, the role played by the young and the ferocious cannot be undermined.
Today’s youth is attaining insurmountable heights and achieving unimaginable milestones. The energy and the instinct to do it all have never been so high. The young force is on adrenalin. But there is another face to it too. There is a steep rise in the so-called disillusioned youth. It takes life as it comes, suffers from megalomania compounded by the illusion that it’s rosy all around. And keeping pace with the world, the fairer sex is catching up if not leading. They cannot afford to! Can they?
The crisis:
A peep into the youths’ minds reveals the lack of vision and hence the chaos. The lack of will to do it now let alone themselves. The chasm between the illusion and the reality is so deep that it shows the mismatch in the overblown expectations and the efforts put in to achieve them. They are high on fashion, drugs and alcohol.
Rahul Mahajan’s alleged misadventure with cocaine almost cost him his life. Partying like animals, having incessant casual sex is no big deal for them. They do anything and everything for money, which comes easily. Thanks to the call centre culture. Recently in Chandigarh, a guy stole a car just because he wanted to take his girlfriend for a drive. And there were these two damsels from Jaipur who just for a kick wanted to meet the prime minister of India and landed behind bars and losing their jobs as air hostesses as well.
Quite a kick! The stakes! They encounter disappointments at all the fronts including unfulfilled expectations and rising frustration levels notwithstanding that it’s their casual attitude that led to their fall. As a result, there is a constant conflict at home and in their lives.
Relationships, for them, are ephemeral and do not hold much value. They suffer either from low self esteem and depression or delusion and consequently have zero tolerance zone, fight and flight pattern and tendency to commit suicide. The number of such cases is rising alarmingly in cities. With no will whatsoever to fight it out, they succumb to the pressures of reality, which they never heeded to when it was high time. How can a farmer expect to harvest if he had never ever sown the seeds?
The cause:
No doubt, it is an information rich world, but sadly information is not being complimented by ample knowledge. Today’s youth though highly informed (courtesy: internet and media) is bereft of knowledge and is not being guided properly. Right at home, their aspirations are not being heard although expectations from them are mounting exponentially. They are not being given the due recognition.
Parents want their children to perform extraordinarily without assessing their capabilities, their areas of strength and limitations.
The result:
Pervasive frustration and increased incidents of suicide after the board results are declared. As the toppers are interviewed on the premier TV channels, parents often compare their performance with that of their own children making them feel insignificant and worthless.
On the other hand, television, cinema and internet are not leaving any stone unturned to inflict the youth with illusion and grandeur, painting a rosy picture and detracting them to live a life similar to a movie plot, well complicated but hollow to achieve the real ends of life. They lack the basic knowledge to understand that fantasies of the Bollywood and the melodrama of Kyunki saas bhi kabhi bahu thi are not be juxtaposed with life.
In a peculiar incident last month, a 20-year-old lad from Khandwa jumped from third floor of a cinema theatre imitating Krissh. I can not fathom what prompted him to undertake such an act of stupidity.
The television and cinema now more freely selling the concept of casual sex and extramarital relationships in the name of freedom of expression portray an image that these practices are normal. As is the case with rising divorce cases and live-in trends. Professor Batuknath from Patna is enjoying a celebrity status after the premier TV channels cashed upon his luscious love story with his student, Julie. Such cases set a wrong precedence and encourage youngsters to follow suit. Education system also to some extent is responsible for the misdemeanors of the young. According to a recent survey, only 30 per cent of the graduates are employable. Even after churning out, scores of engineers and doctors we are unable to imbibe in them the basic tenets of life. They are not only technically unfit but also ill-equipped on the personal front. The problem is compounded by the fact that most of the students are studying keeping in mind the remuneration and not doing what they can do the best. But it is also because our education system never made them capable enough to understand what they can do best in the first instance. They are never urged to ask such questions to themselves. They move where the herd moves. This leads to lack of work satisfaction and hence mediocre production pulling them into a vicious circle of poor performance, which exacerbates the already grim situation of frustration. Quality institutions proving quality education is the need of the hour.
Time to act:
It is high time that all of us made a concerted effort and took the responsibility to prevent the grim situation from turning ugly. There is a need for the youth to understand that nothing is gained by irresponsible actions and carefree attitude. Life has to be seen in the right perspective and has to be meticulously worked upon to attain the desired results. The will to persevere has to be instilled and it has to be learnt by heart that no lunch comes for free