The juvenile mind is changing. Battered by a new age where ‘Dollar’ is the God and siblings are an endangered species, s/he is defining newer boundaries and engaging in thrilling encounters of a destructive kind. The other side of the picture though has a large number of the young breaking through tough barriers. The world is inundated by the smart Indian teenager winning awards, competitions and excelling in all areas of education and enterprise.
In recent times, one has seen an increase in the involvement of young boys in rapes, murders and other major and petty offences. Have the children become rapists overnight? No! Adults have let down children by a deluge of antisocial acts across the country…from corruption to rape. As children watch the corrupt living in mansions without being punished and incidents of rape as common as petty theft…those at high risk join the mob rather being a bystander or the moral cop.
The tearing social fabric
The cultural censor or the societal super ego is collapsing….The fantasies expressed in the washrooms are being enacted live in a manner that may be interpreted as ‘daring’ by the child. ‘Might is right’ feels the child…In India everything goes…When cops can be beaten up by politicians, female cops violated by mobs and the powerful go scot-free after every criminal act, the message is clear. There is no risk…and the slogan ‘just do it’ appears simple.
For the juvenile everything is in the open and there is a thrill and a thirst for notoriety, where the belief is, everything is ok! In the yet to be developed minds, there is a “NORMALISATION” of the act of rape. There is a sense of invincibility. Adults and the State have let our children down. One screams for death sentence for the juvenile involved in the Nirbhaya rape case because he was supposed to be the most vicious. But the car driven by the juvenile on the roads also runs at break-neck speed. There is raw passion, no reason and a desire to outwit, outbeat the adult driver on the road and show I am stronger than you.
Globalisation is the new mantra which boasts about a product made by people in different countries and sold to everyone in the world. The manifestation of this religion is not the same everywhere. We in India embraced the new change without shifting systems, killing corruption and rebuilding our core institutions. So we have a new book with old classrooms, a corrupt black board and leaders who are richer than the economies of smaller countries.
Increasing wealth, shrinking bonds
So the juvenile sees prosperity inside his/her home with shrinking conversations, and also sees the same around and feels grossly deprived of the same. Deprivation and poverty causing crime are old stereotypes that have been thrust down our throats by social scientists. Is this true? Well, deprivation and wealth in India have always coexisted and there was reasonable harmony for many hundred years in a society that was deeply feudal. But today where the world is getting horizontal, the coexistence with shrinking conversations has caused confusion in the mind of the juvenile. The desire for an unaffordable ‘mobile phone’ by a teenager is the source of disharmony and conflict in hundreds of Indian households. Your money is my money; your mobile phone is mine are thought prescriptions that hold no guilt. This can escalate to violence, blackmail, threats, till the parents yield. Parents are also at the receiving end of violence in many cases. The Draft Juvenile Justice Bill has been passed by the Loksabha and is awaiting consent in the Rajyasabha. The bill states that juveniles need to be punished similarly to adults in heinous offences. This is absurd.
So where do we go from here? Let us look at the mobile phone. It is, ‘Buy one and get three addictions free!’ The phone encourages the teenager to get addicted to the Internet, pornography and video games. The conversations for procuring ‘addictive drugs’ is largely facilitated by the mobile phone. Yet one needs to acknowledge that technology does help to connect, build and assist education and communities to be in touch when physical distances are too huge.
What then is the way forward?
The first step to help the juveniles live a normal life is to make adult institutions strong and effective. The world needs to appear safe, secure and strong to nurture, protect and correct the juveniles. The second is to acknowledge that the crisis due to alienation is big and unless there is a massive turn around, this is going to be a big crisis. It is not only violence, but also suicides that have increased among the young. Angst and pace causes anger and helplessness. It also causes a milieu where latent criminal tendencies can be expressed without fear or shame. Emotional blinding occurs in communities steeped in anonymity and helplessness.
Though stress busting through methods and techniques are touted by many to improve emotional health and emotional wealth, thereby building the emotional energy bank, this may not suffice. Building the soul alongside is the second vital step and that makes for a complete person. Several institutions, largely spiritual, are involved in this process with good results. When someone asked me recently whether yoga should be introduced in schools, I had answered it should have been hundreds of years ago. The eastern practices facilitate soul building and connects the teenager with the entire sea of humanity. The compassion curve improves. It is compassion that is the antidote for both violence and suicide. Pace kills compassion and makes one cruel, indifferent and insensitive. The life of a child needs a million pause buttons that helps him to reflect, evaluate and think. There is no need to be doing things all the time. ‘Doing nothing’ is an excellent exercise for all ages and more so a software that has to be inculcated in the young.
In my experience I have found the kitchen in the house to be the ‘calming force’ for the teenager more than the prayer room. Those boys who spend time in the kitchen calm down drastically. There is something in vegetables and fruits that when handled, cut, minced and felt, changes the way one behaves. No, it is not the skills here but the feel that makes a big difference. May be it takes the young back to the fields, orchards, grass that is so sparse and unavailable. I have seen tribal children in different parts of the country much calmer than their city counterparts as they are in deep conversation with nature moment to moment in their life. Unnatural concretisation breeds alienation, disconnects and is the source for festering anger and violence. Sea facing or lake facing apartments makes very little difference and sophisticated violence here though invisible, is as much as among children living in crowded hutments.
I have sent many ‘wild’ teenagers to volunteer with organisations and then there is a sea change in their lives. Not by observing, but by actually doing with their hands, legs and their being is what brings them closer to themselves. Genuine volunteering without a photo op helps discover compassion and assists soul building.
Building wealth and prosperity is the mantra of a new age world. But gross disparity in its distribution will breed more violence. Wealth building is also a myth as energy across the universe is constant. The philosophy of ‘use and throw’ is spurring the so called economy and that to my mind is purely artificial. Yet, one cannot be blind to advances in the silicon chip, science and technology that have contributed to the quality of life on the earth.
It is the time and the space for meaningful listening and conversations with the young that is vital in promoting peace. Strangely, the answer will come from them.