Bengaluru: Asserting that youngsters have the courage to question the status quo, a panel of experts who spoke at a discussion organised by Mount Carmel College (Autonomous) said politics should not be restricted only to the electoral kind.
The panel, consisting of political economist Dr Parakala Prabhakar, former IAS officer and activist Kannan Gopinathan, former head of Amnesty International in India and human rights activist Aakar Patel, and Ila Ananya, a PhD candidate in social anthropology at Cambridge University and Laadli Media and Advertising awardee, lamented the erosion of democracy and constitutional values.
They said discussions on those topics must be encouraged since despair and helplessness have taken over political discourse.
“Indians tend to be oblivious towards the problems of others,” Gopinathan said while answering a question. “We do not tend to question those in power.”
He said students must participate in mass mobilisation, the only way to enter the otherwise inaccessible politics.
Patel, author of the book ‘Price of the Modi Years’, noted the low-level labour participation India, which is around 40. “In countries like the US, China and Vietnam, the labour force participation is not less than 60,” Patel said, adding that we need to acknowledge the problems to solve them.
Prabhakar spoke on the growing trend to eventify everything by headline management and discourses, making normalisation of the abnormal and vice versa, making people numb.
The college’s Department of Political Science organised the discussion, titled ‘Empowering the Future: Encouraging the Youth to Embrace their Vital Role in Politics’.
Published 15 March 2024, 23:16 IST