The future

Illustration/Uday Mohite

When Vishal Jha, a 21-year-old engineering student from Bengaluru, was arrested in the case of the Bulli Bai app, the college was quoted as saying it would take no action against him, because, "He is a young student and we have to think about his career too."

My first response was anger. We know this is reserved only for some people, this valuing of humanity, the benefit of the doubt, the excuse of youth for criminality. It comes quickly when it is men from privileged identities, even when they may not necessarily be rich or powerful people - and today, when it is an attack on minorities.

But as I thought about it, I wondered, what does it mean really today, to think of careers and futures? India's ‘demographic dividend', a phrase endlessly tossed about, is supposed to be its great resource. But what resources go into creating a future for these young people? A recent survey noted that of the 13 million young people who join the workforce each year only one in four management professionals, one in five engineers, and one in 10 graduates are considered fit for jobs. Most college graduates are deemed unemployable. Stories of alienation and depression abound.

The frank misogyny and hate that is promoted on television news, in myriad digital spaces is powered by an unstated fantasy of the future - a golden land ringed by the halo of a supremacist flame. This empty idea of power, of dehumanising others while giving free rein to one's deepest prejudices, mean thoughts and cultivated disgust, seems to be the only language of possibility offered to these young people in lieu of real opportunities.

These young people may believe they are part of a new elite, who will get away with things, as they have seen others do (as with the earlier Sulli Bai app). But, should the system be pressurised into doing the right thing, they will face difficulties, because they are not rich and powerful. They imagine themselves as righteous soldiers in a war whose army is, in fact, made up of mercenaries. The same energy propelled the weaponisation of Sushant Singh Rajput's suicide, where the real issues of mental health and social alienation, were drowned out by a frenzy of aggression, victimisation, casteism and misogyny, especially towards women who are independent, vocal and have a public presence.

We depend on education to secure a future, but in our hearts we know this is not the truth. Futures are made through possibility and imagination. The saddest thing about an older generation that promotes agendas of hate and prejudice, who get off on the conspiracy theories of love jihad and conversion, is how little they care for the futures of a younger generation, robbing them of confidence, dignity and selfhood by turning their faces towards negative fantasies. Violence feels potent. Because it feeds into a larger persecution of minorities and marginalised identities (Neeraj Bishnoi, who created the app, did not just hate Muslims and women who spoke their minds but also Sunny Leone and gay men), it can give a brief, false sense of meaning and importance. But there is also a strange and sad impotence about it, these violent young people, trying to catch the eye of those who rule the kingdom of hate, which doesn't really care about them.

Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at paromita.vohra@mid-day.com