The voice of tomorrow

The episodes are planned in a way that there are between 3 to 5 panellists, all of whom are young professionals or young entrepreneurs within that given age range, and there are two galleries where 12 to 22 students from both public and private universities remain seated with the objective of interacting intensely with the panellists on national, social, economic, and political issues.

This is an endeavour to demonstrate that the upcoming young generation, who are in fact the decision makers of tomorrow, and the people to whom the country's management will be passed on to, indeed has a lot of well articulated opinions on how the nation should be run and how the society should be moulded, instead of only being concerned.

The goal of the program is not to propound the opinions of specialists and senior citizens experienced in certain fields, but to highlight the thoughts of the general people on all these subjects.

The program aims to prove that even young people who may not be specialists in certain fields also have great ideas which often are not too far removed from the researched and specialized opinions of senior experts.

The program also departs from the usual by being bi-lingual and encouraging panellists as well as participants to speak as spontaneously as possible combining both Bangla and English as they feel comfortable.

The topic of discussion of the first episode was: "Should destructive street politics such as hartals and damage of property have any place in the political system of a sovereign nation?"

While moderating the discussion, what surprised me the most is that all of the panellists and the nearly two dozen participants present denounced destructive street politics and did not support the idea of hartals since, in their opinion, that is what leads to such violence and often bloodshed.

They unanimously agreed that there should be means by which the opposition parties should be able to involve the general public and express their dissent towards the government, but that it certainly should not involve enraged processions which ultimately culminate into skirmishes with the law enforcement agencies. They altogether criticized the practice of picketing, and young homeless and underprivileged people being paid and instigated into breaking cars and setting ablaze public transports and street decorations.

Some of the youth in the gallery made some very thought-provoking remarks such as: that many of the political leaders have their own children studying abroad and therefore should not hamper the education of those studying in local institutions here; that many of the hartals are positioned alongside weekends which affects the country's economy even more; that no one takes responsibility for the people who end up dying during these meaningless battles.

Some used humour to censure hartals by saying that it provides a good break which can be utilized for slumber and recreational activities with family; but many others pointed out the stark reality of how businesses, specially small and medium-sized ones, get hampered and how people's lives are endangered as most people in private service have to go to work through the bomb blasts and brick bats.

It was also pointed out that the hartals almost never result in the demands being fulfilled and that in the last 15 years these means did not prove successful in causing any government to step down. Thus such street politics were shown to not be the most effective means of protest. At the same time it was stated from the panel that the government should also be more responsive to people's demands and sometimes they indeed should step down if they really are not being able to meet the nation's requirements.

It was also discussed that most people do not want to go out of their houses in fear and not in support of the demands of a hartal, thus implying that a hartal declared as successful due to closure of shops and lack of people in streets is really not an indication of public support for the cause but only proof of the picketers having instilled enough fear. It was agreed that hartals were perhaps required for the ousting of colonial rule in the 20s till the 40s, and oppression of the 50s and 60s, but that in a sovereign country there can be protests but not hartals like the ones we see today.

What was emphasized by the youth was that these remarks are applicable equally to all parties as each one condemns hartals and such destruction when in the role of government but resorts to it when in the shoes of the opposition. The generation of tomorrow appealed to all politicians to try and devise more peaceful means of political confrontation, quoting different international magazines that our country could achieve over 10% GDP increase a year instead of the present rate of 6 to 7% if only the political situation was stable.

I tried to extract some concrete solutions from the panel and the audience and was pleased to see a good number of them come up: including holding peaceful silent demonstrations in designated fields or parks and not in the streets; the general people wearing black badges on a particular day to indicate their genuine support for a cause; everyone unanimously leaving work and studies and going into the streets for two minutes and observing total silence as a sign of unanimous disapproval; SMS based polling as we now have a tele-density of 1 in 11 people having a mobile phone; and other such peaceful means.

Whichever party goes to the government was also requested by the panellists to pay heed to such forms of protest and not wait to be shown through violence and the young generation requested all political decision makers to realize that the time has come for them to change their thoughts and ways.

Personally, I believe that the thoughts that were ventilated by those in the program were indeed reflective of the true feelings of the younger generation and I agree that we do need to take concrete measures for eliminating the violence from our politics to give our nation and the generations of tomorrow a better future.