The Generation Gap
The new generation is a hungry and an angry generation. Universally unsettled coditions without promise or prospect confront the new generation in almost every country and continent. The youth r the new generation feels that in the present order of things it simple does not belong, it simpel does not add up. It finds itself unwanted and is troubled by blank misgivings in a world which is not its wold. It has no tomorrow which it can call its own.
Doubts, discontents, despair, uncertainities and insecurities stare the new generation in the face. One of the striking phenomena of recent times is student unrest in almost every non-socialist country. The present age is the age of the revolt of youth all over. For the youth of today the future is bleak. Employment and economic security, a home and a family life, a set of values which can sustain and support human life-non of these seem to be promised or guranteed to the over-whelming majority of the rising generation to whom the times seem to be out of joint.
At first the generation finds itself unwilling to accept the profession and the position of field and factory labourers. Agriculture and industries are already over-manned . The Establishment is closed to the majority of the upcoming generation who finds them in the outer darkness. The new generation consequently finds itself to be a hopeless and helpless.No heroics can avail it. Today the labour or the services of millions of youth have become an unwanted commodity. A deadly and a dangerous surplus of man power has resulted in the tragic fact of unemployment, forced idlness and the fearful prospect of anarchy. This has driven the new generation to despair.
The older generation seems to have contented itself with old values or wth the lack thereof. These values are all but lost. Their meaning, their significance and their charm- these seem to have played out. A deariness and a hollowness seem to characterize the old values.
The new generation or modern youth finds itself unprotected and orphaned. In the West the main cause of the sorry pass to which the new generation has come is the excessive pre-occupation of the older generation with money-making and economic opportunism. This has resulted in the break up or snapping of the ties which bound the older and the newer generation. The old generation is too breathless and too pre-occupied with its pursuits to keep alive its emotion. This has resulted in a fatal neglect and in the virtual break-up of family life and of the home. In Asia, icluding India, the generation gap has been created by widespread poverty. The new generation does not know what to do and where to go.
Only a socialist society, which is socialist in name and form and even in purpose and determination, can provide to every member employment and a place under the sun. We have, in India, a crying need of teachers, technicians, doctors etc and yet our governments and our society keep millions of these unemployed. The country needs their service but cannot avail itself of these. A cnsiderable number of well-trained Indians are finding employment outside the country, resulting in what has been called the ‘brain-drain’. We and our government swear by socialism or a socialist pattern of society but we are doing very little to make possible socialism in action. We are all for our Five-year Plans still largely, very largely purposeless and planless.
Only determined and purposeful planning can bridge the generation gap. This will be a twice-blessed consummation, blessing both the newer and the older generation and the country as a whole. The tragedy of the stuation is that we lack the character to make our schemes a success. We seem to have lost the instinct for constructive work, what should have been a planned and and purpsoeful activity has become a meaningless ritual. What should have been real has become a ritual. Formalism and ritualism, resulting frm sloth, selfishness, inefficiency, criminal dishonesty, waste and do-nothingses. In the name of education with certificatss and degress we are sending our illiterate, uneducated, unemployable we sending out illiterate, uneducated, unemployable young men and women in millins every year. The police, the judiciary, the executive, the deparmtents in charge of checking crruptions have all become corrpt. Is it any wonder that our new generation is becoming desperate and in many cases crime-minded? Indian hsitory during thje centuries has been a shock absorbing history. But today with our population or nearly seventy-five crores matters have come to a head and the crackup and go to pieces. Wehave, in a life-giving manner and with a life-giving technique of planning, to trnasform our revolting youth into a co-operative youth. We have to fll the generation gap.
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