Financial Times

Falling over you
By Random Access Memory (RAM)
How wonderful it is to be young in this day and age in Sri Lanka. It is even better, if you are young, educated and unemployed. Perhaps you may not know this, but the government, politicians, donors, NGOs and other well- wishers are falling all over you to offer you generous help and assistance. It is also certain that you will get featured as the topmost stars in the nation's initiatives to regain what we have lost somewhere, somehow.

On the other hand, if you were only young, educated and not unemployed, you will perhaps not get all this attention, except that of your admirers in the opposite sex. But if you had the good fortunate of being young, educated and unemployed, you are sure to have many suitors, mostly from the older age groups, wooing you to gain your attention.

To them you are a potent force. Not for your youthful demeanour or sex appeal, but because you are a potential time bomb that can explode unless defused, upsetting the economy and its smooth functioning. You, remaining as you are, may mean bad news for business success, political and social stability and for maintaining the status quo.

In 1971, it is the likes of you that created the first ever youth uprising in Sri Lanka or was it the only one in the world of that magnitude, since the 'Coup de Etudiant' in the nineteen sixties? It is also the likes of you that cause the closure of universities, become street-smart campaigners for the JVP and out-smart politicians at Q&A time on television talk shows.

Well! to the rational and the logical mind, you are more than all of this. As young people with aspirations of making it to the top of the world, you are yearning for a just society, with opportunities and systems driven by meritocracy and transparency, calling for level playfields to horn your talents and skills.

It is true that some among you belong to the 'spoilt brat' category and spray paint school walls, engage in fisticuffs and damage private and public property at nightspots in the city. But that is the minority among you and those in that category are anyway too busy otherwise studying overseas or spending late nights with other like minded brats, lavishly spending the ill earned money of their parents.

They are too sleepy during the day to worry about anything else let alone think of their aspirations for the future. So they leave all of that in the hands of their erstwhile parents, who also fall over them and protect them from the 'ugly' hands of the few good cops who cannot be bought out for money.

Leaving that segment aside, we go back to the potent force you are and your value in nation building and value creation, for these are noble objectives purported by many. In a business sense you are the likes of venture capital, high risk, high return with no surety.

At a recent workshop for youth, a young counsellor from one of the Universities said something very profound, when asked by a foreign consultant as to why Sri Lankan youth all wanted white collar jobs and were moving away from the agricultural sector to the urban centres in search of jobs.

He said, "Farmers and university graduates are faced with the same problem in Sri Lanka. They both don't have markets." Perhaps that is where the problem is, markets for what is produced. And markets are about opportunities; opportunities created through credible policies, strategies and practices, with access to all. Until we get there, rest assured, the 'falling all over you' syndrome would go on and on.

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