Not just a hashtag generation
Kudos, young comrades, for making the impossible possible – for making the government rethink its position at a time when our policymakers often stubbornly stick to their guns, no matter how foolhardy their decisions. Kudos to you for making us believe, once again, in the indomitable power of mass movements, for showing us that even in these neoliberal times, where fragmentation and individualism are the ethos of the day, collective mobilisation is not a thing of the distant past but a compulsion of the present. Kudos for showing us how an effective movement can be waged, without resorting to untoward violence, without being co-opted, without petty power struggles over representation and ownership. Kudos for proving many of us wrong – those on the left, centre and the right, who had defined, categorised and reduced you to a monolithic entity, who had dismissed your life experiences and struggles as unworthy of notice, who had deemed your hashtag generation as too apathetic to make any meaningful contributions to society.
I will admit that I, too, had written off my generation and yours as self-interested, apolitical, neoliberal citizens, whose responsibilities towards the larger society began and ended with posting a status on FB, donating a blanket for the impoverished or attending a gala dinner to fund a school for street children. This was the generation, I had thought, who would take to the streets to celebrate a Bangladesh win, but not when the plight of the Sundarbans is at stake; it would give a thousand "likes" for a post on Katrina Kaif's new item number but be bored by violation of human rights in the CHT. After all, when the youth around the globe were challenging the highly unequal structures of global capital through the Occupy movements, where were we? Certainly not anywhere close to making those uncomfortable connections that make our complicity in neoliberal capitalism visible, that make it impossible to treat issues of inequality and injustice – events like Tazreen and Rana Plaza – as too distant, too difficult, too big to concern us. When the Greek youth, frustrated with the neoliberal policies that have taken their economy further and further down in the path of debt and destruction, voted a leftist party to power, where were we? Caught between a ruling party showing increasingly authoritarian tendencies and a communal, ideologically bankrupt opposition, we folded our hands and said, "Oh well, who cares about politics anyway?" There was Shahbagh, sure, but there, too, were we ever really able to grasp what the true "spirit of liberation" entailed or did we dilute it down to its most shallow interpretation and let it get co-opted by those who claim to have a copyright over 1971?
The middle-class youth, when accused of being apathetic, ask in return: "Believe in what, exactly?" They have lost faith in the political process, in the power of collective mobilisation, in the possibility of radical change. And why wouldn't they? What examples have we set for them, anyway? A defective democracy (and let's admit it, our democracy has been flawed since its very inception, long before the Jan '14 elections), ideologically and morally corrupt parties, a section of the civil society that is often more interested in pursuing their own donor-funded agendas than in bringing about structural change, a fragmented left with their outdated rhetoric, student politics that is rotten to its very core. . . Add to that disillusionment the fact that we live in a world where we are continuously taught that the power of change lies with the self-interested and enterprising rational individual, with provision of microcredit and capacity-building of the poor and with new business models and whole-scale privatisation, it can hardly be a surprise that we have a generation that no longer hold grand visions of societal transformation but rather aspire to be good consumers.
However, the successful anti-VAT movement waged by these students remind us what an incredibly powerful force the youth can be, if and when it can be moved, at the right time for the right cause(s). Rather than dismiss them as apolitical beings, we ought to harness their potential; rather than dismiss the possibility of ruptures and resistance within these 'bourgeois' institutions, we should enable students to confront their own social locations vis-à-vis the larger society and to contribute to changing the status quo.
But it's an uphill task, no doubt, when our education system itself is teaching them to be human capital, to aspire for that 9-5 job corporate job, to contribute to the "economy" but not to society, to be proud to be apolitical. So to you, dear young comrades, at the risk of sounding self-righteous, let me say this: You must begin to think critically on your own, and question the ways in which our education system itself operates, subjugates and creates hierarchies in today's world. You need to analyse education as a contested site of political and cultural struggle, determine the limitations of the current educational system, and practice alternative ways of being, learning and interpreting the world.
You have begun to ask the right questions about the commodification of education, but let the anti-VAT movement be a stepping stone for a much broader struggle to challenge the neoliberalisation of academia, to hold institutions – both private universities and their regulatory bodies – accountable, to make education accessible to all, regardless of their income. Let this movement be a reminder of the incredible power you hold to change what you deem wrong.
Let this be a beginning, not an end.
The writer is a journalist and activist.
Comments