Rural Youth missing in Youth Development Approach

Youth Development constitutes a core component of development in the context of building human resource. It is well accepted that young people constitute a rich reservoir of resources and wealth, yet, the potential contribution of youth in the development process remains untapped. What exactly the youth development? Is this a vague idea or misnomer or a specific concept?

In fact, the symbolic and constructive identity of youth is not free from the conceptual challenges both at local and global level. Generally, youth is defined in age specific indicator but this is not sufficient to analyze the youth development. In many societies, the difference between the childhood to adulthood is quite short period. As soon an individual physically grow up, one starts earning to support family. While in some societies, period of adulthood is supported by the family as long as an individual not able to build one’s career moves up in ladder of socio economic mobility. Therefore, defining youth development in specific concept needs a comprehensive understanding about the contextual reality and also requires a different kind lens to see the diversity among youth themselves.

Adulthood, the most important period of human life cycle, but this is either most neglected or not fully evolved area of concentration in policy arena. The World Bank in its report entitled “The World Development Report 2007: Development and the Next Generation” proposes a three dimensional approach, “expanding opportunities, enhancing capabilities and providing second chances in which, this have been intended that these three dimensional approach would successfully help the youth to make the smooth transition into adulthood. The report underlines the significance of youth as important human resources, and recognizes the diversity of youth population at global as well as local level.

When we examine the youth policy of many countries (Brown, Larson and Saraswathi, 2002) that shows that youth has been evolved as homogeneous group and these policies identify few areas, such as sports, HIV/AIDS, Crime Prevention, Building morality etc where youth participation to be ensured rather evolving them as a critical partner.  However, the youth policy in many European Countries because of historical tradition of youth involvement in these countries, policy towards youth development seem comprehensive and well structured. The involvement of local level community organizations in many developed countries as implementing partners provide ample space and opportunity for the youth to evolve themselves as catalyst of change at local level. But, the situation is not optimistic for the rural youth in almost every developing country, where a large number of population lives in the rural area. Even some developed countries also not able to address the needs and aspirations of those youth, who are living in marginalized urban areas.

‘There is nothing to do here on the street’, a girl child in Herlam, New York told to Dororthy Stoneman, Founder of YouthBuild, USA. The statement of girl child itself provides ample evidence that there is scarcity of youth space in their own locality. Many youth development programs do not emphasis on target oriented effort to mobilize and involve youth within their locality. However, youth development programs effectively involve schools and educational institutions to engage youth population in effective manner in certain extent, but how to engage those youths, who are not enrolled, dropped out and unemployed is quite challenging at the program and policy level.

This is also to acknowledge here that youth is not a homogeneous group. The nature of variation in the youth group depends upon many social, political, geographical, and cultural factors. Even the variations within the youth groups at urban and rural setting make the situation complex and challenging for the society. Gender identity is another dimension of diversity in youth group. Building youth policy cannot be comprehensive document, unless there is incorporation of the needs and aspirations of different youth groups identified and to be ensured an institutional arrangement to implement these policy options on the basis of the needs and aspirations of different youth groups at community level.

There is need to evolve innovative approach and effort to explore a possibility to understand the rural youth problem in India and how NGOs or local organizations can effectively evolve a youth oriented program to build youth space in rural setting. However, youth space cannot be seen in isolation but the isolated rural youth needs specific kind of program and intervention at local level to address their capacity building process through different kind of creative and innovative activities, which ensure their civic engagement and participation as core objective of program and intervention.