Politics as Vocation: Do We Need Youth Quotas?

For democracy to thrive, its youth must participate in its processes, practises and exercises of electoral politics.

National Students’ Union of India presidential candidate Ronak Khatri with supporters during the final day of campaigning for the DUSU election, at the university’s North Campus in New Delhi on September 25.

(Photo: ANI)

Anyone familiar with the works of the sociologist Max Weber would automatically associate the above keywords vocation and disenchantment with his visualisation of the modern world. Such a visualisation and sociological imagination encapsulates the relationship between the youth and politics today.

The recently concluded Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) elections bear testimony to this. That it exemplifies how and why politics remains a preferred vocation for a section of the campus populace has been a well-established idea.

However, that it also goes on to signal disenchantment with politics, cannot be denied.  

Since 2012, the voter turnout percentage has always been above the 40%-mark, barring 2016 when it went down to 36%. Owing to the Covid-19 pandemic, the elections were not conducted between 2020 to 2022. The percentage was similar in 2023 with it hovering around 42%. However, it has fallen to almost 35% in 2024.

While there is ongoing introspection in this regard among the administration, and the parties; these numbers will certainly hurt the organisational outfits present and participating in campus political activism. With the counting of votes usually scheduled a day after the elections, ongoing developments in a matter being heard by the Delhi High Court have postponed the counting by at least a month.  

For the world’s largest democracy to thrive, its youth must participate in its processes, practises and exercises of electoral politics wholesomely. But what happens when voter turnouts in campus elections are at a historic low, at least at a decadal level?

Although scholars and commentators have argued that low turnout at elections or minuscule political party membership figures should not be read as signs of young people’s political apathy, one cannot help but enquire as to why such numbers are declining despite an ongoing growth and massification of higher education.

Can we attribute this to political apathy? Does apathy arise due to a feeling of disenchantment? Can disenchantment be countered by enhancing representation and can youth quotas help in such a process? 

In a recent edition of Mann ki Baat the Prime Minister reiterated his clarion call to the youth to join politics. In the 78th year of Independence, such a call is welcome. And it comes at a juncture when the world is witnessing multiple crises. Using the assumption that politics can overcome crises and create trajectories for change and development, which includes the long-term vision of Viksit Bharat, heightened political participation among the youth is then significantly essential.

The category youth symbiotically conjoins and encompasses aspirations and hope for a better future. And their enhanced participation in politics can be a point of departure. However, the present scenario of their participation suggests otherwise. 

Despite forming the major bulk of national populations, youth representation in the world parliaments is scanty. As per a Report by the Inter-Parliamentary Union 2023, only 2.8% of the world’s parliamentarians are aged 30 and under, while they represent 50 per cent of the population. The challenge becomes higher with almost one-third of countries making 25 the eligible age for entering parliaments.

Consequently, the average age of leaders lies somewhere around 60, alienating youth from formal politics. In India's case, the average age of MPs in the eighteenth Lok Sabha is close to 56. Furthermore, the Youth Representation Index (YRI) is only 41, where a score of 100 would indicate a perfect representation.

With a general population of youth at almost fifty per cent of our total population, how can we improve our YRI that stands below par? 

One of the foremost ways through which youth participation in politics can be fostered is through the educational curriculum. Citizenship education can help address some of these issues by engaging with the world’s problems of hunger, unemployment, climate change, health and the need for a sustainable world. However academic engagements need to be supplemented with practical exercises.

While youth parliaments do have their merits in creating awareness and skill-building, it would require the young to play an active role in community-building exercises and would need much more than a summer internship. This would also necessitate that youth come to the forefront, and outside of their classrooms, to usher in change. 

Career-making is a serious enterprise and present-day outcome-based education models emphasise the need to carve tangible outcomes for the young populace. And doing politics certainly does not feature as an expected outcome.

Using the CSDS Youth and Politics Survey of 2014, eminent political scientist Sanjay Kumar has shown that 54 per cent of youth declined to take up a career in politics when compared to 34 per cent who were willing, and 12 per cent had no opinion in this regard. He attributes such a cause to the general ‘educational system’ as well as the ‘lack of avenues and incentives to make it a career’. While noting that socioeconomic background (money, access, political connections) and political background are essential for career-making in politics, he states that ‘exceptional individuals’ have also made it to this field. 

Such a phenomenon also draws its roots from commonsensical notions about politics itself that have lent it a pejorative connotation with labels such as ‘dirty politics’ being commonplace. Typically, middle-class households do not foresee politics as a respectable profession, but rather less as a vocation for their offspring. However, most are happy to complain about the fact with phrases and remarks that our political class is not ‘educated enough’. Such a situation puts us in a double bind. 

While voting in elections can be another strategy to enhance levels of involvement, the young must do much more. They must set the agenda and use politics as a tool for change. Does that call for the need to initiate youth quotas? Probably, that can be an important starting point.

The Ace Project in one of its reports states that several countries have responded to this question by implementing quotas for youth to increase their participation. Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Tunisia and Uganda, among other countries, have adopted some kind of quota to bolster the representation of youth. 

In the elections of 2024, while key issues relating to youth made it to political parties’ manifestos, and while notable young leaders also got an opportunity to seek representation by contesting in it, much more needs to be done to facilitate their better participation. With 38 per cent of eligible voters being first-time voters in these elections this year, we can only expect the numbers to grow.

Notwithstanding, it is also imperative to ensure that the young are not apathetic to electoral processes and exercises in a democracy. Nation-building can only be possible with the active involvement of its youth, and one can be hopeful that their enthusiastic participation will only go on to bolster such a longstanding project. 

(Dr Soumodip Sinha is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Alliance University, Bengaluru. Views are personal.)