Reviving Villages: Keeping Youth at Home for a Brighter Future
The person is in an advantageous position when he is in his young age, as he is full of energy, strength and hope.
Winter season in this part of world brings cheerful smile as it is the time of harvesting and the season of celebrations. It is also the time to move around and explore different places along with the family.
I remember in my childhood days, during such a crop harvesting period, I accompanied my grandfather to our ancestral village. The distant relative of grandpa was proudly showing us the boasting agricultural field that was holding yellow colour Winter season in this part of world brings cheerful smile as it is the time of harvesting and the season of celebrations. It is also the time to move around and explore different places along with the family.
The tip of small plants loaded with the ripen grain seeds could not stand tall due to the exertion of matured crop weight.
They were dangling in the air, swinging from one side to the other with slightest blow of wind. Even a light breeze was creating ripple in the field making it looks like unfurling of a piece of golden colour cloth over the crop land.
As far as my faint memory of the yesteryears recollect me, I was being shown by grandpa the countless number of coconut trees, the betel vine yard, the back yard pond so on and so forth. While grandpa was busy in bragging about his ancestral productive land holdings, I heard his relative saying to him, “You see! As you have already retired from your job, you should come back to our village.
In post-retirement life you are definitely going to enjoy your stay in the village.” I remember, my young mind got excited with this proposal of reverse migration to village as that would mean my freedom from constant vigilant eyes of my mother.
The happy memories of yesteryears compelled me to visit our village in my late teen age, accompanying my father with the expectation to revive and restore moments of those happy gone days. However, the picture of our village was quite contrast to my earlier experience, as most of the agricultural field was lying vacant with greyish brown colour!
Few frail and feeble looking cattle, unaccompanied by any vigilant humans, were grazing casually on the empty land! We moved forward to meet our father’s distant relatives at their homes. The vibes in their surroundings were not delightful as well.
Their homes, their vicinity seems devoid of bright, buoyant and chipper symphonic sounds of humans, birds and animals complimenting each other like witnessed last time while accompanying Grandpa.
Subsequently after spending some time in father’s cousin’s house in the ancestral village got to know that most of the young people of the village are now residing in the urban areas in search of jobs. Agriculture as a livelihood option has become the responsibility of the people belonging to the previous generation.
Youngsters are no more attracted to the agriculture because it is increasingly becoming non-viable with escalating frequent disasters, animal and plants infestation with multiple diseases. With the creation of vacuum of young people in the agricultural field, the rippling effect is being felt at the household and at the village welfare level.
The village demographic composition got reduced to more of middle aged and elderly population which has its own drawbacks.
The revelation of village reality gave me a miserable feeling as I could visualise the ordeal of forced migration to the urban centres. Lack of decent earning opportunity for these migrating youngsters compel them to stay in the slum areas in the cities and township, that further impact on their health, morality and confidence.
Slums, synonymised with unsafe and unhealthy overcrowded house dwellings that lack the windows for ventilation, filthy floorings, leaky walls and roofs in the urban areas. Unsecured land tenure, weak house structure and overcrowded dwellings are potential site for many eventualities like natural disasters or easy spread of epidemics and fire hazards.
Prevalence of wide spread unhygienic condition in the locality due to scarcity of potable drinking water and enough toilet facilities make the inhabitant susceptible to the spread of water borne diseases.
Lack of educational qualification, reduce the opportunity to earn livelihood from formal set ups, pushing the slum dwellers in doing petty small jobs. Poverty, insufficiency and inadequacy of the slum make the young people of the locality vulnerable to crime too.
These visual displays of probable condition of migrating villagers in their destination point, in my imagination, created an uneasy and clumsy feeling within me. On the way returning home, my father could notice the silence and could probably understood the reason behind it.
In a passing by statement he said to me, “You know! Your Grandpa always used to say that in a human being’s life, the person is in an advantageous position when he is in his young age, as he is full of energy, strength and hope. In this young age, instead of getting sad or backing out of the struggle and taking shelter under fantasy coverage, one should learn to fight and come out as victorious.”
It took some time to understand the real meaning of the statement, then looking back to him, I said, “Yes Father! Young people have all the potential to change this world!” Probably the time has come to retain the young people in the villages so that the life becomes comfortable and colourful for all of us.
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