Young leaders faced-off on stage at NDTV Yuva today as they discussed the country’s politics and its relevance to Gen-Z.
Actor Rhiya Ahir, who came into the spotlight during the protest over the NEET paper leak organised by the Cockroach Janta Party (CPJ) recently, said that she belongs to a generation that is willing to question the old systems that she doesn’t believe in.
“Our generation is willing to question all systems we don’t believe in. “So we take to the streets and when we do, people notice that students have come out on their own. Because the people in charge are far away in parliament or elsewhere,” she said, we can’t always do that from home.
The very fact that students were on the streets raised a question – and held an answer – as to why young people had to take to the streets instead of being in schools, colleges or institutions,” she said. She said the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan as Union Education Minister felt like an “early Diwali” had come. Anish Gawande, a young spokesperson of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), alluded to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and pointed out that the country “is above a single leader, a single individual and its reputation cannot be built or tarnished by one person.”
“In Jharkhand, students were protesting on the streets and getting beaten up. Punjab is a state most affected by drugs yet one doesn’t see any student protest there. “This must be abandoned. The youth in any part of the country are the country’s youth and their issues are everyone’s issues.
They protested for 20 days yet Rhiya ji said nothing. In Punjab, there are 31,000 teacher vacancies and schools are in dire straits.
Responding to her, Sidharth Yadav, the national media co-convenor of the BJP, said the “early Diwali” she spoke of was felt in Jharkhand too. In Kerala, water cannons are used on students outside the assembly and not a single tweet or word is uttered,” Yadav said, and pointed out what he called “hypocrisy regarding the nation’s youth, where we speak up only when it suits our political convenience, seek the limelight and build a narrative around it. It is unfortunate that the issues are being selectively chosen,” Yadav said.
