Agniveers. In reality.

Have you ever been so frustrated as to punch a wall, or become so hysterical that you commit self-harm, or lose control and throw something (nor necessarily at someone, but maybe even that), or actually see red, get palpitations of the heart, grind your teeth, clench your fist, throw a punch? Have you seen others in your friends and family do it? Did you realise that it was an involuntary reaction and there really was nothing you could have done to prevent it?

Now, tell me, did you see the video of the youth breaking public property and burning trains and buses? Did you notice that (most of) it seems rather close to the reaction one would have when frustrated and feeling powerless and impotent? Did you see the similarity between your own actions when deeply and completely frustrated and that of the red-blooded youth of this country?

Have you then wondered why they’d have such a visceral, violent, almost involuntary reaction to a change in government policy? How important can this little shift be, you must have thought. What triggered this violent outpouring? Obviously, the pacifist in you thinks that violence is not the answer. Surely, you say, there are better ways to show your disaffection.

So, let me ask you something:

How many of you have met actual youth who are aspirants for OR in the IA?

How many have you seen their intensity and drive? How many of you have noticed their physical practice, the care they take as to what they eat (even when many are obviously malnourished due to poverty), and the dreams in their eyes?

How many of you have realised that getting into the lowest ranks of the military is not a career or a profession or a passion or simply another job, but it is their ticket out of poverty?

How many of you know how closely they keep a lookout for the dates of announcements for recruitment drives, how their WA groups are filled with mathematics and GK questions that they are searching for answers to, and how hungry they are for any information about any recruitment in the army, police, paramilitary, or even railways (under the sports quota)?

How many of you know about their close watch over their own age and the count of the number of attempts remaining until they become overage?

How many of you know about their families who are holding out hope that their ward will one day get a steady paying job, even if risky and dangerous, so that they could get him married (perhaps even get his sister married once he is employed)?

How many of you actually meet them on a regular basis and have been to their homes and houses, intermingled with them and their families & friends, eaten at their tables(?), joked & laughed with them, trained with them, and befriended them enough for you to truly understand their hopes and fears, their dreams and nightmares, and their fantasies and aspirations?

How many of you know that these youth are now sharing (in their WA groups) videos and news of suicides of other youths who have given up on their dream to climb out of the poverty they were born into via the only medium they knew, not because they failed the tests (which they would accept, and try again next time, until overage) but because the government simply closed off that avenue for them?

If you have done and know all of this, you will come a little closer, not by much though, for you can never really equal their own lived experience through the vicarious lens of your connection and friendship, to understanding their anguish, pain, and sense of betrayal at this ill-conceived Agnipath scheme.

If you have not done or know this, you will not see the path of fire these young men are already walking in their daily lives just being kept alive with the cooling draught of the dream that soon, they’d get a chance to try out for the army, and then, like it happens in fairy tales, all will end well for them and their family which depends on them. If you have not done or know this, you will not know that they are truly Agniveers in their real life, just waiting for a chance to test themselves against other equally needy and equally prepared competitors for the coveted job guarantee and, to repeat this (since is important that you understand this), their ticket out of poverty, and not just their ticket, but the entire generation’s.

If you have not done or know this and are still trying to explain the protests, the violence, the rioting, and the tempers and passions running as high as they are, you are blowing smoke out of your ass, and should probably stop embarrassing yourself.

P.S: Remember the protests and riots during the railway recruitment fiasco in February 2022? You think the youth of this country likes to riot? Or you think they would have some overarching reason that has hurt them deeply and will probably affect their and their families’ entire lives negatively for a very long time, perhaps for the entire generation, to come out and protest and become violent the way they have.

Endnote: Massive unemployment and underemployment as it exists today is going to rob this nation and its citizens of the true demographic dividend we privileged only know how to talk about. We better do something about it if we don’t want it to destroy the fabric of this nation in the process.