Soon, your days of youth may end at 30

At 35, you may consider yourself young. The Indian government, however, may not think so anymore. ChetanChauhan reports.

Updated on: Jun 1, 2012, 01:54:48 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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At 35, you may consider yourself young. The Indian government, however, may not think so anymore.

Aiming to scrap the existing norm of 13 to 35 years, the new draft youth policy unveiled on Thursday describes those in the age-group of 16 to 30 as youth. “This change has been proposed to realign the definition of youth with prevailing international definitions,” said youth affairs minister Ajay Maken.

While the UN defines youth as those in the age group of 15 to 24, the Commonwealth pegs it at 15 to 29.

Besides the Indian government, organisations such as the Indian Youth Congress and the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad consider those below the age of 35 as youth. While the youth affairs ministry allows those in the 15-35 age group to enrol in clubs under the Nehru Yuva Kendra Sangthan, the National Youth Corps pegs the age category at 18-25.

The existing norm of 13-35 years puts half of India’s 1.2 billion people in the youth category. The new definition, if accepted, will cover 40% of Indians.

By 2020, the average age of the Indian will be 29 years.

Maken said that as per the new definition, youth has been categorised into three sub-groups — 16-21 covering adolescents, 21-25 as those in the process of completing education, and 26-30 as persons who have largely settled down with jobs.

As issues regarding youth are not homogenous, the draft policy divides them into nine target groups —including gays and lesbians — and three priority groups, including young women and differently-abled.

“Gays and lesbians have never been accepted in our society because same-gender sex has always been treated as perverted and immoral behaviour,” the policy document says, asking the youth to play a crucial role in ensuring that they are accepted in society.

The policy also takes a dig at some of the existing policies, stating that government resources should not be limited to a handful of IITs and IIMs. The socio-cultural sector, including politics, should be included in the education syllabus, it adds.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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