Youth groups unaffiliated to political parties have announced a common platform to highlight unemployment as an election issue before the Lok Sabha polls next year.
The Sanyukt Yuva Morcha, formed on the lines of the Samyukt Kisan Morcha, is an attempt to replicate the success of the farmers' movement, which was able to get the Narendra Modi government's laws to corporatise agriculture repealed.
The demands of the Yuva Morcha are a right to employment, filling up all vacant posts in the public sector, stopping contractualisation of jobs of perennial nature and putting an end to "nationalising loss and privatising profit", which they call “Modanikaran”.
The Morcha is steered by Yuva Halla Bol (YHB), a group that led the agitation against the alleged leak of question papers in the state selection commission exams in 2018.
YHB president Anupam said: “If we are unable to give education, employment, skill and value to the country’s youth, the demographic dividend will become a demographic disaster.”
The Morcha has 113 affiliates in 22 states.
At the launch, senior advocate Prashant Bhushan said: “Our democracy is in danger, our constitutional values are in danger, and our civilisation itself is at risk. At such a time, the public, especially the youth, has a very big role.”
He added: “Article 21 means the right to live with dignity. If that is every citizen’s right, then it should include employment as well without which you can’t live a dignified life.”
Speaking at the event at the Press Club of India, former chief information commissioner Yashovardhan Jha Azad said the Yuva Morcha would hold a national convention in June, after which it would engage experts to prepare a national report on the state of unemployment for the Centre and state governments to act upon.
“In every state and at the Centre, recruitment exams are conducted, then some irregularity happens, the candidate becomes overage. How do we compensate for this?... We want every party that contests elections in 2024 to say what they will do to generate employment,” he said.
