With the youth constituting 70 per cent of the country’s population, they can set the electoral discourse in contemporary politics, change the game and its players, said former Chief Election Commissioner J. M. Lyngdoh.
“They [the youth] must start their own organisations. Youngsters can begin with the odd municipality, then a constituency or two, then a State and finally the country as a whole,” Mr. Lyngdoh told students at the Amjad Ali Khan College of Business Administration here on Tuesday.
On the current political scenario, he felt the old should give way to the youth.
“In every election, caste and religious hatred are aroused, and godmen and conmen are used for the purpose. The State has been so taken over by political and business interests that it barely exists,” he asserted.
“A strong State has nothing to do with military, strength or wealth. It is one which enjoys the loyalty of its citizens above their loyalty to family, clan, caste and religion. And which also has a monopoly in exercise of power,” the former CEC said. He lamented that 60 years past independence, the structure of India, which was painstakingly put together, was being demolished by the ignorant and the greedy.
