Indian Youth Parliament is a political youth movement, striving towards strengthening the government initiatives at the grass root level who would be partially elected and partially selected to form the three-tier representational hierarchy and also present the ground reality to the state and the national government to develop policies and initiatives for them. Indian Youth Parliament (IYP) would be a platform, where the policy would be created by the people, for the people and implemented by the people. At the same time, IYP is a process of political socialization, where young people are the drivers of the #IamNewIndia movement.
The lack of involvement by young people in the decision-making processes has often been put down leading to a cynical opinion about the democracy. The focus on the IYP would be a fairly recent part of a strategy to reconnect young people with the political system by educating and training them in the democratic process.
However, there are hundreds of mock youth parliament happening across the country. There has been no impact that such youth parliaments have created. Rather, most of them mock the entire parliamentary functioning and thus creates a distorted image about the parliamentary activities. Secondly, the discussions generally revolve around imaginary and non-relevant topics. The very idea of a competition in the IYP is a failure.
There have been various models of youth parliament functioning successfully and efficiently across the world. In fact, one of the key agendas of United Kingdom Youth Parliament is to ‘create and change national manifesto policy’ with the dual strategy of the youth mobilization. Sri Lanka, one of the India’s neighboring country has adopted the Sri Lanka Youth Parliament, engaging the youth voices in governance. Apart from UK and Sri Lanka, youth parliament is a concept well accepted by other countries as well.
Association of young leaders with the parliamentary activities is good for the country, but their purposeful participation depends upon their acquaintance with the procedure. In the light of this development the scheme of Youth Parliament should go a long way in equipping future legislators for their role in the country’s parliament and state legislatures. This will help to gain training and experience to work for the parliamentary system, which explains not only the ease and facility with which the system was introduced in this country but also the high standards maintained in our Indian Parliament.
Youth Parliament is an opportunity for young Indians to learn first-hand about India’s democracy and to influence decision making. Youth Parliament replicates the real Parliament as close as possible. Guiding a new era of tolerant coexistence to the main political stage of the country, the Indian Youth Parliament, as a youth led, youth run initiative will target to mobilize and create a new common network or a platform that is comprised of all kinds of the young people of the country to raise their voices in respect of the issues that affect youth and their communities. Specially the Indian Youth Parliament would witness the active young political participation in India, enhance the young participation including women, disabled and ethnically differentiated communities in decision making process. As we move ahead to Transform India, at this juncture of rebuilding the nation with the collective youth voices under the able and visionary leadership, I strongly believe that Indian Youth Parliament will reconnect the youth voices towards the transformational mission of Ek Bharat, Shrest Bharat.