The 15th Lok Sabha filled with many young faces and having some of the youngest MPs so far in the history of India is all set to govern our nation. True, that the Parliament is a representative of people and when 70 % of India is young as per the recent demographic trends then the same is bound to be reflected in the Parliament as well.

But is that going to change the way our nation is governed surely can't be answered based on the age aspect of Parliament alone.

Governance is an art and needs skill and experience. These two things are abundant in the more experienced and aged politicians and people's representatives. But one thing, the absence of which can render one's skill and experience worthless, is the attitude, the attitude to work hard and the attitude of making a difference. This one thing had gone missing over the years from the people's representatives.

The friendship of corruption and criminalization with politics, the interference of politics in judiciary, the bureaucracy made inefficient by over-interference of politics are all symptoms of lack of attitude in doing something, something good for the nation."Greed increases with age", that's what someone has said. If we assume this to be true then, we can expect the young MPs to be less corrupt and less criminalized, for greed is the cause behind all such wrongdoings. Now with a young parliament in place, with MPs who are young and full of fresh ideas, representatives with attitude to do some good work for our country, expectations are bound to set high.

With youthfulness, comes courage. With courage, comes revolution. It, therefore, would not be surprising if we see some radical decisions being made and plans executed in India with the young parliament in place. The Civil Services Bill 2009 that is currently being drafted to allow the Indian bureaucrats to work efficiently without political interference by fixing their tenure for 3 years is a welcome step. With about 80 MPs under 40 years of age, we might see more of such steps being taken to improvise the governance of our country.

The young MPs have new vision, new ideas, a different and modern outlook that would definitely express itself in the way our Parliament works. But in party politics, as prevails in India, a party has its own ways of working with consensus. Consensus becomes even more important when multi-party alliances like UPA or NDA are formed to govern the country. In such a scenario, an independent young mind might not get a vent to let his imagination flow and dominate the party decision. It therefore becomes important for the senior leaders to leave their egos aside and allow the youth to express themselves. Finally, the best plan should be executed.

At the same time, the young leaders cannot neglect a more experienced person by judging him on the grounds of age alone. The oldest MP to have been elected to the House this time is 88-year Ramsunder Das of JD(U), who defeated Union Cabinet Minister and LJP President Ram Vilas Paswan. Paswan had once held the record for winning with the highest margin of over 4.24 lakh votes. This shows the might of experience. Moreover, only experience can guide ideas in the right direction, or what else can decide on the feasibility of a new idea?

As Lyman Bryson (1888 – 1959) says "The error of youth is to believe that intelligence is a substitute for experience, while the error of age is to believe that experience is a substitute for intelligence", the consensus of youth with the experienced is a must to move ahead as a team. Therefore, the likes of Agatha Sangma, Rahul Gandhi, Sachin Pilot, etc need to comprehend the level of expectations of the people of India from them and implement effective ideas under the guidance of the more experienced leaders to take India forward on the path of growth and development.

As of now, we, the people of India can only have our assumptions in place about the way the young Parliament will govern the nation. Only time can tell, if our decision of choosing young representatives in this election was right or wrong and help us make our choice for the next Election.

By

Aparajita Banerjee

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