JANUARY 19 — It’s an old story I tell people quite often.

Of how I asked a student in a hall filled with others like him or her for a ringgit. Weeks later, deep in the semester the same student -- baffled that I ignored the debt -- asks for the ringgit back. I understand the ringgit is not what it was, say earlier this month, but one ringgit still did not amount to a fortune back then.

This would be my cue. When the debtor signals for a repayment.

I’d wax about how this young person, just like the overwhelming majority inside the lecture theatre, has no qualms wanting his ringgit to be accounted for yet at the same time is indifferent about national finance and administration, in short about politics.

"There you are,” I’d say, "lamenting about a lost ringgit when a select number of people are spending thousands of ringgit on your behalf and act as custodians of your lands — the minerals which lie beneath them and the factories above them darkening the skies and releasing wastes into the waterways — and personal security.

"Men who decide if you live or die, or worse live in the throes of misery. Yet, that seems not enough reason to speak up or to participate or to walk over to a post office and register to vote.”

Of course I’d pick the friendly student who would have said before he or she hates politics. And the point though well made, would cause the student much consternation as to be unsuspectingly turned into a teaching prop.

"Thanks a lot, for the moral lesson,” would be the riposte.

For me, then, it seemed a fairly cool thing to do. And it is, as it was then, quite a challenge to teach and be cool at the same time. Who does not want to be the cool academic?

Today, not so much. It is an amusing story, but getting the young to act in their own best interest, is a formidable obstacle and is a mission achieved through slog. An anecdote is hardly an antidote for new voters in a dysfunctional democracy.

Bleak winter

The usual narrative is that the young — and when I say this I don’t mean young as how our political parties define youth — don’t want to care about things beyond themselves. On the same token, senior citizens are accused of childlike eagerness to participate.

The joke goes that those who suffer most from bad decisions don’t care to affect the decisions, and those on the way out with little to fear from the bad decisions can’t wait to say more about it.  

I am mindful that this is evident in most countries.

Though it’s vastly mutated here, it is not just apathy, there is an active distaste for politics here in Malaysia. It is seemingly that our young hate books and politics with equal rigour.

I’ve grown up in the system, experienced the textbooks, confronted the rote learning culture still advocated along with centralised examinations inflating the value of tuition centres gaming success, therefore unsurprised by the antipathy towards books. However, the immense animosity to politics among our young has spiralled out of the stratosphere.

Many brag to me that they have never registered to vote and pledge with every sinew of strength they possess they’d endeavour to avoid registration. Almost like being registered is a disease.

Even present active university debaters, in general, while exhibiting a high interest in anything intellectual or international, find their attention span waning when the discussion is Malaysian politics or policies.

But this is not youth bashing.

I’m not following the script of alluding to my generation’s disappointment with those younger. I don’t think any generation gets to be disappointed with those before or after. The admonishments have little currency.

I am, however, keen to change status quo. If the percentage of those below 30 registered to vote is the same as all other age brackets, the whole nature of national political debate and candidate selection would be vastly different. They’d be the largest bloc of voters and the election will be about them.

Empower

Our system institutionalises learned helplessness among the masses. The young are not exempt and a case can be made that every proceeding batch is abused with increasing vigour.

Those opposed to this reality, wanting to counter it, often get caught up with their overzealousness that they are absent to the fact that they too turn negative.

Quite easily we turn to guilt, as I did with my students. Guilt is sexy, but does not linger when the personal context is marginal.

When negative forces face off, the familiar wins.

Perhaps it’s only natural, though tragic, to utilise the tools of the oppressor.

It would be instructive to consider reframing the objective. To begin with, not assume that they have prescience about political change. To study from their self-interest.

What do we want from the young? Their votes, their participation or their leadership?

It is certain, just wanting their votes is going to validate their preconception about activists. It has to be all in. For them to feel genuine participation and therefore compelled to vote because it is a natural extension of said participation. Enough opportunities to participate would have already resulted in them leading.

Politics is about affecting the unstructured thread of multiple conversations regarding the population by the population. The percentage of population ready to participate compared to those actually participating is staggering. The educated would feel most aggrieved by the disconnect.

Those advocating change have to ask the stronger of the young, not to follow them but to instead lead conversations in their youthful communities. I, for one, actually am of the opinion that the now retired national service camps minus the administrative ineptitude were positive for political awareness.

It allowed all segments of youth to mingle, or fight in some instances, and know that there is a larger country and that one may need to think about it. Of how they fit in it.

It is not in the aligning and recruitment of young people into political parties that political awareness will grow in our campuses. It will if those conversations occur in those campuses indifferent to political affiliations but facilitated by student leadership.

It is time to galvanise our youth by unchaining them from our political baggage.

If the conversation belonging to them turned to me and they ask me, I’d only offer this:

Life has consequences. You’re obligated to arm yourself with the sciences and arts to measure the past, navigate the present and aspire for an outcome in the future which justifies your efforts. Protect yourself, and commit to things and people since you time-share the planet with them.

And thank you, for you are my custodian. I have no legacy without you.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.