The invisible young heroes of 2019

In what has been the coldest December in several years in North India, my heart is warmed by the young students helming the movement against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). Video grabs of these brave young women and fearless young men have filled my social media feeds. I have watched them all. For the older I get, the more I find myself focusing on the young. The math is simple: young changemakers have more time than their older counterparts to make a difference. Perhaps that’s why this year, this column has featured so many stories of invisible young heroes. Here’s a recap. 

My favourite is of 16-year-old Sachin Gupta from a Lucknow village. He’d wonder why his four beloved sisters became so withdrawn during certain days of the month until he learnt about menstruation. He designed and built a sanitary napkin incinerator for his sisters and trained as a peer educator on hygiene in his village. Today, the menstrual taboo broken, the atmosphere in his home has transformed. 

Seventeen-year-old Shikoh Zaidi of Hardoi district in UP has a similar story. A student of a residential school for meritorious underprivileged students, she realised while working on a school project that in her community, girls tended to drop out of school because of the lack of safe menstrual hygiene practices. The teenager, with the staunch support of her father, started organising meetings where, using animation videos downloaded from the internet, she’d initiate discussions on menstrual hygiene and the need to break the silence enshrouding periods. Many were shocked, others laughed at her. But thanks to her efforts, Zaidi’s community is coming around to the idea of allowing their daughters greater freedom when they’re menstruating. Meanwhile, she’s lobbying with the health department to make low cost sanitary napkins available with the ASHA health worker in her village. 

Education is another field where the young are making an impact. Prafull Sawant, a 24-year-old son of an auto driver father and domestic worker mother, in Mumbai has successfully run a free learning centre in his slum in Powai since February 2016. He’s taught over 400 students and mentored innumerable others to apply to college and appear for competitive exams. Similarly, when 19-year-old Sarathi Tudu from Singhbhum, Jharkhand grew up to find her peers dropping out to work and get married, she started free tuition classes in her village. Forty five students come to her every day to study today. 

Mumbai rapper Shaikhspeare AKA Aamir Shaikh of Bombay Lokal is enabling the youth in Mumbai’s slums to find their voices through hip hop. Kanpur’s young “water doctors” Divya, Ekta, Shikha, Alam and Mani Kumar are going door-to-door testing drinking water to convince their neighbours about the importance of water hygiene. Twenty-four-year-old Pooja Itodiya, ASHA worker at Aalri village in Madhya Pradesh, has tested water sources in her village to identify the ones with potable water. 

Few know these young and celebrate their work. To me, however, they’re a source of renewed hope for the change they effect will ensure that 2020 and beyond could be better than the years gone by.