Youth is a promise. Youth is a promise to our parents, our society and us. However, generations after generations of humanity have witnessed this promise turn to despair and hopelessness.

Our parents and grandparents were supposed to carry the torch of change in independent India. There was much hope in the mid -70s when JP's Total Revolution (Revolution in the world as well as inside you) swept away Indira Gandhi's autocratic hold over our young democracy. What happened to all those youth leaders of the time? They turned out to be power-hungry, greedy people like Lalloo Yadav, Ram Vilas Paswan...and so on.

Let us examine our fabled democratic dividend. A majority of our population is below 25. What are the chances of change happening in India? Our government-funded schools are in shambles. Teachers are either incompetent or absent. Colleges are churning out graduates by the millions. How many of these are employable? There is severe lack of skills-based education, which does not seem to be solved anytime soon. We all read about the recent tragedy near Bareilly, where more than two lakh people turned up for a couple of hundred of jobs in the Indo Tibetan Border Police (ITBP). Many of these aspirants died of electrocution as they were traveling on top of train compartments. Our population is so huge that merely filling up BPO/KPO and Infosys-type jobs will not suffice.

Let us now talk about bringing change, overthrowing the sleeping leadership, ushering in systemic changes, and bringing in accountability, through politics. Dynasties (some say there are 400 such dynasties) are ruling India, in Delhi or in the states. Politics has become the playground of moneyed people (It is almost a cliche now). However, we can deal with all the dynasties and money-power if we could organize ourselves, starting at the grassroot level. Young people can start organizing themselves in their colleges.

All college-level politics has been reduced to minor copy of dirty politics in general. Most students politicians, save some places like the Jawahar Lal Nehru University have become agents of major political parties. Abuse of money and muscle power is the norm in most college student union elections.

How can we hope to do a Tahrir square in India if we are not organized at student level? How can we bring change when we are too busy with the troika of social media, mobile and bad television? It is not surprising that the disorganized, disillusioned Indian youth easily falls prey to constant calls of consumerism, lapping up all that "India is Great! Buy, Buy Buy!" TV ad slogans, while ignoring the mess all around us.

Youth must not necessarily be overrated and so wasted. How can the youth deliver on its promise? It will not be easy. However, there is a person who can show us the way - Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhiji (he used to edit a paper called 'Young India') used to say, "If we manage to help even one poor person, we could come out of our personal despairs." (This quote used to be on back of our school copies)

Helping others liberates us. It brings us out of ourselves. Help others more than you help yourself. Make a start. Tolstoy said, "The Kingdom of God is inside you." A variation on that brings us to "The Real promise of youth is inside you."