Bring Them Back

It isn’t quite 9/11 but then again this is not the US. This is Bhutan, the GNH nation. It is about happiness and a sense of assured wellbeing that isn’t quite there. Instead, there is a palpable sense of unease, even fear over what is going on in the capital. And it is all the harder to stomach when it concerns the youth, the supposed future of the nation. What happens when the streets are not safe anymore? Why are young kids menacing people with knives and sticks looking for easy loot? Wherein lies the answer to such unprecedented developments?
The players in this dangerous coliseum are obviously parents, teachers, the legal system and society at large. Today, after several incidents of blatant disregard for the law, people are actually scared to be out on the streets. On the other hand, we have youth who contemptuously ridicule the law. Being in the lock-up for a night or two has become almost second-nature for them. They are well aware that they will be out sometime or the other to resume their conquest of the night and hapless victims. They are not scared to scare the rest of society.
Why is this happening? People say that this is the consequence of changing times. Something that is inevitable. Yet, have we not as a nation always purported to avoid that cliché? We sell ourselves as a country that is different, unique, if you will. If that be so, then there is the need for us to urgently seek a solution to this growing malaise. Young students preying on migrant workers and the like mean a much deeper issue. It is pretty much the same for young girls throwing themselves at ever-willing sugar daddies.
In the end, it all boils down to money. Money to sustain a lifestyle that is not in keeping with the family income. For one, it is about drugs. It has become an all pervasive habit with youth. Tablets, syrups, intravenous stuff, they are doing it all. Only, getting the regular fix costs money. How does a young boy or girl pay for it every day with no source of income? Get into crime, that is the doorway to a regular fix. Steal, bully, sell yourself, anything at all. That is the present state of our youth. The people we so laud as the ones who will take us into a brighter future.
There is the need for the government to seriously look into these issues. We are emerging as a socially loose society. Divorces are rampant; education is weak and youth counseling non-existent. The law is still unclear about how to deal with minors and we have no mechanism in place to bring the aberrant back on the right path. Such lapses will only exacerbate the problem that not only makes our streets unsafe but goes against the very values that we embody as a GNH nation. We need to bring the boys and girls back to the fold. And we need to do it fast, before we lose them altogether.