IYCRC OPEN PAPER SERIES 2026
THEME: Social Issues & Youth Behavior
Giving morphine to the monster makes it uglier - is a well-known metaphor highlighting the danger of well-intentioned actions that fail to address the underlying problem.Pakistan’s youth- a generation raised on the broadcast of unfulfilled democratic promises, are not indifferent to politics; they are exhausted by it. They live inside a widening social and political gap, colliding daily with unemployment, restricted speech, corruption, and institutional inertia, breeding a quiet and slow but dangerous and irreversible distrust in governance.Across Pakistan, scrolling through political news is more of a habit than participating in it. The youth witnesses publicized projects, televised crises, viral scandals, and elite power games, barely connected with their own lives—tuition fees, joblessness, housing insecurity—in formal political agendas. This gap is strengthening the narrative that politics or the applied version of democracy in Pakistani society is something done to them rather than something for them, opposed to the wider claim of 'for the people, by the people.'Surveys over the last decade indicate youth disillusionment with democratic institutions, whilst being deeply concerned about the country’s direction. Democracy, for many, has become a mimicry show of voting every few years, rather than a decisive factor in real governance.The question lies here: What is sculpting this behavior? The answer to this divide sadly, is not political unawareness but three intersecting social pressures: economic precarity, educational crisis, and institutional fragility. In today's world, where the mere existence of an adult is amounted to the figures he earns, resources he gathers, and the opportunities he seizes in late 20's, high unemployment and underemployment has pushed educated youth into a prolonged waiting room of “almost-adulthood." (Asif, 2026). When the economy does not reward effort, it quietly teaches that irrelevance of meritocracy, indirectly resorting to people to use connections- a biggest nightmare for an average middle-class Pakistani who had studied in textbooks: parho gey likho gey, bano gay nawab (those who perform well, are bound to succeed.)
Record underinvestment in education better termed an “education emergency" undermines both skills and critical thinking, creating a system that allows them to learn roles, but providing limited access to public reasoning. This leaves young citizens fluent in frustrations & doubts, leading to a system where the graduates live in the country like their own, but treat its politics as a spectacle of fiction rather than shared responsibility.
The cherry on top is the eternal governance failure, corruption scandals, and selected-elected war on contested elections that erodes confidence in institutions fueling the perception that power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The narrative of power being hereditary, insulated, and unresponsive, further distances youth from power politics.
An important distinction however is, young Pakistanis distrust political governance, not politics, being extremely vocal in how they think, speak, and mobilize, openly expressing low trust in government, parliament, and political parties - a fierce slap on democracy's veil. Instead of joining parties or unions, youth create hashtags, boycotts, and informal networks to voice dissent. They are politically awake but procedurally absent, citing disengagement as less apathy than strategic withdrawal from arenas perceived as corrupt rigged or too risky.
The present distrust & political gap did not arise in a vacuum; it is historically designed. Since the ban on student unions and politics, young blood has been deprived of a legitimate training ground for democratic contestation, negotiation, and leadership. Universities, once arenas of political debate are nothing more than exam centers now, saturating the society with hundreds and thousands of graduates with degrees in their hands, but zero to no job opportunities in market, keeping them hanging between a choice to either stand up before an oppressive elitist regime to claim their rights or silently pave their way towards securing a humble life where necessities are being barely fulfilled at the mercy of state -stripping youth of structured pathways into national debates. Each cycle of instability covers interventions, fragile coalitions, contested mandates—widened by the rift between the democratic promise and its lived practice.
The consequences of this digital and social divide have been excruciating. Low institutional trust has corroded the legitimacy of any proclaimed democratic project. When young voters believe institutions cannot protect their rights, they either abstain or vote cynically, treating ballots as symbolic gestures rather than instruments of change. Secondly, sustained disengagement creates a risk of a parallel public sphere where solutions are slower, and grievances are fast paced. Youth increasingly relies on informal, sometimes radical, avenues for political expression, leaving formal institutions to manage crises, on their own making it nearly unmanageable, without the energy and creativity of their largest demographic.
Lastly, there is a growing vulnerability to polarizing narratives. When governance is consistently disappointing, any actor promising clarity—whether through military rule, strict religious law, or populist charisma can swiftly capture disillusioned youth. The result is a pendulum democracy, swinging between hope and backlash, trust and distrust - a real life hit or miss.
The core argument is Pakistan’s crisis is that politics has systematically refused to listen to youth. Policies often treat young people as too emotional, a fierce blood that is easy to misguide and a problem to be managed—through employment schemes lacking accountability or security narratives that can quickly adapt to who they want to secure —rather than as key partners in shaping governance & institutions.
Rebuilding trust demands listening to the youth. Youth must shift from being mere recipients of governance to co-authors of the rules that govern them. Without this normative turn, every new government in Pakistan will inherit a democratic deficit in addition to a fiscal deficit that too with a larger youth divide. The remedies lie in reinstating genuinely representative student unions for youth to learn negotiation, compromise, and collective action, strengthening political behavior in institutions. Transparent reserved youth quotas in parliament and local bodies can bring innovative voices into legislative spaces. Meaningful civic education should teach practical and constitutional skills as how to petition, organize, debate, and hold institutions accountable, shifting political behavior from reactive anger to informed engagement.
Youth trust cannot be demanded; it must be earned through credible anti-corruption measures, open data, and visibly enforced accountability. Cynicism loses its rational basis when institutions apply the rules upward as well as downward.
If the state continues to ask youth for patience without offering participation, distrust will harden into disengagement, and disengagement into quiet refusal. The youth, however, still has to ponder over the social and political future of this country, and that divide can be filled via bridging institutions, governance and youth proactively and productively, always and in all ways. If institutions choose to listen to not restrict free speech, restore unions, open parliaments, reform education, and practice accountability and transparency—Pakistan is bound to succeed, with young people turning disillusionment into a renaissance of democratic imagination.
Pakistan Zindabad!
REFERENCES:
1. Politics of disenfranchisement: Why Pakistan’s youth no longer believes in the sanctity of the vote - Pakistan - DAWN.COM
2. Youth Political Disengagement in Pakistan: Causes and Consequences | Pakistan Languages and Humanities Review
3. Pakistani Youth And The Crisis Of Institutional Trust
4. PAKISTAN LABOUR FORCE SURVEY 2020-21
5. The Lost Generation: Pakistan’s Gen Z Between Cult and Collapse -
6. Dawn-ePaper | May 04, 2025 | Youth parliament discusses links between climate change, extremism
The cherry on top is the eternal governance failure, corruption scandals, and selected-elected war on contested elections that erodes confidence in institutions fueling the perception that power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The narrative of power being hereditary, insulated, and unresponsive, further distances youth from power politics.
An important distinction however is, young Pakistanis distrust political governance, not politics, being extremely vocal in how they think, speak, and mobilize, openly expressing low trust in government, parliament, and political parties - a fierce slap on democracy's veil. Instead of joining parties or unions, youth create hashtags, boycotts, and informal networks to voice dissent. They are politically awake but procedurally absent, citing disengagement as less apathy than strategic withdrawal from arenas perceived as corrupt rigged or too risky.
The present distrust & political gap did not arise in a vacuum; it is historically designed. Since the ban on student unions and politics, young blood has been deprived of a legitimate training ground for democratic contestation, negotiation, and leadership. Universities, once arenas of political debate are nothing more than exam centers now, saturating the society with hundreds and thousands of graduates with degrees in their hands, but zero to no job opportunities in market, keeping them hanging between a choice to either stand up before an oppressive elitist regime to claim their rights or silently pave their way towards securing a humble life where necessities are being barely fulfilled at the mercy of state -stripping youth of structured pathways into national debates. Each cycle of instability covers interventions, fragile coalitions, contested mandates—widened by the rift between the democratic promise and its lived practice.
The consequences of this digital and social divide have been excruciating. Low institutional trust has corroded the legitimacy of any proclaimed democratic project. When young voters believe institutions cannot protect their rights, they either abstain or vote cynically, treating ballots as symbolic gestures rather than instruments of change. Secondly, sustained disengagement creates a risk of a parallel public sphere where solutions are slower, and grievances are fast paced. Youth increasingly relies on informal, sometimes radical, avenues for political expression, leaving formal institutions to manage crises, on their own making it nearly unmanageable, without the energy and creativity of their largest demographic.
Lastly, there is a growing vulnerability to polarizing narratives. When governance is consistently disappointing, any actor promising clarity—whether through military rule, strict religious law, or populist charisma can swiftly capture disillusioned youth. The result is a pendulum democracy, swinging between hope and backlash, trust and distrust - a real life hit or miss.
The core argument is Pakistan’s crisis is that politics has systematically refused to listen to youth. Policies often treat young people as too emotional, a fierce blood that is easy to misguide and a problem to be managed—through employment schemes lacking accountability or security narratives that can quickly adapt to who they want to secure —rather than as key partners in shaping governance & institutions.
Rebuilding trust demands listening to the youth. Youth must shift from being mere recipients of governance to co-authors of the rules that govern them. Without this normative turn, every new government in Pakistan will inherit a democratic deficit in addition to a fiscal deficit that too with a larger youth divide. The remedies lie in reinstating genuinely representative student unions for youth to learn negotiation, compromise, and collective action, strengthening political behavior in institutions. Transparent reserved youth quotas in parliament and local bodies can bring innovative voices into legislative spaces. Meaningful civic education should teach practical and constitutional skills as how to petition, organize, debate, and hold institutions accountable, shifting political behavior from reactive anger to informed engagement.
Youth trust cannot be demanded; it must be earned through credible anti-corruption measures, open data, and visibly enforced accountability. Cynicism loses its rational basis when institutions apply the rules upward as well as downward.
If the state continues to ask youth for patience without offering participation, distrust will harden into disengagement, and disengagement into quiet refusal. The youth, however, still has to ponder over the social and political future of this country, and that divide can be filled via bridging institutions, governance and youth proactively and productively, always and in all ways. If institutions choose to listen to not restrict free speech, restore unions, open parliaments, reform education, and practice accountability and transparency—Pakistan is bound to succeed, with young people turning disillusionment into a renaissance of democratic imagination.
Pakistan Zindabad!
REFERENCES:
1. Politics of disenfranchisement: Why Pakistan’s youth no longer believes in the sanctity of the vote - Pakistan - DAWN.COM
2. Youth Political Disengagement in Pakistan: Causes and Consequences | Pakistan Languages and Humanities Review
3. Pakistani Youth And The Crisis Of Institutional Trust
4. PAKISTAN LABOUR FORCE SURVEY 2020-21
5. The Lost Generation: Pakistan’s Gen Z Between Cult and Collapse -
6. Dawn-ePaper | May 04, 2025 | Youth parliament discusses links between climate change, extremism
