THE common knowledge that our young people tend to go wayward in their thought and action, actually pushes to consider making more active efforts to help the youths to know what to think and how to think. This issue may seem rather too basic for many of us, but the social reality is that it is going to claim a lot of attention of all of us in the near future. The only hope is that when we finally resolve that we need to guide our young people in shaping their thought-process, it would not be too late in the day.

 

The reference to this thought stems from an unstructured survey of young minds with emphasis on knowing what sort of role models they have in their minds. Minus a small number of youths -- girls and boys between 20 years and 30 years of ages -- most respondents talked of film personalities as their role models. Though the loud-thinker holds no grudge against those (why should he?), he feels surprised and even pained to an extent that our youths think in such a shallow manner. What do we really know about those film personalities that we treat as our role models? Our first impression is influenced by their cosmetic show-off which is so carefully orchestrated by their Public Relations teams. Their answers to questions by the media, too, are pre-decided in most cases and designed to cause a positive impression. For the common people outside the tinsel world, there is no way to know if what they outwardly see in film personalities has any grain of truth or it is all PR. Yet, when many young people say that a film personality -- man or woman -- is their role model, then one can conclude that there is something amiss in their way of thinking.

 

Again, there is nothing against anybody in the film industry. But the loud-thinker would like to assert again and again that those heroes and heroines from the show business cannot be considered as anybody’s real-life role models. The Indian society has been fortunate to have had countless numbers of great personalities to be treated as role models. Men and women of science, sports, literature, arts, national affairs ...! But not anybody from the filmdom. The loud-thinker knows quite a lot of people personally from the film industry. Many of them have some good qualities, too, which we can learn from and imbibe in ourselves. Yet, when a shallow film actor or actress is treated as a role model, we only transgress the realm of good sense and embrace something that is shallow and basic. It is against this background that the loud-thinker feels most sincerely that the elders in the family and the society and education should take a lead in hand-holding our younger generations in developing a healthy way of thinking positively and constructively about many issues of life. That is where we will find better prospects for our next generations. This is an earnest appeal.