最好的年纪？ | 印度年轻人深受疫情影响
印度年轻人深受疫情影响
India’s youth: Hit hard by the pandemic
失业率急剧上升，远程教育困难重重，孤独感，家庭条件差的女童重操家务劳动。在一个近半数人口不满25岁的国家，年轻人在这场公共卫生危机当中付出了格外惨痛的代价。
©️图为联合国教科文《信使》杂志2021年第2期，点击文末“阅读原文”可免费阅读本期数字版。
塞巴斯蒂安·法尔西 Sébastien Farcis
法国国际广播电台驻新德里的印度和南亚记者
2020年，高拉夫（Gaurav）迎来了这一年的一个相当不错的开端——2月，他应聘成为旧德里普尔班加什区一家体育用品店的销售员。对于这个过早离开学校的20岁业余拳击手来说，这是他的第一份工作。
但是，COVID-19 的流行毫不留情地结束了这一切。高拉夫说：“公共交通越来越少，后来彻底停运了。我没钱每天坐出租车去上班，只能辞职。”印度从当年3月25日开始实施严格的封锁措施，反正他无论如何都保不住这份工作。此次封锁导致印度经济瘫痪了六个多月，同时也打碎了无数年轻人的美梦。
印度是全球人口最年轻的国家之一，6亿多印度人，也就是近半数人口还不满25岁。同高拉夫一样，现在有很多人都找不到工作。根据2011年最近的一次人口普查预测，有11.5%的印度人（1.577亿）年龄在18至23岁之间。在经济不景气的情况下，这些缺乏经验的劳动力面临的风险最大。
©️ Sébastien Farcis
沙布里（座位上戴口罩的人）在新德里的“青年生活项目联盟”中心完成了培训，此前由于封锁，她的培训中断了9个月。Shabri (seated, with a mask), finishes her training at the Life Project 4 Youth Alliance centre in New Delhi, after an interruption of more than nine months due to the lockdown.
城市年轻人首当其冲
疫情造成的这场危机是自1947年印度独立以来最严重的一次。2020至2021财政年度，印度国内生产总值（GDP）下降了8.5%。印度经济监测中心对17万户家庭开展的3年期调查发现，2019年12月至2020年4月，有41.2%的受访者失去了工作。
在15至24岁的年轻人中，这个比例高达58.5%。班加罗尔阿齐姆·普莱姆基大学可持续就业中心研究员帕里托什·纳特（Paaritosh Nath）认为：“与农村年轻人相比，城市年轻人受到的影响要严重得多，农业部门仍在继续运作，农村地区实施了保障性公共就业计划，可以为更多人提供工作机会。但为城市制定此类就业计划的邦却寥寥无几。”
封锁还切断了印度青年女性争取经济独立的出路。例如，家住新德里贫民窟的沙布里（Shabri）是一名高中毕业生，2019年12月，她开始在“青年生活项目联盟”（LP4Y）接受职业培训，这家联盟为17至24岁的年轻人开设培训课程。在封锁期间，沙布里没有办法回到家人身边。这位24岁的姑娘戴着口罩，眯着眼睛看着我说：“我们去了比哈尔邦（印度东部的一个邦）农村的祖父母家，所有的家务活都由我一个人承担。”但这种磨难只会让她越挫越勇。她的父亲慢慢恢复了昔日的茶叶生意，沙布里也回去继续上学了。
“青年生活项目联盟”是一家非政府组织，专为17至24岁的青年开办职业培训，这为受到疫情冲击的人们带来了一线生机。不过，这家组织的志愿工作者如果想要在封锁解除后恢复工作，还得先修复被季风摧毁的办公地点。帕哈拉甘中心的负责人罗曼·巴特克（Romain Butticker）回想当初说道：“9月，我们获准重新开门时，办公室外的所有阳台都被泥巴糊住了。”这家中心位于旧德里的劳工阶层聚居区，在一栋狭窄逼仄的楼房中占了三层。
为与学员取得联系，中心历尽波折。截至12月，大约有30名学员终于回到了中心。巴特克说：“这场流行病对于这些年轻人来说无异于一场灾难。他们出身贫民窟，在那里，一个房间有时要同住六或七个人。在封锁之前，他们正在学习，对未来充满期待。可是突然间，这一切戛然而止。”这些年轻人回来的时候已经筋疲力尽，但也无比渴望渡过难关。
电话授课
学生们也承受了这场危机带来的巨大压力。在封锁期间，有四分之一的印度大学生需要远程上课。对于私立学院的学生来说，改为远程学习比较顺利；但对于在公立大学就读的学生，以及那些生活条件较差，或是居住在市中心以外的学生来说，这种过渡就比较困难了。当时还在新德里印度国立伊斯兰大学英语系读研究生的穆纳扎（Munazza）告诉我们：“所有的课程都是通过WhatsApp 上的语音邮件发送过来的，对于像我这样返回克什米尔邦（印度北部一个邦）家中的学生来说，这是唯一能够继续学习的办法。”
疫情还加剧了社会不平等，导致数百万学生学业中断。例如在印度南部的迈索尔地区，截至2020年12月，43%的公立大学学生放弃了学士学位课程。女生的辍学率更是高达65%。社会学家、女权主义作家、社会活动家曼吉玛·巴塔查亚（Manjima Bhattacharjya）对此解释说：“受到危机的影响，很多家长宁愿把女儿嫁出去。”
那些继续学业的学生往往会感到孤独。在封锁期间，穆纳扎的室友纷纷离开了，24岁的她独自一人留在新德里，她回忆说：“她们离开以后，我很难继续学习，甚至连做饭都成了一种负担。”她原本希望找到一份高收入的技术性工作，但这种希望也越来越渺茫了，她抱怨道：“有人提出给我一份工作，每天工作三小时，收入比出租车司机还要低。如果是这样的话，为什么还要再学五年呢？”
穆纳扎设法让自己振作了起来，她加入到学生队伍中，向成千上万的农民工伸出援手，这些人失去了城市里的工作，但由于交通不便无法返乡。
2020年6月，穆纳扎终于毕业了，她现在打算提交论文，申请继续深造。但大学仍处在封锁状态，或是人手不足，可能需要几个月之后才能发布招生计划表。这一年的危机对于穆纳扎来说不仅只有负面影响。她承认，危机促使她变得更成熟，也更了解自己：“我是一个生性焦虑多思的人，我已经意识到只要保持冷静，一切都会好起来的。”
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India’s youth: Hit hard by the pandemic
Soaring unemployment, distance learning in conditions that are often difficult, feelings of isolation, a return to domestic work for girls from disadvantaged backgrounds. In a country where almost half the population is under 25, young people are paying a disproportionately heavy price during the health crisis.
Sébastien Farcis
Correspondent for India and South Asia, Radio France Internationale, based in New Delhi
The year 2020 had started well for Gaurav – in February, he was hired as a salesman in a sports shop in the Pul Bangash area of Old Delhi. It was the first job for this 20-year-old amateur boxer who had left school early.
But the coronavirus epidemic brought all this to a brutal end. “Public transport became less frequent, and then stopped completely,” Gaurav recalls. “I couldn’t afford to take a taxi to work every day, so I had to quit.” In any case, he would not have been able to keep his job because of the strict lockdown imposed from 25 March that year. This paralysed the Indian economy for over six months, and shattered the dreams of many young people.
India has one of the youngest populations in the world. Over 600 million people, or almost one Indian in two, are under 25. And, like Gaurav, many are now finding it hard to enter the labour market. According to projections based on the latest census in 2011, 11.5 percent of the Indian population, or 157.7 million people, are between 18 and 23. This inexperienced workforce is most at risk in the event of an economic downturn.
Urban youth on the front line
The crisis caused by the pandemic is the most serious ever recorded since the country's independence in 1947. India's gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 8.5 per cent in the 2020-2021 fiscal year. According to a three-year survey of 170,000 households by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, 41.2 percent of those surveyed had lost their jobs between December 2019 and April 2020.
This figure rises to 58.5 per cent for young people aged 15 to 24. “Urban youth have been much more affected than rural youth,” says Paaritosh Nath, a research fellow at the Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University, in Bangalore. “The agricultural sector has continued to function, and the guaranteed public employment programme in rural areas has made it possible to offer work to more people there. But such a programme does not exist in the cities, except in a few states.”
The lockdown has also delayed the path to economic independence for young Indian women, like Shabri, a high-school graduate from a New Delhi slum. In December 2019, she began vocational training with the Life Project 4 Youth Alliance (LP4Y), which trains youth aged 17 to 24. She had a difficult time when she returned home to her family during the lockdown. “We went to my grandparents' house in rural Bihar [a state in the country’s east], where I had to do all the household chores,” says the 24-year-old, squinting over a face mask. “I was scared, because that's not what I wanted to do with my life.” But the ordeal has only increased her motivation. While her father was slowly resuming his business as a tea vendor, Shabri returned to her studies.
The LP4Y NGO has become a lifeline for those affected by the pandemic. But before it could resume its activities after the lockdown, its volunteer staff had to restore their premises, which had been devastated by the monsoon. “In September, when we were allowed to reopen, all the balconies outside our offices were covered in mud,” says Romain Butticker, manager of the Paharganj centre, which is spread over three cramped floors of a building in this working-class district of Old Delhi.
After considerable efforts to contact the participants, around thirty trainees found their way back to the centre in December. “The epidemic has been a disaster for these young people. They come from the slums, where six or seven people sometimes share a single room,” Butticker says. “Before the lockdown, they were studying, and had a future to look forward to. And then, all of a sudden, everything stopped.” They came back worn-out, but also very eager to make it through.
Courses by phone
Students have also borne the full force of this crisis. For the quarter of young Indians who attend university, classes became virtual during lockdown. While the transition to distance learning has gone fairly smoothly for students at private colleges, it has been more difficult for those attending public universities, and for students who are less fortunate or live outside major urban centres. “All our courses were delivered by voicemail on WhatsApp,” says Munazza, who was completing a master's degree in English at the Jamia Millia Islamia Public University in New Delhi, at the time. “It was the only way that students who had returned to their homes in Kashmir [a northern Indian state] could continue their studies.”
The pandemic has also increased social inequalities, and caused millions of students to interrupt their studies. In the Mysore region in the country’s south, for example, forty-three per cent of students in public universities were no longer following their bachelor’s degree courses in December 2020. The drop-out rate for girls has been as high as sixty-five per cent. “Hit by the crisis, many parents have preferred to marry off their daughters,” explains sociologist and feminist writer and activist Manjima Bhattacharjya.
Students who have managed to continue their studies often suffer from a sense of isolation. When Munazza's roommates left during lockdown, the 24-year-old found herself alone in New Delhi. “After they left, I found it hard to keep studying. Even cooking was an effort,” she recalls. Her hopes of finding a skilled and well-paid job have also receded. “I was offered three hours of work a day for less than what a taxi driver earns,” she complained. “Why study for an extra five years if that is the case?”
Munazza managed to bounce back, by joining the students who helped feed the thousands of migrant workers from rural areas who had lost their jobs in the city, and could not return to the countryside because of a lack of transport.
Finally graduating in June 2020, Munazza now plans to enrol her thesis for further studies. But universities that are still in lockdown, or have inadequate staff, could take months to release the registration forms. The year of crisis has not just been negative for her. It has helped her become more mature and get to know herself better, she admits. “I'm a person who worries by nature. I now realize that I have to learn to stay calm. If I am calm, everything will be okay.”
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