Milind and the millennials

City politician Milind Deora's new web series sheds light on the benefits and perils of social media through the perspective of millennials

When I was your age, we didn't have anything called social media." Former MP Milind Deora is seated in an art gallery in South Mumbai with three people much younger than himself — not quite the setting commonly seen on the Internet, let alone their agenda for the day that involves talking about the relationship between social media and politics.

The idea of a web show, Learning with Millennials, was conceived by the interns at Deora's office around a month ago, who began sourcing young voices they could feature in the series. That, for the first session bottled down to three names — Gurmehar Kaur, 20, of Lady Shri Ram College in Delhi, Mohini Jha, 21, a recent graduate of St Xavier's College in Mumbai, and Rohit Agarwal, 22, a student at Rizvi Law College. "The basic concept was to connect with millennials and understand what their aspirations are, in a very apolitical way. The other was to allow them to make use of my experience of governance and government to debunk some of the myths and misconceptions they have about politicians," 41-year-old Deora explains.

According to the UN's Population Database, millennials accounted for 30.6 per cent of the country's total population share. For Agarwal, the disparity of dialogue between politicians or the older generation at large, and the young needs to be worked on — where the latter are seen more of a resource that just, "children". "We also have a strong culture in India of not paying attention to the opinions of people younger than you. Politicians today for various reasons don't spend enough time interacting, at least by way of dialogue and not just one-way communication, with the younger generations. So it was refreshing to see someone try and fill these gaps," he says.

This move to keep it apolitical also makes it a unique platform, Jha explains. "Usually, the assumption is that political leaders are only concerned about vote banks, but this showed the willingness of leaders to hear the voice of the youth and attempt to tackle social problems through deliberative and progressive dialogue."

The 15-minute unscripted episode, however, didn't only treat its subject matter on surface-level, but delved into everything from "bought" and "bot" news, to "bobs" and "vagene" [a term that frequents the inboxes of women from Indian men asking for nudes], that even made Deora a bit nervous as it could potentially create controversy. "The topic is extremely relevant to the younger generation. I don't think any politician in India is even aware or bothered by epidemics like unsolicited d$#k pictures. So this was a good platform to talk about those things," Agarwal adds.

For Kaur, although there has been an increase in the political dialogue amongst young people today as compared to the past, it hasn't translated into reaching out and learning from them. "Our politics is much different from our parents and grandparents. Take Section 377 for example. It was a lot of fun being on a panel with fellow students and with a former MP who just sat there and listened to us. The more common narrative and assumptions are that MPs and men in power are entitled and self-absorbed. It was so nice to see Milind treat us all as equals and listen to what we had to say without patronising in any way," Kaur says.

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