AN ANALYSIS OF IDEOLOGICAL POLITICS AND CHANGING PATTERNS OF POLITICAL THOUGHTS AMONG PAKISTANI YOUTH

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyze the ideological politics,
considering history and the evolving political thought, among the youth of
Pakistan. Currently, youth seem less interested in political affairs for
various reasons, such as aimless use of social media, apolitical curricula
taught in educational institutions, and fear and greed in the minds of
middle-class youth. Since the middle class has always been a major driving
force behind political change in history worldwide, it is the foremost task
of powerful forces to corrupt the middle class through different endeavors
or to make them afraid through different tactics. The literature review of
the study mainly suggests that critical thinking, which is a very important
aspect in understanding and participating in political affairs, is lacking in
today’s new generation. This is one of the major causes that the youth can
be misled and negatively used by different political players in the country.
On the one hand, it seems youth engagement in politics increased as
Pakistan constitutes a huge majority youth population, but their politics
mainly revolves around politics that benefit a particular political party or
pressure groups. Though the youth is engaging with mainstream politics
and participates in the voting process, in third-world countries like
Pakistan, voting is just a tool to manipulate the people, as the powerful
authorities are the sole actors behind making and overthrowing the
governments. The prime example in this regard is the general elections of
2024, in which the people’s mandate was stolen. The same happened in the
2018 elections and before, except for the elections held in 1970. The study
examines the political patterns of politics revolving around different
ideologies. The major source of analyzing youth engagement in politics is
to keep an eye on social media. Therefore, the qualitative method is used in
the study in order to analyze social media activism as well as youth
practical participation in political affairs.