Sudhish Rambhotla is both a Landmark Forum graduate and a successful entreprenur in Hyderabad, having formed Color Chips India Limited, a leading animation company. When he participated in the Self-Expression and Leadership Programme, he decided to act on his commitment to having youths have a say in India’s political future. The India Express wrote a story about the project.

Lead India Stirs Debate on Reservation for Youth

by Manjula Kolanu 

The Lead India Campaign has certainly had a huge impact. It has not only given a platform for young leaders, but also inspired people to don the mantle of political leadership and take proactive steps to improve the political climate in the country. In Hyderabad, Sudhish Rambhotla, a well-known entrepreneur in the field of animation and films, is taking time away from his successful company to launch the Young India Movement (YIM), to create political awareness among the youth and act as a pressure group on political parties demanding allotment of seats to youngsters.

A law graduate and a qualified charter accountant, 36-year old Sudhish was a management consultant to leading industrial groups in Andhra Pradesh until he ventured out to start Color Chips India Limited in 2000, which quickly grew to be a major player in the global animation industry. Color Chips may have a large reservoir of intellectual property rights (IPRs) for its characters and features, but Sudhish is presently focusing on protecting the rights and interests of youngsters in politics. Elaborating on the ‘raison d’etre’ of the Young India Movement, Sudhish says “History shows that youngster have path-breaking ideas and concepts. We all know that NASA is packed with young Indian scientists and that the Nano was designed by a 30 year-old engineer, but how many people remember that Mahatma Gandhi was a youngster when he first started the Satragyaha, that we moved from the license raj to a liberalised economy under the leadership of young Rajiv Gandhi, that Chandrababu Naidu and YS Rajasekhara Reddy were also youth leaders at one time? Every political party has student and youth wings, and though the youth comprise 70 percent of India’s voters, when it comes time to allotting seats or posts, youngsters are sidelined completely.”

Sudhish says the Lead India campaign was the tipping point for him, when he decided to start a movement that would galvanise youngsters of all political parties into concrete action. Driven by the conviction that younger individuals are smarter and sharper and bring new ideas, passion and drive into everything they do, YIM is exerting pressure on political parties to reserve 50 percent of their seats in party organisational posts, electoral seats, nominated positions like corporations and even in the cabinet to their young cadre.

“Youngsters usually have to wait for some senior party politician to be killed by a terrorist before they get a chance to prove themselves! Otherwise when some political leader dies, his child gets a seat on a sympathy wave. There is no political vision governing the allotment of seats or posts. Reserving seats will solve such problems, parties will also benefit from a healthy mix of youth and experience,” says Sudhish.

In order to raise awareness on this issue, he plans to organise public meetings, discussions and conferences at all the district headquarters over the next six months to form district level committees that will demand reservations for youth. So far the two-month-old YIM has had three meetings - at Nalgonda, Guntur and Vijayawada - where representatives of Indian National Congress, Telugu Desam, CPI, CPM, Lok Satta, BSP, NSUI, Youth Conference, Telugu Yuvatha, ABVP, USO, SFI and AISF were present.

In response, the Telugu Desam party has already promised to allot 40 percent of its seats to youth. YIM meetings will be held at Yarangal, Prakasam, Chittoor, and Nellore districts by the end of February. YIM also invites applications by youngsters interested in jumping into the political fray. And yes, Sudhish himself isn’t averse to entering politics, though he has made no definite plans yet.