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Unemployed indigenous youth find themselves struggling against societal tropes of being ‘apathetic youth’ and racialized colonial tropes of the ‘lazy native’ (Gergan 2014). This section deals with official state narratives of unemployed young people in Sikkim and Dzongu and how these are challenged by Dzongu youth. During fieldwork I attended a workshop on Youth, Livelihood and Sustainable Issues, organized by Sikkim’s Human Development Report (HDR) cell, which sought input from young people across Sikkim for the forthcoming state HDR. Many young people present, raised concerns around the lack of opportunities within Sikkim. The response of the government official moderating the meeting, turned into a patronizing speech about a benevolent Sikkimese state and the wayward unemployed youth:

Government official: Is it the government’s responsibility to give jobs to all the people? Tell me? Now what has happened in Sikkim is that it is a ‘chopey ko

state, maya gareko state’ [a state that protects and spoils its people]. The

government does so much for those who are unemployed, we give trainings, and we give loans. When I was the BDO [Block District Officer], I’ve seen this…this person who got a loan of 1, 50,000 rupees for a poultry farm. I asked him, “Will you actually open a poultry farm”? And he said, “No, I just want to buy a motorbike.”

This caricature of an unemployed youth was a recurring trope in many interviews I conducted with government officials both in Gangtok and Dzongu. The government official’s reference to Sikkim being a state that “protects” and “spoils” its people, draws on the fact that the state government is the single largest employer in the formal sector. Much of this has been enabled by special subsidy packages that Sikkim, being one of ten special category states,

receives from the Central government (Lama 2001). In addition to this, Sikkimese subjects also enjoy special provisions under article 371F of the constitution, which among other things

includes complete exemption from income tax. At the regional level, this has granted Sikkim the reputation of being a state that is ‘spoiled’ by the Indian government and which in turn ‘spoils’ its people. The Sikkim Democratic Front with Chamling at its head, while being embroiled in several corruption scandals has consistently funnelled central assistance into the provision of public welfare schemes and projects targeted mostly at the rural poor. While these programs have done much to alleviate poverty within the state, even state officials agree that these benefits have come at a price. The author of the 2001 Human Development Report of Sikkim, Mahendra Lama noted that “past subsidies were used as government handouts and had spoilt the people by killing local initiative and traditional self-help” and that the focus should now be on, “loans for entrepreneurship, skills-building, and microcredit for farmers” (Dixit 2003, emphasis mine). This quote from Mahendra Lama, reiterates the sentiment of the government official quoted at the beginning of this section, who lamented how all the training and loans provided to unemployed youth were squandered away by a generation too accustomed to state assistance. Since the writing of Sikkim’s HDR in 2001, not much has changed other than the inability of the public sector to absorb the growing ranks of educated young people. In interviews with panchayat members in Dzongu, a similar theme emerged when I spoke of what opportunities were available to young people who were returning to the reserve:

Panchayat member: The government has several schemes like NREGA or handicrafts especially for educated unemployed youth but till now I feel young people have not really actively been looking for work. There are so many young kids who have returned to the village and are just sitting at home. What I’ve seen is that those who have done their graduation or completed their school, they feel like they’ve become big people. It’s actually those who have only studied up till class 5th or 8th, who participate in these trainings and benefit. So it’s not like the

government hasn’t done anything, there are several schemes. If these young people were to look around carefully there are all these opportunities.

In rural spaces like Dzongu, the government sponsors trainings and workshops for unemployed youth in a range of fields like handicrafts, poultry farming, horticulture, animal husbandry etc. Along with the lazy unemployed youth, we find another trope of the arrogant educated unemployed youth, who think they are above manual labor. This panchayat member was not wrong in her observation, most young people who returned to the reserve, were not very involved in these programs. When I inquired why this was the case, the young people I spoke with challenged this understanding. Thendup, one of the anti-dam activists who had recently switched camps and had joined the ruling party in hopes of getting a secure job, expressed his frustration at panchayat members who spoke of NREGA and handicrafts as viable alternatives for educated unemployed youth:

Thendup: Just imagine someone who has put so much effort studied all their lives and then has to learn handicraft. They won’t like that. It’s like if someone is used to playing games on the computer will they like to play marbles? The training programs need to be according to the level. Those who are not educated should be involved in these things like NREGA or handicraft and for us there should be something more professional. NREGA is not something we asked for it is just something that has been implemented by government of India.

The desire to be employed according to your “level” and the failure to achieve this is reflective of the larger global youth employment crisis, wherein many educated youth find themselves struggling with both unemployment and underemployment. In a 2011 report the International Labor Organization warned of a “scarred” generation of young people who had the “bad luck of…entering the labour market in the years of the Great Recession” and how in the long run this would result in a “distrust of the political and economic system.” (ILO 2011:6). In Dzongu, this distrust was apparent on both ends, with high numbers of unemployed youth

as entitled and arrogant. Though many like Thendup, felt it was a safer bet to stick with the ruling party, many anti-dam activists said their reasons for returning to the reserve were to challenge the ruling party’s control over grassroots politics, wean themselves away from government subsidies, and make way for educated youth. Conversations with the educated unemployed reserve youth revealed an intense desire to control the projects and programs that were presently being executed by village leaders backed by the powerful ruling party. Mayalmit, one of the prominent women anti-dam activists, who had decided not to return to Dzongu after the protests, expressed a longing to do something for the village but felt heartened by the efforts of those who were running successful homestays despite the lack of government support:

Mayalmit: The youngsters, they are really determined to do something for the village, Anum [brother] Tenzing is doing good work and Anum Gyatso, even though he is from the law background instead of practicing in the chamber, it has become like a compulsion for him to do something for the village. At the end they can tell the government with full confidence that we are not even dependent on you. Instead they are showing the government the alternative of development. Young people are trying to explain what is development.

As young people returned to the reserve after the anti-dam protests, they discovered that despite being educated and politically articulate, they were marginalized because they did not support the ruling party. Instead they found themselves completely dependent on the government in most spheres of life, having to ingratiate themselves to panchayat leaders and local politicians who supported hydropower projects. This exclusion from the political life of the reserve was especially apparent with regards to development schemes related to village or eco-tourism. Dzongu presents a unique set of challenges since the land cannot be sold to outsiders (the exception being the state and hydropower developers) therefore one can’t really earn a profit from land unless you’re cultivating it. Activists like Tenzing and Gyatso refused to sell their lands to dam developers which were in prime location and started developing those plots for both

agriculture and eco-tourism. Eco-tourism emerged as an important option for the young activists due to a combination of reasons ranging from the lack of skills for farming and underdeveloped market connectivity. As Lepcha youth attempt to reinsert themselves into the dense political networks that characterize these rural spaces, decisions related to infrastructure and built environment, are slowly emerging as extremely contested arenas.