how to cross that and not trip from
there can only go smoothly in a crowded
noisy competitive world I grew up being
asked this constant question who do you
want to be when you grow up and my
answer was really simple I’ve always
wanted to be a playback singer for Walt
Disney and that’s actually what I went
ahead and did I studied to be a musician
I’m him the sami classical singer an
opera singer a jazz singer and a pianist
I also wanted to learn how to be someone
who is comfortable in their own skin a
few years later when I was in school in
2002 the go through riots took place for
those of you who are not familiar these
are riots that took place in Gujarat
when they took place there was a debate
that took place on the social and
ethical breakdown that happens in a
state when communal riots happen and my
school at the time asked me to go and
speak at a debate and like a debater I
went to the library and thought I got a
win this topic am I speaking for the
motion am i speaking against the motion
I went and I typed in go through riots
those are some of the images that I saw
and all of a sudden my interest shifted
from going for and against the motion to
really trying to understand what were
these pictures what were these images
how was this going on in one part of the
country whilst I was growing up in Delhi
perfectly undisturbed when I was reading
these transcripts about the riots I read
an interview between a politician and a
journalist and so the journalists asked
the politician he said sir what’s your
answer for all the blood that’s been
spilt in the streets because these riots
have taken place and I will never
get what the politician said in response
he quoted Newton’s third law of motion
and said every action has an equal and
opposite reaction and I thought how
would you respond when communities of
people are victimized I realized
individuals rarely know how to challenge
and change the status quo and could it
have been possible that as a privileged
young person who grew up in Delhi that
really speaking my very privileged
education in some ways had made me
indifferent to the human rights
violations that were taking place in the
rest of the country and what if I wasn’t
good enough what if I’m not strong
enough to speak out what if I am the sum
of all my weaknesses intimidated
completely unable to be powerful in a
country that has over a billion people
and worse still especially if you’re in
school what if I’m judged at that point
in time we were thinking about what we
could do how do we get involved with
riots how do we get young people
passionate about riots who becomes
passionate about something like riots
and I met somebody I don’t think I
ideally in my daily life would have
bumped into that’s Ajith Ajith comes
from small village in Orissa called
Belle Gow Ajith left his village and is
the first young person in his family who
came to Delhi because he wanted to be a
cartoonist and Ajith came up to me in
one of these brainstorming meetings and
he said you know the problem is young
people like you don’t see young people
like me and the more conversations we
had the more we learnt that at the end
of the day maybe we were invisible izing
each other so if we can’t see each other
how do we practice solidarity so whilst
our context and our realities as young
people growing up in India are different
maybe our need for access to information
and services really isn’t maybe young
people do need a safe space to
understand each other to listen to build
to be themselves without judgment so I
can grow up and be a musician if that’s
what I want to be and explain that as a
career choice to my family but that
doesn’t mean that I’m an artist that
doesn’t care about somebody else’s
rights and so in 2002 we stole my
younger brother’s bedroom something he
has still not forgiven me for and we
started a youth organization called the
wipey foundation we worked with six and
a half thousand young people across
Delhi to build a movement that turned
into an organization that turned into an
excellent excuse to Bank college that
turned into an even better excuse to not
do a masters and what has eventually
been my career for the last 15 years of
my life until in 2009 I found myself in
a strange place I was standing in the US
Senate on the floor giving a
congressional briefing this was during
the time of the presidency of George
Bush to defend of all the possible
things in the world why the US
government should fund sex education
programs in India at the time in India
twelve state governments had banned
sexuality education and we had some very
inspired opinions that had come out we
had a very famous politician who said
why do young people need sex education
we have yoga I’m still not entirely sure
what kind of yoga he practices but the
kind that I’m aware of doesn’t help you
protect from unwanted pregnancies or HIV
we also had a Member of Parliament who
said sexuality education is against
Indian culture this manual and that was
the manual the manual came out and it
was banned and because the manual was
banned in States de-facto
sex ed was banned in India and I don’t
even think many of us knew about this
raise your hands if you knew that there
is a ban in five states in India on sex
ed today so here’s what we do know one
out of every five adolescents in the
world today is an Indian there are 253
million adolescents in India who are all
under 15 years of age
and for the majority of young people
including you and me many who have sex
for the first time in India have it
unprotected and for most girls in India
the first time they have sex it is not
with their consent one study a
government study showed that more than
50% of children in India are sexually
abused we also know and this is public
data that 70% of young women in India
don’t know that a male condom can just
be used once
despite abortion being legal in India
for many years a woman in India dies
every two hours because an abortion goes
wrong and why is it as a culture that we
are more comfortable seeing two men
whole guns than hold hands so rationally
sex education should be legal there’s a
case for it so I spent the next eight
years working with governments learning
how is it that a young person in India
can travel all the way to the u.s. to
the Congress to testify to their
government but had no idea how to access
and talk to her own government back home
I looked at the UN to try and see how
India negotiates these agreements who’s
deciding what India should commit to who
sits in the chair in those ministries
and decides how much money goes into
which policy line into which budget and
I learned that policy is actually a
platform that can unite young people how
does a government organize to include us
if we start asking questions can we
understand our rights and can we make
the system stronger if we ask more
questions can we make the system more
accountable to us for the decisions it
takes so that the next time I ask how
many of you know that sex education is
banned in five states in India more than
five people in the audience raised their
hands
what questions you ask in life and whom
you ask them for is a crucial decision
you make at every single point and the
only thing I’ve really learnt in the
work that I’ve done is that your silence
is not your consent and your voice is
really speaking one of the most powerful
tools you’ll ever have it doesn’t have
to be for sex ed that’s as a musician
strangely what I landed up advocating
for for you it could be something
completely different it’s when you speak
out in a country where 253 million
people are people who constitute your
age group that you start insuring for
governments that may be insuring
people’s human rights is really good
economics and here’s why young people in
India constitute the largest voting base
and any government you elect into power
will respond to the priorities that you
hold them accountable to so what
happened with the organization I started
it kind of grew we went from six and a
half thousand people in Delhi to four
hundred and fifty thousand young people
across 18 states in India we grew from
India to work in South Asia we moved to
working in South Asia to work at the UN
and wipey today it’s doing its own thing
and it works in villages and cities in
schools and in slum communities and I
learned a few things in that process
when I am Not Afraid of not being good
enough I begin to understand who I am so
one of the things I did when we became
this big is I quit and I handed space
over to somebody else because it needed
a better leader and I was doing a pretty
terrible job so if we can help young
people to believe in themselves to trust
their skills to follow their passion to
agree to disagree and understand
diversity they will hold space in their
hearts and their minds to transform
their worlds our sustainability actually
depends not on how much we consume but
on our ability to
power with one-another leadership in my
experience is not about the person who
comes first
it’s not about single people who are
brilliant it’s not about the one kid in
school who always got noticed and went
for everything because there are plenty
of us who remain sitting right at the
back never got called for anything and
are doing pretty okay in life leadership
really needs to be about creating shared
spaces and shared roles for people’s
power in communities so we understand
one another because if we don’t
understand one another we will never
want to stand up for one another because
in your lifetime
nobody is accidental nobody is
replaceable there is one you and don’t
let anybody else tell you otherwise
because in this country your voice is
needed thank you
[Applause] you