5 Questions with Yangthy Imchen- YouTuber and PhD scholar in Sussex, U.K

I met Bendangyangerla Imchen (Yangthy) while she was working as State Assistant coordinator at Church’s Auxiliary for Social Action (CASA) – a non-religious Indian development organisation based in Chennai. With her help we could kick start CASA’s project in Longleng, Nagaland. God fearing, always pro-active, ambitious, positive and a go-getter, Yangthy had some qualities few Naga youth possess. She has done her Masters in Social Work from the prestigious Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) and is currently doing her PhD studies on the project titled “An exploration on gender gap in political participation of Naga women: Challenges and prospects” at the University of Sussex, U.K.

In many ways Yangthy personifies ‘the modern, sophisticated yet traditional’ Naga youth. Thousands of miles away, she still tries to do her bit for folks back home through her YouTube channel ‘ThePurplePage’. Through these 5 questions, we try to understand a young professional Naga’s mind, their concerns, their worldview, challenges – and try to learn.

Today, young Nagas have lots of capabilities and potential to do well – more than where we are today. But the problem lies in the constricted mindset that never thinks beyond the boundary or out of the box. There are lots of domains that our young Nagas need to meticulously look into – but to mention few – western culture and technology is taking away the reality we are living today. Culture is flying at its best but the mentality and the civilization are still crawling at the slowest pace. We are so good at imitating other’s culture but we forget to live in reality. Technology is taking over our lives and today everyone knows how to use internet but we lack using it to our advantage. We are letting technology rule our life and thus many of our youths are slave to technology. We should learn to take over technology and control it and be the master of it and use it to our best advantage.

Secondly, we dream very high which is good but when we encounter failure we give up very easily. Success cannot be achieved easily by everyone. We try comparing ourselves with the best competitor and try to act like one having high hopes and losing oneself in figments but once we hit the reality – that’s when we lose our hopes and that’s when our dream comes to an end.

Thirdly, we young Nagas are overpowered by fears; we are lazy and are ego driven slackers at the same time. We fail to take risk in life but we want to wear the best clothes, eat the best food and work at the best company with a highly regarded job and that is the reason why unemployment is rampant among young Nagas. We fail to figure out our own skills and lack so call ‘dignity of labour’ and we try to run after the job offered by someone because we love spoon feeding rather than developing a self-reliant job and live an independent life.

When I first applied for this particular scholarship it was through the help of someone but I got back the response with a big letter ‘Rejected- Not Eligible for this Scholarship’. Then I realized that I applied for SC category and not ST. I was just blindly following others with no proper self research. Later, I reapplied for ST category and passed the screening and was called for interview with panel of seven interviewers. Luckily I was still pursuing my Masters during the whole process so I didn’t waste time or took any gap for the reapplication of the scholarship. Right after my graduation I got the scholarship for my PhD studies.

The whole process for scholarship was not easy of course. Talking about getting into the university – I spent so many days and nights browsing and looking for the best university for the area of study that I want to pursue. It was a long process and one have to overcome tons of obstacles and also there were times I felt like giving up but I never let that take over my ambition and goal. In short ‘I never gave up till I got to the point where I want to be’.

Of Course, there are many opportunities abroad for higher studies in all disciplines which young Naga should explore and to name few – which today – we need to give prior importance are like Arts and humanities, business administration, Marketing and Advertising, Global health, Travel and Tourism, International relation, Manufacturing engineering, Cell biology and Social Anthropology and Criminology. But the road is not easy, one need to be ready to take up all the challenges and also our government should be able to open up job opportunities for every disciplines so that we will see the development in both input and output.

I am just entering the technology world as a novice with very limited skills. Whilst, there were many reasons why I started this channel. The first intention was to provide platform to those people who would love to share their story or experiences so that people get inspired or relate to or learn something. So probably it was a knowledge based and social awareness kind of approach. One reason is because I never came across any Naga channel that provide information for us Nagas (to be specific) about the real experience of people and their culture around the world.

Most of the news articles and sources in the internet are vague and forged and likewise we hardly get time to update with news or articles globally and of course to be more realistic most of our young people today love watching youtube videos rather than reading articles, so I thought why not help our youths educate and gain some knowledge and learn about other people’s culture rather than being an ethnocentric and also share some facts and help with every possible way I can and learn from each other. I remember, as I grew up there was no one to guide me through all this knowledge though I was so enthusiastic about it. So I thought by creating this channel it will be a great platform to help people like me who are in dilemma about so many aspects in life.

Among many, some of the good practices that I have observed in British education system are:
a. Skill oriented curriculum – where the children at school level practice employable skills, generic skills, and vocational skills.
b. Structural framework of the school or university system are flexible and the systems are loosened where education is fun to pursue, teachers understands how to teach better, what to teach and when to teach and also flexible relationship where student can progress with their own capacity and capability with the time they have in their hands.
c. Varieties of programmes made available to the students and stopping mandatory subjects at certain point of stage by allowing student to choose programmes or subject as per their own interest.
d. Freedom of speech for the students and encourage to share their opinion and open discussion without passing negative comments and also avoid hierarchy between the teacher and student.
e. Practice of submitting assignments and papers online from elementary school and get adapted to technology oriented study system so that during sudden pandemic like COVID-19 , online learning will be smooth and effective.
f. Innovative education system as per the aspiration and the needs of the students and access to high quality support, wide range of extra-curricular opportunities, strong welfare support, and not based on normal traditional schedule of read- write exam and get promoted. It should be beyond just reading and writing.
g. Yearly inspection that covers the quality of the curriculum, the quality of teaching and learning, spiritual, moral, cultural and social development of the students, their health, welfare and safety and the school’s complaints procedures.

Like any other people all over the world even British people were devastated over the sudden attack of virus and the rapid spread all over UK. But I should say, if I have to make a comparison with India, there was less panicking here and people were less serious about it. Maybe that can be one reason why the cases shot up so high. But the response of universities and schools were quick and it was moved to online learning model smoothly without affecting the academic term or courses. Moreover the lockdown here is not as stringent as it is in India. People are allowed to go out for exercise or walking or cycling but only with their family members and even for groceries by maintaining social distancing without time constraint which was somehow a good strategy because in that way people do not rush out at a given hour and get exposed or become more vulnerable.

Also facility like online delivery (grocery, commodities etc) has helped people to avoid going out unless it is necessary. Also Scheme like Self-employed income support scheme (SEISS) was announced offering coronavirus job retention scheme for self-employed workers which pays 80% of employed worker’s wages up to £2,500 a month and that is around Rs.23 lakhs. The government also set a target of 100,000 COVID test per day in order to make early estimates about what percentage of the population might have had the virus.