The 2014 Lok Sabha elections saw the involvement of India’s youth like nothing you’ve seen prior. These were debating inside classrooms, sitting for dharnas on the street, having interactions in offices and on social media marketing. The election in 2014 noticed 150 million young voters—and the highest number of first-time voters in India.

And yet, the common age of our parliamentarians is sixty-three. Our leaders are nearly four decades older than the common twenty-five-year-old.

In The Adolescent and the Restless, Gurmehar Kaur, pupil activist and writer of Small Acts of Freedom, follows the journeys of eight youth leaders, their aspirations for the country’s youth, their aspirations for themselves and, most of all, their aspirations for the nation. She explores whether their politics just mimics that of the old party leaders or if indeed they possess the ideas, passion and motivation of the demographic they represent.