http://www.financialexpress.com/news/Column---India-s-youth-have-moved-on/698748/Column : India's youth have moved on
Shailesh Dobhal
Posted online: 2010-10-18 22:53:05+05:30
The subdued, mature response by all manner of people and organisations
to the recent Lucknow High Court verdict on the six-decade old
Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute has been rightly read by political
commentators and media pundits alike as sign of a new India's desire
to move beyond divisive politics to more progressive, development-led
agendas.
And it seems the desire to 'move on' has been particularly strong with
India's young population for some time now. The country's young
demographics, over 65% of the population under the age of 35, is our
biggest calling card, not just in terms of achieving the much avowed
global economic stardom, but critically the nature of polity that we
ultimately become.
Let's look at some proxy indicators. A massive survey of India's youth
last year by the National Council of Applied Economic Research for
National Book Trust throws of some very interesting findings. The
survey takes the National Youth Policy's definition of 13-35 years as
youth. The survey, undertaken as part of the National Youth Readership
Survey 2009, interviewed over 3,11,431 youth in 432 villages and 199
cities/towns, the biggest by any survey so far. The survey results are
for literate youth, who constitute around three-fourths of 459 million
youth in the country.
Lest we assume that we're now a country of atheists or 'non-religious'
young people, the survey says that a overwhelming proportion, over
three-fourths, of India's literate youth (333 million) said they were
religious, with the count of atheists at 2% and non-religious at 15%.
These numbers are roughly similar across gender, faith, cities and
villages and level of education.
But it seems being 'personally religious' (the specific question was
"Irrespective of whether you attend religious services, would you say
you're a religious person?") does in no way come in way of embracing
progressive thoughts and rejecting dogmatism.
Under 1% of literate youth in the country is associated with any
political party as a member, lower than memberships for apolitical
organisations like self-help groups and youth clubs. The study trashes
the 'fairly competitive and intense student politics at the university
and college level', as non-representative of 'the political
orientation of the literate youth in India'. After all, only a third
of all 333 million literate youth in India are students, and less than
one in ten literate youth go to colleges for higher education, so
indeed why should 'students politics' in big cities based colleges be
marker for all youth in the country!
Clearly, Indian youth and not political creatures in the sense of
belonging to one group or the other, or espousing one ideology over
another, but that doesn't mean they're apolitical. Far from it. Over a
third are interested in politics, higher than the proportion that
shows interest in fashion. And a high number (72%) is interested in
news & current affairs making them aware citizens.
A large majority (67%) of literate Indian youth support reservation
for women in Parliament and state assemblies. And around half are
aware of developmental programmes like NREGA and Sarva Shiksha
Abhiyan, pointing to a growing trend towards supporting gender &
economic inclusiveness.
Importantly, even while two-thirds of India's literate youth fall in
the SC/ST/OBC category, the proportion that support the current
caste-based reservation in higher education is under half (47.7%). And
this, even when unemployment remains high (around 10%) amongst
graduate/post-graduate youth. What this points to is a losing traction
for caste-based politics of the Mandal kind that tore through the
country's social fabric in the early 1990s. However, a caveat here is
in order. The NCAER-NBT survey is for a period in time (2009) and we
don't have time series figures to compare it with, 1990-91 for
instance, the year of the anti-Mandal agitation against OBC
reservation. Nonetheless, available anecdotal evidence suggests that
indeed caste-based reservation is losing its potency to rally people,
for or against it.
What is also important to bear in mind is that a large part of
literate Indian youth (75%) still lives in a joint-family, with around
three generations under one roof. With conformism a social behaviour
even with young people in India, undoubtedly, the general
family/elders view has a bearing on the youth's responses and
opinions. In that sense, what the youth of India is articulating here
points to a vastly changed India. And that, in a sense, proves that we
as people are surely moving away from the bitterness, insularity and
parochialism of the past, and for the better.
shailesh.dobhal@expressindia.com
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