A generational shift is under way in India with half of the population under 24. How the 150m first-time voters cast their ballot will dictate the future
Jason Burke in Delhi
theguardian.com, Monday 7 April 2014
Vijay Kumar is preparing for his India civil service exam, alongside 500,000 other hopefuls. Photograph: Sami Siva for the Guardian
There is not much of a view from Vijay Kumar's home near Shadipur depot, west Delhi. He lives in one of the most deprived slums in the Indian capital, in a square mile of narrow lanes, teetering brick tenement homes and open sewers shared by 15,000 people. Yet Kumar's ambitions have never been restricted by his circumstances.
Kumar, 22, is studying for exams for entry to the prestigious Indian Administrative Service – at least when there is power to run a light in the two rooms he shares with his parents and siblings. There are only 4,500 of these elite bureaucrats, and just a hundred or so new recruits each year. Kumar will be among up to 500,000 candidates.
"I want to be in the system and from within do something for my community and for my country," he says. "To change things you need power. I am not interested in money but in doing something for India. This is the responsibility of my generation."
Over the next six weeks more than half a billion Indians will go to 930,000 polling stations in the 16th general election since the country won independence from Britain in 1947. The exact impact of the 120 million first-time voters expected to cast their ballots is hotly debated. What is undisputed is that Kumar's generation will decide their nation's future.
First there are the sheer demographics: a third of the population is under 15, more than half under 24; every third person in an Indian city today is between 15 and 32; the median age in India is 27; around 150 million people are eligible to vote for the first time in the coming polls.
Then there is the wider story of present-day India. The powerful growth that boosted incomes and significantly reduced poverty has faltered in recent years. Traditional values and customs have given way to a new uncertainty. Much is changing, and the process of transition is traumatic for millions. India's youth could be a "demographic dividend", ensuring stability and prosperity for decades to come – or a disaster, condemning the country to years of deep social tensions, drift and fear.
For if, as a recent report by the United Nations(PDF) commented, if there is a "vibrancy" among young people, there is great anger too.
In part, this is provoked by the huge challenges that Kumar and people like him face in their search for a better life, and for a better life for others.
Students wait to collect their degrees at Delhi University. Graduate unemployment remains high, fuelling anger among many students Photograph: Hindustan Times/Getty Images
Educational institutions are grossly over-subscribed and hugely under-resourced. Worse, perhaps, there is little guarantee of satisfactory employment whatever the investment of time and money. According to Indian government data, although growth averaged 8.7% from 2005 to 2010, only 1m jobs were created, leaving 59 million new entrants on to the labour market with nothing.
That is what worries Saklan Shukla, who spends six hours on a crowded bus every day to get to his college in Delhi and study computer science.
"The biggest problem is there are no graduate jobs. And I have to travel so far to find a good college that is affordable," the 19-year-old said.
Graduate unemployment can touch 30% for women in rural areas. Even for men in towns, it is at least 17%. Javed Khan, from the north-western city of Meerut, described the "tension in the mind" that results.
"A good job is a very hard thing to have. Maybe a government job is best. But for that you need to be knowing someone," said Khan, 20.
In the cities or towns, such stress is exacerbated by the failure of authorities to provide even basic public services. Power cuts – such as those that stop Kumar studying in Shadipur – are common. Potable water is rare. Food prices are rising, so are rents. Bribes have to be paid for school and college places, to the police, to petty officials to ensure they perform basic administrative tasks, even for hospital beds. If you have connections – to a doctor, a headteacher, a top bureaucrat, a police officer or, best of all, a politician – life can be much easier. But without it is a struggle.
"Costs and population have gone up. This nation has been pulled down. Then there is so much corruption," said Mukesh Verma, 25, who manages a clothes shop in a new shopping centre that recently opened in Meerut.
Indian students take part in a candle-light vigil at Jantar Mantar mark the first anniversary of the fatal Delhi gang rape of a 23-year-old woman. Photograph: Hindustan Times/Hindustan Times via Getty Images
There is also violence. As elsewhere in the world, 18- to 25-year-olds in India are disproportionate victims, and perpetrators, of violence. So-called "honour killing" does not just involve parents, but siblings too. "There's a limit to how much you can take. I'd do the same to my sister," Rohit, 17, said.
Young women living more independent lives than their mothers suffer systematic sexual harassment, and sometimes assault, in public and, increasingly, in the workplace.
But young people say that theirs is a generation no longer prepared to accept their circumstances – and that alone is a major change. "I know hate is a strong word. But I hate people who sit at home and in an office and complain about the country. If we want change, then action is the only way forward," said Palak Muchhal, a 21-year-old from Indore in Madhya Pradesh.
Muchhal, a professional singer who has worked on major Bollywood hits, has raised more than 37m rupees (£400,000) to save the lives of more than 550 children with heart ailments.
"I have a gift and I want to use it for the betterment of people around me. I feel blessed," she says.
Others, too – from a young Kashmiri woman who invented an Android app that acts as a directory of all the important and often unobtainable government numbers in the state, to a commerce student who started an NGO connecting donors and charities – are active in guiding the vast transformation of this varied and complex country.
Voters line up in Assam, India. Photograph: UB Photos/Barcroft India
There are people such as Jason Temasfieldt, a former event organiser who launched a campaign against harassment of women in India's commercial capital of Mumbai after his cousin was stabbed to death while intervening to try to protect a female friend. The 26-year-old said the tragedy made him realise he could "no longer turn his back on people in trouble" and needed to get involved himself through social activism.
"I'm not alone. There's been a tremendous change in recent years. Once we were not bothered by what is happening around us. Now we are and I can see some big change that is going to come in the future," Temasfieldt said.
Even in the slum that was home to the men who gangraped and murdered a 23-year-old physiotherapist in Delhi in 2012 – an event that prompted tens of thousands of young people to take to the streets – young people have high expectations of life. Young women talk about being fashion designers, doctors and scientists. Their male counterparts are less ambitious, or perhaps more realistic, but still hope for something better.
Photograph: Asoka Raina
"I could start as a rickshaw driver, like my dad, but then invest my savings and start a taxi business. Eventually, if I work hard, I can move out of here and be earning some real wealth," said Rakesh Singh, 21.
Perhaps the greatest challenge for India's often elderly policymakers lies in managing expectations .
B Narayanaswamy, of Ipsos Indica, a leading local market research company, traces four generational shifts since India gained its independence in 1947. In the early 1950s, patriotism and self-sacrifice were dominant as values, with young people wanting to be teachers. Twenty years later, after the 1971 war with Pakistan and with the autocratic Indira Gandhi committed to a socialist programme, the most popular professions were in the military. By the early 1990s, there came an identity-based reaction to a globalisation both channelled and encouraged by a newly resurgent Hindu nationalist ideology. Finally, today, values are increasingly determined by urbanisation.
"The new sets of beliefs and behaviours are all urban. The jobs and the prospects are to be found in cities. There's a big shift away from hierarchy, and feudal mindsets. Success is defined in economic terms – a salary, a car, a mobile. It's more about a hand-up than a handout," said Narayanaswamy.
Schoolchildren celebrate Independence Day. One-third of the population is aged under 15 Photograph: Dinodia/Corbis
Many have pointed out that this is a generation for which doctrinaire arguments pitting socialism against capitalism, the developing world against the west or even events such as the destruction of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, in 1991 have little, or at least less, relevance.
Pratap Bhanu Mehta, president of the New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research thinktank, has argued that it is unlikely that young voters would vote as a bloc.
"A lot of the old historical examples by which the parties used to discredit each other, probably, for good or bad, no longer have any resonance. Memories of the Emergency [a period of unrest in the mid-70s], 1984 [anti-Sikh riots], all of that, which in a sense defined that ideological space, perhaps even around secularism and so forth, are not very big for these kids," Mehta told the local Mint newspaper.
This explains why senior Bharatiya Janata party officials believe that their party's message of economic reform and decisive leadership will appeal to a widespread desire for both solutions and "empowerment". Congress party strategists say that their campaign leader Rahul Gandhi's relative youth – the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty is 43 – and their tradition of "pluralist secularism" will win over young people. Many young people are expected to vote for the new Aam Aadmi party, formed in 2012 to combat corruption and present a new transparent, accountable alternative to the established political groups.
"They are clean people," said Ajay Bedi, a 24-year-old taxi driver from the northern state of Himachal Pradesh, who works in Delhi to support his family who live, as is usually the case, "back in the village", hundreds of miles away.
Pupils pictured after taking their English language paper in Gurgaon, India. Photograph: Hindustan Times/Hindustan Times via Getty Images
The election commission – which has said it hopes to see a turnout of more than 70% in the forthcoming polls – has been making an effort to motivate the young to vote.
In the capital, registered voters have increased in four months from 11.9 million to 12.7 million with roughly 42% of the newly enrolled voters in the 18-19 age group.
Some experts downplay the likelihood of any "youth revolution".
"There are some signs of a greater interest in politics compared with the past, but it's marginal. There's a lot of euphoria but any difference from the last election is likely to be purely demographic," Professor Sanjay Kumar, of the Centre for Developing Societies, Delhi, said. "At the very least there appears to be no sign of a lot of tension. That gives hope."
Young graduate Vijay Kumar Photograph: Sami Siva for the Guardian
Vijay Kumar, the aspirant elite bureaucrat from the Shadipur slum, went to a local government school and taught himself English from borrowed books. He is now a qualified engineer. Both his father, a carpenter, and his mother, a cleaner, are "more or less" literate though very poor. His grandparents are almost destitute peasant farmers in remote rural areas of the poor northern state of Bihar. Hundreds of millions of Indians have followed a path similar to that of Kumar over less than three decades.
"We taught my grandparents how to sign their names and read a bit. It was difficult. But most of the important things in life are hard work," Kumar said.
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