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THE recent report ‘Attitudes, Anxieties and Aspirations of India’s Youth’ by the CSDS-Lokniti team merits close scrutiny. A sequel to an earlier survey carried out ten years back by the same team, it indicates that notwithstanding dramatic shifts in economy, society and polity, our youth continue to hold and reflect values and attitudes that do not bode well for our health as a peaceful, modern and democratic society. More specifically, the report cautions us against excessive optimism about our much vaunted democratic dividend.
Both Rajiv Gandhi in the mid-1980s and Narendra Modi now, the only two leaders in the last three decades to lead their respective parties to a clear majority in Parliament, did so in substantial measure by stoking and building upon aspirations amongst our youth. Failure to adequately respond to these heightened expectations can generate serious tensions, as we saw in the case of Rajiv Gandhi. The recent spate of agitations on various university campuses, as also the growing demand for ‘reservations’ by better off dominant caste groups, is clear testimony to the precarious and uncertain lives that thousands of young Indians are leading.
Unsurprisingly, the survey foregrounds ‘anxiety with respect to jobs’ as among the top five anxieties of the youth irrespective of whether they are employed or not. Intriguingly, unlike a decade back when economic growth rates were high and the future appeared full of promise, the current lack of meaningful employment opportunities, more than pushing self-employment is impelling the young to extend their years of education. In addition to increasing the economic costs of waiting, as adequate jobs remain a mirage, this fuels a rage that our extant growth strategy has no response to.
More disturbing is ‘the streak of illiberalism’ that one notices with respect to opinions on social and political issues, as also with respect to some of their practices. Our youth while becoming outwardly modern in their appearance and consumption habits, simultaneously reflect a troubling inclination towards intolerance and conservatism. Clearly, unlike what many social theorists of modernization claim, an increase in years of schooling, rising incomes and higher consumption, urbanization, greater ease with modern technology and so on, does not, by itself, make for a populace marked by greater preponderance towards sociality.
More than half of those surveyed, men and women, hold patriarchal and misogynist views – women should not work after marriage, wives should always listen to their husbands, men invariably make better leaders than women. Even as the proportion of self-arranged marriages has gone up, as has the age of marriage, there is little support for inter-caste or inter-faith marriage. And, no surprise, same sex relationships remain a strong no-no. On this grid, at least, even our educated, urban youth have still to clearly distance themselves from a khap panchayat mentality.
More disturbing, despite decades of promoting ‘scientific temper’ and the foregrounding of reason over faith, a majority continues to hold a contrary view, unequivocally stating that if forced to choose between scientific propositions and faith-based pronouncements, they would rather believe the latter, a tendency commonly reflected in the public discourse in the ongoing controversies over the cow, or Ram janmabhoomi, to cite a few. Worse, levels of education do not seem to significantly dilute our deeply held prejudices, further bolstered by the utterances of our community/faith leaders and media. Hardly surprising, as the recent ‘State of Democracy in South Asia’ report reveals, the level of trust in religious leaders and institutions has significantly increased, even as trust in democratic, electoral institutions and leaders continues to decline.
What then are we to make of these trends? Is it, as is often argued, that these social and political trends are reflective of a larger, global tendency affecting many countries, what author Pankaj Mishra characterizes as a ‘revolt against reason’ and western modernity, a rejection of policies promoting aggressive secularism and economic globalization which seem to only generate greater inequality and fuel anxiety about the place of the individual and collective self in a rapidly transforming world. Possibly, this may also, in part, explain the growing fascination with and support for strong/ authoritarian leaders with a marked illiberal streak.
Whatever the reason, this raises the bar for the kind of political and social leadership, multicultural, pluralistic societies need to help us navigate these charged times. Unfortunately, our current leadership seems more keen to instrumentally deploy these fears and anxieties in an effort to consolidate political power, neglecting in the process the critical role of political and social education. Unmediated by any concern to foreground respect for and equality of the ‘social other’, the search for coherence can easily turn toxic, leading us into a prolonged phase of social strife.
Harsh Sethi