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Posted at YouthKiAwaaz on June 26, 2011 in Youth Trends 0 Comments
A few days back we asked our Facebook community about their thoughts on whether they thought that movies like FALTU, Shaitan, Always Kabhi Kabhi, have represented the youth correctly or not. Here are some of the interesting responses: Chandwani Lalit: Commercially they are correct. Gagan Gill: Faltu did. Prathamesh Mulye: The recent youth centric movies are not even closer to what a ambitious youth of worlds fastest developing country would think Rachit Sharma: They are stereotyped depicting only a strata of youth who constitutes not even the half of us. Things are changing rapidly except Bollywood. Sreeja Bhowal: We need more of the hard-hitting variety so that it makes us delve into serious problems of our society more often Surath Bhattacharjee: I think the modern youth is inundated in the stiff competition that the world is presenting them with there is really no place for frivolity 24/7 and a movie released at a time when some colleges are demanding ridiculous cut-offs is surely gonna mold the minds of those who believe that the young age is all about beer and skittles! Kapil Mehta: Not really! These days directors and producers are not repressing what the youth needs-their self-identity Recent hit song- D.K Bose can explain it better than anything else which if sung fluently brings an abuse on tongue I am very peeved to say that our youth is
being distracted by music like munni badnam hue Shila ki javani and movies like Dabang, and many more which have just become a source of making money and not more than that. Ashish Anand: No not even close to that Tripti Singh: Mostly. They touched the upper layer of the over-ambitious, raunchy and Facebook generation but still a lot is yet to be pictured. Susmita Lakra: I too believe that such youth centric movies are distracting the youth who do not have a sense of what is right and what is wrong. Shivangi Mittal: I think we need movies which represent the youth in a more realistic way. There is more to us than drugs, parental pressure, and faltu-ness. Do you agree? Let us know what you think about the topic. Post a comment in the section below.
Even here, many young people are having their first taste of rising prosperity and expectations. One result is that computer literacy and education are eradicating caste barriers. While caste and social position still dominates Indian politics, sociologists predict the rigid lines of the system will continue to ease. Already, urban youth are more concerned with their professional ambition than their caste. ''We are only aware of caste while filling out government forms,'' says Trisha Singh, 23, a Pune law student. ''It's more 'What do you do?' that determines your status.'' In addition, massive computer literacy could do plenty for India's economy. National per capita income is currently $450 per year. But a 10% increase in computer literacy in a single year would push per capita income up to $650, according to Dewang Mehta of Nasscom, India's software industry association. COCKY ATTITUDE. Another driving force of change is TV. Just one year after the 1991 election of former Premier Narasimha Rao ushered in a program of economic liberalization, cable and satellite television became available in 50 million Indian homes. Rupert Murdoch's Star TV, with its news footage from around the globe and soap operas like Santa Barbara gave many Indians their first real look at other worlds. Viacom's MTV and Murdoch's music channel, Channel V, changed the aspirations and values of Indians forever. With its cocky attitude, MTV embodied a take-it-or-leave-it style that appealed to the young. ''The old Brahmanical code of 'lofty thinking and simple living' went out of style, to be replaced by the MTV culture of youth anywhere in the world,'' says Vibha Rishi, marketing director of PepsiCo Inc. India. The cultural impact has been revolutionary. The previous generation, born in the decade following India's independence from British rule on Aug. 15, 1947, grew up shy, obedient, and socialist in the 1960s and '70s. Bombay-born author Salman Rushdie dubbed them Midnight's Children in his famous book. They came of age during hard times: three wars, several famines, rigid protectionism. Consumer choice meant one state-run TV channel, three brands of bath soap, and car models that changed little through the decades. One political party, Congress, was voted into office again and again. How times have changed. To appreciate the generation gap, consider Samarth Moray, 11. The only child of a lawyer father and schoolteacher mother in Bombay, he loves computers and building with Lego sets. His hero is Captain Planet on Ted Turner's Cartoon Network. Like many youngsters, he disdains politicians. ''They act like first-grade kids in Parliament,'' Samarth says. ''I feel ashamed.'' What the new generation does like is money. According to a survey conducted by Coca-Cola (KO), the primary ambition of young Indians from the smallest villages to the largest cities is to ''become rich.'' Young people hope to achieve this goal through enterprise and education. That's a big change. For years, the most highly regarded careers were in civil service, engineering, and medicine. Now, high-paying jobs in high tech and the media are where it's at. Liberalization has created a ''new social contract in which making money is respectable,'' says author Das. Young Indians endorse it heartily. ''India's salvation lies in free enterprise,'' says Vinay Aranha, 22, who illustrates the trend. He works two jobs--selling cars and doing marketing for his family's small business in Pune, near Bombay. Already, high-tech startups are taking off in India. Industry experts put the number at almost two per week over the past two years. Pradeep Kar, 40, founder of two high-tech operations, e-commerce company Planetasia.com and portal Itspace.com in Bangalore, says he has been receiving e-mail from engineering students chafing to be entrepreneurs and seeking his advice. ''That spirit of enterprise will change the face of the Indian economy,'' says Kar. Kiran Nadkarni, managing director of the $55 million
Draper India Fund, says the entrepreneurs he observes are getting younger--from an average age of about 40 previously to about 25 now. Liberalization has created new career models and heroes for India's young. Microsoft Chairman William H. Gates III is especially popular, and so are successful home-grown entrepreneurs like N.R. Narayana Murthy of Infosys Technologies Ltd. (INFY), India's premier software company. Other culture heroes: Indian national cricket team captain Sachin Tendulkar, 25, who is known for his clean image, and MTV video jockey Cyrus Broacha, 28, popular among urban Indian youth for his confidence and selfdeprecating humor. ''Cyrus Broacha's our man,'' says Vinod Makhija, a high school student in Pune. ''He's humble, and he's wacko.'' Icons like Broacha embody this generation's ability to adapt Western influences. ''We are a hybrid,'' says Broacha, who sometimes wears a Gandhi topi, a traditional cap, as well as blue jeans. Embracing globalization has given Indians a new confidence. In fact, Indians feel being Indian is now a badge of honor in world music, fashion, literary, and intellectual circles. ''Even Madonna thinks India is cool,'' says Singh, the Pune law student. ''No one asks us any more if elephants walk the streets. Liberalization has changed all that and given India more exposure internationally.'' MARRY FOR LOVE. Indian youth haven't fully embraced Western ways. Tradition still dictates much of daily life. But progressive influences are everywhere. Take the tradition of arranged marriages, where parents chose children's spouses, often without their consent. Now young people want to marry for love-but also want parents' approval. The younger generation is nationalistic. In a recent survey by ad agency McCann-Erickson Asia-Pacific, Asian youth around the region voted Paris, London, and New York as the ''coolest'' cities. But young Indians voted for Bombay, along with New York. ''India has the best mix of people and cultures you can find,'' says Gaurav Kumar, 16, of Bangalore, India's Silicon Valley. ''We should take the best of both worlds.'' Kumar wants to be an aviation engineer. Along with half his graduating class, he intends to take the tough exam for the Indian Institute of Technology, a system of prestigious, high-tech universities. The most sought-after field: computer science. ''It's almost a religion with young people,'' says Hema Ravichander, head of human resources for Infosys, which gets 280,000 job applicants every year. Private computer training institutes are working to fill the demand. Just in the past three years, the New Delhi-based National Institute of Information Technology (NIIT) and Bombay-based Aptech have expanded their franchises to 2,500 training centers in 300 cities and towns in India. ''These kids have a deep desire to uplift themselves and their families,'' says Rajendra Pawar, who co-founded NIIT in 1981. Companies are reaching out to the computer-literate young. Koshika, the cellular phone service provider in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, India's poorest states, is using young people to develop an e-mail service. The company approached people who operate cellular phones as public services for their villages. It then sold them computers at a hefty discount and taught their children to use the Internet. For a fee, they offer email services. Since most village families have members working in Persian Gulf states, they are starting to use e-mail to communicate, since it is cheaper than a telephone and faster than sending a letter. For the boys of the village, such opportunities are a great incentive for staying home rather than moving to the cities. Bunty Garg, from the town of Punnhana in Uttar Pradesh, was regarded as a ne'er-do-well by his father, who owns the local fabric store. That was until Bunty set up a public cell phone. Bunty, 22, now has seven public phone booths, his own car, and the biggest home in town.
The danger for India is, of course, that the potent mixture of aspirations created by TV, computers, and marketers in the hearts of India's young could overheat, and the social cauldron could boil over. Some researchers also worry about rising aspirations colliding with the realities of Indian poverty. ''The young generation may want more,'' says Indrani Vidyarthi of ORG-MARG, India's premier market research agency. ''But how to get more when there ain't more?'' Indeed, almost 60% of rural Indian households have no electricity. ''How will they run computers?'' asks Rakesh Mohan, director of the National Council for Applied Economic Research in New Delhi. But Mohan may be underestimating the pragmatism and ambition of India's liberalization generation. Young Indians are not pessimistic. ''Our lives are in the fast lane,'' says Bangalore schoolboy Gaurav. ''We can cope; we have to.'' With luck, they'll not only cope--they'll thrive.