Struggles of the Indian youth
For the last five years or so, the government of India has been priding itself over the power of its country’s youth.
“We have the largest population of youth”, boasted the PM in his speech once.
Usually, when someone is revered so much, they gain power on the account of undertaking certain responsibilities. But in India, the responsibilities seem to be increasing continuously, while the power remains absent for the most part. It’s not all bad here of course. We still enjoy a budding startup industry and a great output of undergraduates ready to join the workforce, but the struggles of everyday life mostly remain unsolved.
(The problems I am about to outline are coming from the point of view of a male millennial. Although I will try to keep my depiction as gender neutral as possible, bias of some kind is bound to be there. I personally believe that females go through tougher lives than males in most areas. So, just assume all the problems I depict to be harder on women than men).
The stigma associate with love
To a person judging India from the output of it’s commercially successful movies and songs, India might seem as a country where love is given a lot of importance. After all, our Bollywood films always feature exotic locations with the couple dancing to the tunes of a romantic song while other people join in with their cheesy steps.
Alas! the reality cannot be far from real. India has the highest number of arrange marriages ever because parents don’t trust their children enough to make the right choice. This leads to unsatisfactory relationships. Couple that with the stigma around divorce, and you have made marriage just a means to an end. The ‘end’ here is to be considered “successful” in society. Many relationships do not have the romantic flair which is essential for a happy married life. The relationship does feature a child though, which is supposed to be a sign of a healthy married life.
In India alone, arranged marriages make up 90% of all marital unions with a divorce rate of just 1.1%.
— newidea.com
Young couples are watched upon with scornful eyes.
A violent group named ‘Bajrang Dal’ exists in some parts of the country. They freely go around punishing (and often beating the man in the relationship) young couples in public in the name of “protecting the Indian culture”.
Couples who seem to be married can be expected to show a proof of their marriage or face harassment if they fail to do so. This problem has just been dormant rather than absent. The only places with better conditions are urban cities, in the sense that they do not have frequent occurrences of violence against the youth. The average youth still has to “maintain discipline”. A couple is viewed as uncivilized and destroyer of the innocence of a place. It is continuously the center of attention for the passerby and have to be on the constant lookout for a relative who might gossip about you to your parents and society.
One who is in a relationship (at a college-going age) is viewed with the eye of a failure by many, including their own parents if they (the parents) aren’t open-minded. The person is compared to an imaginary shadow of themselves who might have made a career had they not indulged in such “shameful practices”. The society isn’t forgiving towards young couples and will happily blame them for destroying Indian culture, although ours Gods and Goddesses themselves were usually deeply in love with each other.
Love and romance in India is only worshiped in Bollywood. Old people will happily blast the “Top 100 Love songs of the Golden era” on their speakers but fail to understand its meaning. Due to this, the youth isn’t always able to live out to the fullest potential that love has to offer as they are crippled with the weight of the society’s judgement.
The never-ending rat race
Pass your 10th boards, then you will have an amazing life.
Pass the 12th boards….
Pass this entrance exam…..
Get this college and your life is set.
Interview at this company and you’ve got the best career
Get promoted to this position and you will have accomplished everything
Marry well and that’s it
Settle in this place it’s better….
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The race in India is always on. To every young Indian reading this, chance are that it is never going to end. This condition is to be expected from an overpopulated country.
But no matter what the reason is, the stress on a person’s brain throughout their lifetime is huge and stay for a long duration of their life. Schooling in India is very marks (grade) — centric. You have to score in top 10% of your class or you are already failing. The ‘passing marks' threshold is just for making things simpler. It’s in the minds of people where the result are actually declared. Marks (grades) are undoubtedly important, but here in India they are treated as the paramount factor for your success. This puts incomprehensible stress on a young student who cannot grasp the importance of numbers before reaching emotional maturity.
Post — school life is another mess. for students choosing engineering, IIT is the premiere engineering institute in India. It offers 10k seats. The number of people applying for them are 20 lakhs ( 2 million ). You can already understand the level of competition by now. The time we get for studying are 2 years. The syllabus is vast. In fact it is so vast that people give up studying for 11th and 12th grades die to which the IITs had to pass a new rule which stated that the marks of 12th grade will also be given importance when considering the student for a seat. The syllabus is still vast enough for people to actually start studying for the IIT exam in 6th or 8th grade. These types of courses are popularly known as ‘foundation courses’. Imagine a child in 6th grade already studying a syllabus studied by graduates and postgraduates.
The studies for medical aspirants follow a similar course (and a longer course as well) with almost the same amount of competition and even more stressful jobs await them because of overpopulation.
Degrees in arts and art-related subjects isn’t considered respectful.
If this doesn’t prove to you how stressful and corrosive this culture in India can be then nothing will.
People often ask,
“Where is the creativity in India if there are so many intellectuals ?”.
I used to ask the same question. I think the answer is that, when people are so fearfully and frantically preparing for the immediate next step of their life, how can they zoom out efficiently to look at the bigger picture, and see what their abilities can achieve.
We are too afraid to lift our heads up and look about, because we worry that our worth will lessen if we take even a tiny moment to breathe in this cut-throat competition.
Mental health is a secret
Experts: “You need to speak up about your mental health”
Indians: “We don’t do that here”
India has yet to realize the importance of mental health. Good therapy in India costs more than many can afford to pay. The social stigma around mental health is beginning to clear up in the younger generation, but nothing can be done unless the elders, the ones who run the institutions, accept its importance. Efforts are continuously being made by activists and NGOs but progress cannot be made if the general public itself does not realize what’s wrong.
Mental health cannot be discussed easily with family either. The kind of parenting predominant in India doesn’t pose a picture of friendly parents who are supportive in every manner. This all is beginning to change, albeit slowly. It will still take a lot of time to bring up affordable clinics for people struggling with issues relating to mental health.
For now, people keep their problems to themselves. Hidden from the world. Especially hidden from their family due to lack of mutual understanding.
Creative work is just a hobby
Be good at art, writing, dancing, singing, designing but studies are paramount. This is the viewpoint while we are in school and high school. Things change when we are old enough to take things into our own hands and produce content by ourselves. The funny thing is that people will expect children to be competitive and win awards in these fields, but will still treat them as a hobby and not a career opportunity. If you get too good at it then just….. be happy and study ‘real subjects’.
No matter how talented you are, when it comes to making a career out of something, you need to develop skills that can match a professional. When children are told to be less serious with their “hobbies”, they lose the valuable time which they could be using to learn from teachers and polish their skills.
The artistic side is often suppressed. Bachelors degree in Arts is viewed as a vacation. India has developed many premier institutes for designing, music, arts and things have taken a turn for the better, but the situation at homes still needs to improve. Many parents do encourage their children’s artistic mastery, but only few of them actively help achieve it.
Widespread unemployment
(My knowledge in this topic is only limited to the IT sector)
India’s youth unemployment rate has been steadily climbing
This shouldn’t come as a surprise when talking about an overpopulated nation. India produces 20 lakh engineers each year alone, while good jobs are relatively scarce. Many employers, at least in the technical field, do not understand the technologies very well and, to be fair, there is nothing wrong with it if they are in a management role, but they expect everyone to use the latest technique in market even if their job does not require it. This puts the engineers at a disadvantage because new technologies, in web and application development fields, are being continuously created and it is neither required nor useful to be good at all of them. Since everyone has to learn the same stuff, everyone competes for the same job.
One obvious solution is to introduce new businesses which explore a variety of different fields instead of “following the market”. This is made tough by the errant GDP of India.
Another source for a graphical representation of India’s GDP record.
But there is good news as well :
Since the start of the 21st century, annual average GDP growth has been 6% to 7%,[45] and from 2014 to 2018, India was the world’s fastest growing major economy, surpassing China.[49][50] Historically, India was the largest economy in the world for most of the two millennia from the 1st until 19th century.
- Wikipedia
The progress of startups is slow since India is a developing nation, but I think this area can improve faster than the others I mentioned. The only issue is that if population is not controlled, then there will always be approximately the same number of unemployed people in the market.
Think different. But not too different.
The emphasis on traditions in this country is crazy. No matter how restrictive some traditions are, or how biased they are in terms of gender, you are expected to follow. Quite often, violent actions have been taken against people who tried to shun some traditions and justice in these cases is still rare. Many people in India ( literate as well as illiterate) still follow the cast system.
An incident took place two days ago in the state of Karnataka,in which a person of a lower caste was brutally beaten by a mob of upper caste people because the victim had touched the motorbike of one of the culprits.
Any way of thinking that upsets the senior members of society are opposed by those people without even looking at the facts or the expected results.
“NEW IDEAS BAD !”
Conclusion
The youth has been given the responsibility of leading the country to a brighter future. But they can only work in a way that is to the liking of the elders. Take a different path and we are done with you. We feel suffocated but are still expected to work for the benefit of the one holding the bag on our head. Many people, including me, plan on leaving the country for higher studies just to catch a breath. The wild corruption, overpopulation, indiscipline and lack of civic sense makes it harder to create startups and/or live independently. Which is another reason why foreign lands are so attractive to us.
Narratives are being constructed by the government around the responsibilities of the youth towards their nation. You have to work for your country, but don’t expect it to work for you. You do what we expect or need from you, and in return we will stay the same. India, at present, is not an incubator of skilled youth but of skilled robots. Do not question much and you will prosper. Keep your new ways to yourself if they are too different from our culture. We do not need your progressive thoughts because they scare us. Welcome to India.
I completely understand that this article will provide a very negative view of India to someone reading about India for the first time. So let me reassure some of my audience. India is much more developed than many people think it is. Problems exists in every country. If anyone is looking to travel to and in India then you will have an amazing experience. ,You are most welcome. We will be pleased to have you as our guest. If you want to stay in India temporarily or even work here forever, it is more or less a satisfactory experience unless you are of a questioning nature. India has a lot to improve if it wants to become an attractive land for inquisitive souls. People who question will often feel trapped in an immovable vehicle. Progress is slow but I hope we make it.
Namaste.
