India's Modern Day Youth Identity Crisis
A Conflicting Self-image is Disempowering India's Young Generation
Youth of India are facing a time of identity crisis. They are split among their status groups, income groups, and generation groups among others. They are fraught with anxiety over their conflicting image. They have a desire to uphold their Indian traditions, while similarly attempting to keep up with, or advance beyond, the West. However, desires, behaviours and attitudes are so varied amongst Indian youth that it would be difficult to indicate a single direction this group might take.
Haves and Have-nots
New policies are cultivating growing divisions among young people, empowering some and victimising others; the division is most pronounced among consumption levels. This division between the haves and the have-nots is often ignored in discussion of India’s youth, which mostly focus on India’s economically prosperous adolescent generation.
The have-not youths are deeply affected by the poverty, which affects their ability to organise and the content of their protest. The latter group comprises the majority of Indian youth, with the haves only numbering around 16 million. Both groups are exposed to mass media advertising, and the have-nots are subjected to unsatisfiable cravings that lead to violence, crime, and self-destructive behaviours like taking drugs. Since the two sides have differing demands and methods by which they make those demands, organising amongst a coherent youth ‘whole’ is difficult.
Indian Youth Consumed by Desire
Consumerism, or the desire to consume, is rampant among Indian youth. Indeed, the youth market (14-25 years) is the largest consumer segment in India. Indian youth currently hold a massive $2.8 billion in discretionary income.
Yet the relationship between consumption and Indian youth is complex, some are prominent consumers and strongly associate consumption with their own identity, while other young people are minimal or non-consumers due to force, circumstance, or choice. Yet high rates of economic growth are a part of an Indian youth’s surroundings, whether or not they partake.
Despite their high hand in the growing economy, there has been a failure by the GoI to equitably deliver the fruits of development. This has drastically affected youth identities. Youth are frustrated that they are contributing economically to their country’s growth, but not given a say in the form this growth should take, hence they may feel they have unfulfilled political identities. Even more frustrated are the youth without purchasing power or political influence who feel even more powerless.
The Media's Effect on Adolescents in India
Mass media is another aspect drastically affecting youth identity in India. India is feeling the effects of a television culture shock. A Times of India article from June 20, 1979, states:
"The effects that we can already see—the depressing mental climate of our children and youth—are sufficiently frightening…There is no vitality around these young men; only an odour of talc and perfume. No manly gait, but a mincing feminine step forced on by elevator shoes. Unfortunately, the young girls are no better."
Melissa Butcher, in her book Transnational Television, Cultural Identity and Change: When Star came to India, criticised satellite television for creating a generation of zombie-like youth who were increasingly materialistic, disinterested in family ties, and individualistic.
According to Butcher, it is possible that even the have-not youths, though not common purchasers of these products, come to identify with them simply through their desire for them. Where in the past, national identity was bound in opposition to the West, television has played a large role in creating the idea of a pan-global shared youth culture. It has become a constructed cultural space that links Indian youth with their global counterparts.
The media is also largely thought to be contributing to the objectification of Indian youth, directing them towards a facade of being cool, young and happening.
Identifying with the West
Young people from more closed social spaces (such as urban bastis) felt a commonality with an image of a group of young people from the United States. For them it indicated ‘all friends together’ and ‘unity’. However, the sense of comradeship in the image has an aspirational quality to it. The depiction of peer bonding and freedom is in contrast to their lived experience set by family and community.
Indian youth seem to want the best of both worlds; they want to see themselves as similar to their Western counterparts, but they also want to retain a certain ‘Indianness’. This cultural hybridity is reflective of a dual youth identity. It maintains the cultural identity of the nation’s youth while allowing them to feel a sense of global youth culture across borders.
Indian youth are split between east and west
|
What do you think about this article?
Comments
More in Politics & Society
Latest Articles