India, or Bharat, is one of the youngest countries on this planet, with an average age of 29. Currently, over 650 million Indians are under the age of 25, and 845 million are under 35.1 With such a large workforce, one would expect India to be the immediate next superpower.
There is, of course, a lot of hope about India around the world right now. As an Indian, it feels so exhilarating to witness a time when most of the world looks toward India for growth. India’s rise as a large and responsible world power will be driven by the aspiration, hard work, and values of its young people aged between 15-35.
Taking India to the next level means the economy has to grow at a tremendous pace so that GDP (Gross Domestic Product) becomes at least 10 trillion dollars or more by 2040 (from 3.8 trillion dollars now). The Engine for this growth relies not only on the government policies but more on the aspirations of the young people in the country.
So, what are young people doing in India? What are their aspirations? What is the state of affairs for youth?
The future of the country depends to a large extent on figuring out these questions.
I have no doubt in mind that Indians are way more ambitious today than 10 years back. When I was growing up in the early 2000s, the goal of life for most young people was to secure a job somehow. The concept of creating a product and starting small companies wasn’t popular in those days.
These days, even school kids know about start-ups and alternative career paths rather than just traditional jobs. While there have been many such positive stories about Indian youth in the last decade, Indians still have to go a long way and introspect far more to achieve anything significant on the world platform.
While I am proud to witness the growth of Indian youths over the last one to two decades, I am more willing to discuss the bottlenecks that could derail the future if not changed in due course
Overemphasis of Entrance Exams
There are 195 countries in the world and I can almost bet you would rarely find a country where entrance exams are as popular as in India. Most countries have their own forms of entrance exams, such as Gaokao in China, SAT or GRE in the USA, etc.
In India, the problem is that people overrate entrance exams and there are too many of them. If you search for the world’s top 10 toughest entrance exams, you will find that three to four are from India. While one may think that it is something to be proud of, actually, it is not.
Most countries view entrance exams as a way to test knowledge and determine if students are qualified to pursue a particular course of study. Ultimately, that is ideally the purpose of an entrance exam is to filter out people who are better at something (although it isn’t that straightforward in reality). Unfortunately, in India, people view an entrance exam as something that decides the fate of a student. It is related to one’s position in society, almost related to status. An entrance exam itself creates a hierarchy in society. Those who pass reach higher and those who fail to reach lower in the hierarchy.
Take, for example, UPSC OR IIT-JEE. The first one is for civil service and the latter for engineering. The prestige associated with these exams is extremely high. So high that people are ready to give away 5-10 years of their lives. There are several thousand students who devote their entire 20s pursuing these exams.
If the purpose of an entrance exam is an opportunity to understand one’s condition and position in knowledge, then attempting two or three times should be good enough to evaluate that. In reality, that’s hardly the case.
But why is this the case?
In my view, two primary reasons exist, and they are interconnected.
Societal Reason
Nowhere in the world, you will see the glorification of entrance exams as in India. Even the mainstream media and newspapers actively take part in that. In the end, it is just a reflection of society. You will find movies being made on several entrance exams but rarely about the scientific spirit or scientific heroes of the country.
Britain made a movie about Srinivasa Ramanujan, but India did not. There are no movies or TV series on CV Raman, Satyendranath Bose, Jagadish Chandra Bose, Prafulla Chandra Ray, Meghnad Saha, Abdul Kalam, Homi Bhava, Subramanyam Chandrasekharan, Hargovind Khorana, Vikram Sarabhai (Rocket Boys being the only one), and many more.
What does it tell you about society?
That it does not value enough its original thinkers and innovators. Society, in general, does not encourage or inspire its young people to become innovators in any sector. Until 1991, India was a closed market, the government controlled everything. Naturally, the only option to secure a future for young people was to get a stable government job.
Since 1991, the market has opened, and in 2024 the world is investing significantly (to reap benefits of course) in the growth of India (Foreign Direct Investment). Young people have way more options to secure their future than a government job. The risk appetite of youth is increasing to take up challenging projects to bring a change. But somehow, for a large part of society, the shadow of 1990s India (or before that) still haunts and limits our thinking beyond getting a government job.
The overemphasis on entrance exams is just a reflection of all these. Otherwise, why would someone invest 5-10 years of their life in clearing UPSC (which has a 0.1% chance of qualifying) when they can do something else given the same energy and dedication.
This mentality has also paved the path for a billion-dollar coaching industry in the name of shadow education. All these coaching industries survive by selling false dreams to millions of young and vulnerable students.
Policy Failures
In a genuine sense, India still has not witnessed the true Industrial Revolution. While the service sector has seen its rise in bits and pieces, manufacturing was never on the rise in India. The lack of developed industries meant that most people had little choice but to work in agriculture or seek government jobs. Thinking about building something and opening a small company was a distant dream just 15-20 years ago and is still not a popular thing for most of the population.
When I was growing up, the dream job for most of my contemporaries was becoming a doctor, engineer, pilot, teacher, etc. Almost everyone wanted to pass an exam and get a stable job. Because there were few options available.
Imagine the USA without Apple, Microsoft, and Google. What makes a nation advanced and developed is its firms and then encouraging its young people to start more innovative firms. That’s what is prevalent in the USA or any other advanced nation. Governments encourage people to build small or large companies.
The government in India has not managed to do that so far. We have improved a lot in recent years but not yet there in terms of infrastructure and development of industries. Just like without water, a fish would die, without proper culture and environment, the ambition of young people would die. This explains the massive brain drain India has witnessed all along.
Undoubtedly, the last few years have been good in terms of industrial development. This needs to continue with more force. As more development takes place, young people will become courageous to build rather than just trying to entrance exams.
Forgetting the Art of Slow-Paced Life
Do you remember those moments when you felt the air pass touching your face? Or those moments when you laughed together with your siblings and cousins on a cozy winter day?
For most of us, these moments are from our early teenage years or childhood. If you ask people about their most memorable life moments, many will probably say they happened during their childhood or teenage years.
It is probably because we lived in the moment in our early years. Without the burden of the past or future, we focused our attention on the present, making us feel freer than in adulthood. That’s a characteristic of slow living when we feel we are not in a rush, either mentally or physically. We savor each moment as if this is all we have for this particular moment.
Childhood is perhaps the best opportunity to practice slow living, free of much worry and anxiety. As we grow up, our days become busier, and we become anxious often. Our slow living of childhood becomes fast-paced to cope with the modern world. No longer we savor the first ray of sunlight or breeze on an airy day. This was mostly true for people born before the year 2000.
The abundance of the internet and social media changed everything for kids born after 2000. Playing in an open field, dancing, and singing with other kids together is no longer a norm today. Rather, opening social media accounts, creating a Gmail account, and registering a domain name at an early age have become a norm for the younger generation.
The concept of a slow life has almost disappeared for today’s kids and teenagers. This has given rise to a generation that is not patient enough and finds it harder to connect with their true selves (thus easy to manipulate). A progressive country needs its younger generation to be resilient and patient in order to contribute best to nation-building.
Emotional intelligence plays a significant role in any success in life.2 Just appearing smart by numbers is not enough. Sustainable success demands character. And the character does not develop overnight. How someone lives their childhood and teenage years directly influences their character development.
A fast-paced life in the early years does not help build resilience and robust character. Thinking requires clarity, and clarity is easier to get when someone has time to wander deep and wide. Naturally, a slow life is conducive to better clarity in life.
The current younger generation in India has been bombarded with all sorts of fast-paced information from the Internet and social media. Subconsciously, their brains are in fight-or-flight mode almost every day. With that state, it seems everything happening around the world has something to do with their lives. In reality, though, 99% of the things floating around social media have hardly any relevance to their lives. The results are reduced attention span (impatience) and becoming emotionally gullible character.
When the same younger generation comes into the workforce, most of them aspire to achieve grand success in the shortest time possible. Failures in between push them towards depression. The whole concept of depression has been normalized in today’s society. A man or woman of character takes failures as lessons and gives their best to bounce back from failures. As someone rightly said-
“Fast Success builds ego, Slow Success builds character”
All these eventually result in a small segment of young people (1-2%) who manage to be resilient and contribute to nation-building, but a majority are unable to contribute meaningfully. The larger issue is this- is it enough for a nation like India to have only 1-2% of its young generation think and do something about nation-building if it aspires to become a major power in the world?
Probably not. The numbers must be greater. But when life is busy with sensationalism in the form of irrelevant news and posts on digital screens, there is hardly any energy left to ponder on issues like character-building and nation-building.
While many countries are taking significant steps to curb the addiction of the internet and social media from the lives of their younger generation,3 India is far behind in this. Parents surely have a bigger role than policymakers regarding this. Unfortunately, even parents sometimes do not take this seriously.
No country is great by itself. It’s the people who make their country great through their efforts. The future of a country lies to a great extent in the aspirations and abilities of its younger generation. Just having a larger younger population in India does not offer any unique advantage unless they are well-equipped to build a developed nation. The policymakers, parents, and most importantly, the younger generation must reflect on whether the youth of the nation are actually well-equipped.
