What are the aspirations of the youth of this country.docx

8/14/2019 What are the aspirations of the youth of this country.docx

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What are the aspirations of the youth of this country?

1. Good Education : What we have learned in india and are taught to be good managers , not goodinnovators.

2. Better Employment Opportunities3. Representation in political Bodies4. Corruption free environment or Intolerance to corruption5. Gender Equality for Women6. Avenues for Research and Development7. Indian youth saw a new age with the coming of Liberalization reforms in 1991, do we need neo

liberalization reforms today

8. It is to be remembered that when aspirations remain unfulfilled they turn into frustrations.9. Political class includes not just the government but Political parties as a whole. Indian Youth

comprises 22 % population of this country (UN definition of 15-24). Median age in India is 25 yrs.

Means 50% of population is below 25 yrs of age. But how much participation does they invite.

10.Better Sports facilitiesThe Perils of Unfulfilled Indian Youth

By Rupa Subramanya

Altaf Qadri/Associated Press

People staged a protest demanding death penalty for six men involved in

the rape and murder of the 23-year-old woman, New Delhi, Jan. 29.


2/12

India may boast an ancient civilization, but it is a youthful nation. One of the

most important stories of contemporary India is that of its young people: their

hopes, aspirations and frustrations.

Whether in the information technology hub of Bangalore, the up-and-comingcity of Nagpur, orBarasat, a small town on the fringes of Kolkata , Indias

young people are on the move. Theyre reaching for new opportunities made

possible by Indias liberalization over the past two decades. Theyre seeing that

success isnt limited to a few members of theold elite.

The United Nations defines youth as people between ages 15 and 24. By this

measure, there are approximately 240 million youth in India, about 20% of

the population, according to preliminary projections from the 2011 census.Thats up from 195 million in 2001. The median age in India is 25, meaning

that half the population is below 25 and half is above it. Compare India to

Canada, whose youth make up just 12% of its population and where the

median age is almost 40.

Whats the significance of these numbers for India? They mean that hundreds

of millions of young people are or soon will be looking for jobs and spouses. If

those hopes arent fulfilled, aspiration may turn to frustration. And, some

social scientists say, that frustration can manifest itself in rising crime.

Could the frustration of Indias youth help explain the prevalence of sexual

harassment and violence against women in India today? There are many

factors that could drive such behavior, of course, and its important not to

overstate any one factors impact. But its certainly worth exploring the role of

economic and social frustration.

I got a chance to do some anecdotal investigation in Barasat, a town featured

today in a front-page Wall Street Journal article aboutsexual harassment of

women. I spoke to women at the train station, where they were commuting to

and from work and school, and at the local college. They described daily

incidents of harassment taunts, stalking and groping. Some said men pulled

at their chunis, or scarves that cover their chests.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324616604578302620513689386.html?mod=WSJINDIA_hpp_MIDDLELSMinihttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324616604578302620513689386.html?mod=WSJINDIA_hpp_MIDDLELSMinihttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324616604578302620513689386.html?mod=WSJINDIA_hpp_MIDDLELSMinihttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324616604578302620513689386.html?mod=WSJINDIA_hpp_MIDDLELSMinihttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324616604578302620513689386.html?mod=WSJINDIA_hpp_MIDDLELSMinihttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324616604578302620513689386.html?mod=WSJINDIA_hpp_MIDDLELSMinihttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324616604578302620513689386.html?mod=WSJINDIA_hpp_MIDDLELSMinihttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324616604578302620513689386.html?mod=WSJINDIA_hpp_MIDDLELSMinihttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324616604578302620513689386.html?mod=WSJINDIA_hpp_MIDDLELSMinihttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324616604578302620513689386.html?mod=WSJINDIA_hpp_MIDDLELSMini


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For the most part, these women described the perpetrators of this harassment

as relatively young men who had lots of time on their hands to loaf around.

The women said these men stand around sipping chai, drinking alcohol or

playing cards. With nothing too productive to do, apparently, they bother

women passing by.

The report India commissioned to recommend changes to sexual assault laws

after the deadly gangrape of a 23-year-old Delhi student in December

highlighted the economic frustration of young Indian men as a serious issue.

The report, produced by a committee headed by former Supreme Court Chief

Justice J.S. Verma, described the mass of young, prospectless men whose

sexual harassment of women may tip over into more aggravated assault. It

said these men are fighting for space in an economy that offers mainly casualwork. The report starkly concluded that large-scale disempowerment of

urban men is lending intensity to a pre-existing culture of sexual violence.

Indias incomplete economic liberalization since 1991 has left the country with

few good employment opportunities for unskilled workers who do not have

much education. The countrys growth in the last two decades has been driven

mainly by services like information technology. That has created many

opportunities for high-skilled workers, but there hasnt been a corresponding

boom in manufacturing to create lower-skilled jobs. Young men whether in

Delhi or Barasat or any other Indian city often have no choice but to stay in

low-paying jobs as rickshaw pullers or street vendors.

Craig Jeffrey, a geographer at Oxford University, has a sociological term for

the act of loafing around with nothing to do: timepass. That is also the

Indian slang for whiling away time unproductively.

Rapid social change in provincial India has created a vast army of educatedand semi-educated loafers among young men, says Mr. Jeffrey. Young men

find themselves with little or no opportunities or resources and find it difficult

to get married, he says. They hang about, he explains, near college campuses

or even by the roadside, taking out their frustration on women.


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Unemployment and underemployment are notoriously difficult to measure

because as much as 90% of the Indian labor force works in the informal

sector, in activities and occupations that by definition arent recorded in

official statistics.

Timepassers arent just unemployed or underemployed; theyre often also

unattached. After decades of skewed sex ratios at birth, India now has

approximately 37 million more men than women. This excess supply of men,

combined with falling fertility rates and the fact that men on average marry

women about five years younger, has led to what demographers call a

marriage squeeze.

The combination of young men with few prospects and the frustration of beingsingle is especially pronounced in North India, where sex ratios are the most

skewed.

Unemployment is definitely a factor in exacerbating sexual harassment of

women, said Ravinder Kaur, a sociologist at the Indian Institute of

Technology in Delhi who has done field research in Indias northern state of

Haryana. Ms. Kaur notes that young men from villages often spend the day

whiling away time in nearby towns and cities to escape being called good-for-

nothing. They often loiter and harass women by day and return home in the

evening, she said.

Sexual harassment is just one of the social pathologies that can arise from

these economic and demographic trends. Those trends can also help explain

why men get involved in trafficking of women and prostitution rings, social

scientists say.

India may discover that being a young country has its perils.

ECONOMY: As aspirations rise, Indias burgeoningyouth find jobs are hard to get
http://www.unfpa.org/gender/docs/studies/summaries/regional_analysis.pdfhttp://www.unfpa.org/gender/docs/studies/summaries/regional_analysis.pdf


5/12

Vijay Kumar looks at his certificates outside an employment exchange office in New

Delhi, India. Thousands of unemployed like Kumar flock to 900 state-run job centersacross the country, where they hope to get what many in this country believe is the ticketto a better life, a government job. Rajesh Kumar Singh/AP

NIRMALA GEORGE

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW DELHI Vijay Kumar clutched a worn plastic folder containing his

high school diploma and his nursing aide certificate as he joined a long queue

at an employment exchange in a New Delhi suburb. Its a familiar ritual. For

six years he has struck out.

Kumar is one of the millions of young Indians who make up a population

bulge that experts say will see India hit 1.6 billion people in less than 20 years,

overtaking China as the worlds most populated country. Over the next three

to four decades India will become remarkably young, with more than half its

population under 25.

Indias politicians like to boast that the swelling youth population is apowerful rising tide that will propel the country into a global economic power

while other Asian nations such as Japan grapple with greying majorities. They

can point to China where a population spurt contributed to rising prosperity

as a vast army of young people migrated from the countryside to the

manufacturing heartlands in its south and east. But in India it just might


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become a waste of human potential on a monumental scale, another missed

opportunity in a country perennially failing to deliver on its promise.

The burgeoning youth population will be a dividend if we empower our

young, Kapil Sibal, minister for human resource development, said recently.It will be a disaster if we fail.

Young job seekers such as Kumar flock to some 900 state-run job centres

across the country, where they vie for a limited number of entry-level jobs

offered by the government and private companies. The government says 6.6

per cent of Indias workers are jobless, a figure that belies that harsh reality of

the labour market where many eke out a subsistence level existence in menial,

unsafe and backbreaking jobs. The situation is worse for young job-seekerswith government statistics placing the number of unemployed higher at 10.5

per cent.

Kumar grew up in the poverty-ridden eastern state of Bihar. Like countless

others he moved to the Indian capital in search of employment.

In Bihar, there was no hope of getting a job. It was a choice of migrating to

Delhi or starving. It wasnt a choice, really, he said, at once dispirited and

hopeful that the latest visit to the employment exchange will yield results.

The employment agency in the New Delhi suburb of Shahdara operates from

one corner of a large unswept hall in a government building. Broken furniture

lies at one end. A tangle of electrical wires and cobwebs hang from the ceiling.

The walls are covered in dust. A slow moving ceiling fan whirls the dust in

slow eddies.

Job applicants sit on a row of metal benches, shifting sideways till its their

turn at the single desk where a clerk with a computer and printer registers

them to apply for openings. The jobs on offer are at the very lowest rung as

clerks or office boys but as applicants say, its a job.


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Each day a couple of hundred applicants pass through the office. Fresh-faced

young graduates registering for the first time. Older applicants, renewing their

applications, are dejected and bitter at the futility of the exercise.

Rajinder Singh, the clerk, shrugs helplessly. We post all the jobs there are.The problem is, there are too few openings and too many applicants, he said.

Indias economy, the 10th largest in the world, is fast growing even

considering its recent slowdown. Businesses want workers, the young

especially.

But unlike in the economically struggling U.S. and Europe, where many highly

skilled applicants are fighting over few jobs, only a minority of working-age

Indians are qualified for skilled occupations.

The poor quality of education in India is partly to blame. Millions of job

seekers have impressive sounding diplomas but many dont have the skills

promised by those certificates from substandard colleges and technical

institutes.

And as Indias growth rate lags its potential, its an ever bigger task for private

companies to absorb the fast rising number of young job seekers. Despite lowwages, foreign companies arent rushing in to plug the gaps, wary of

unpredictable turns in government policy, frequent strikes and other

negatives.

Driven by their exposure to television and films showing the good life, young

jobseekers have rising aspirations. Their inability to reach them is leading to

enormous frustration.

Kumar gets hired by the day as a labourer with a house painting crew, sendingpart of his meagre earnings back to his parents, itinerant farm workers.

Every six months he heads back to the exchange to renew his registration.

My hopes are high. Each day I get by on hope, he said.


8/12

Seconds later, fatalism took over. Whether I succeed or not, that is in Gods

hands.

There is concern that if growing numbers of young people in India do not find

employment, or if they find themselves in dead-end jobs, the risk of politicalviolence escalates, said Ashish Bose, a leading population expert.

Indias economic and regional inequalities along with age-old caste, religious

and class tensions provide ample cause for disgruntled young people to find a

grievance to rally around, with the danger of them resorting to extremism.

India, with the worlds largest chunk of illiterates at over 250 million, has to

invest massively in technical and academic education, said Bose.

Anyone who has some skill is potentially employable, he said.

Employment analysts say only 15 per cent of working age Indians have the

skills needed to find a good job a deficit the government is trying to address

through public-private partnerships focused on worker training. But with

millions of young people entering the job market each year, the sheer numbers

dwarf any government-sponsored program to impart skill training to first time

job seekers.

Job hunter Dharmender Singh Rawats lack of success has not tempered his

hopes of a better life.

Rawat trained as a bus driver, but couldnt find a job. He tried to enlist in the

armed forces, but failed. Clean shaven and neatly dressed, Rawat is clear that

he wants to cast off his humble lower middle class roots and pursue his

upwardly mobile dreams.

On occasion he drops by the employment exchange to renew his registration

on the unemployment roster.

Without a job, Rawat spends much of the day watching television soaps and

dreaming of a house in affluent south Delhi and a Scorpio SUV.


9/12

When I dream, I am a different person, he said.

Indias new middle classes friends of progress orapolitical mall-rats?

One of the topics that kept coming up during my recent trip with Oxfam

Indiawas the role of the rising middle classes. We had a great debate

withAseem Prakashfrom Jindal University, who is in the middle of a paper

on this (Ill link when its published).According to Aseem, different definitions

yield numbers for Indias middle classes ranging from 5 million ($10-$20 per

day) to 214 million ($2-$4 a day). Whats not disputed, however, is that the

numbers are rising rapidly as Indias economy continues to boom.

Behind the numbers are some increasingly complex dynamics, as a new

commercial middle class, including rising numbers of so-

called lower caste entrepreneurs, joins

the post-independence middle class of mainly dominant-caste government

technocrats who placed their faith in the power of the state to lead Indias rise.

But there is very little agreement over what this means for progressive

movements. While Oxfam is beginning to explore working with middle class

youth on sustainable consumption and other areas of cooperation, the default

position among many civil society organizations seems to be that the middle

classes are pretty much a lost cause consumerist mall rats with no capacity

to identify with the plight and struggles of poor people. And it may be true that

the middle classes have largely given up on politics as one slum activist put

it Only poor people vote no middle class people bother.
http://www.oxfamindia.org/http://www.oxfamindia.org/http://www.oxfamindia.org/http://jsgp.academia.edu/AseemPrakashhttp://jsgp.academia.edu/AseemPrakashhttp://jsgp.academia.edu/AseemPrakashhttp://www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/?attachment_id=12473http://jsgp.academia.edu/AseemPrakashhttp://www.oxfamindia.org/http://www.oxfamindia.org/


10/12

According toPaul Divakar,of theNational Dalit Campaign for Human

Rights. We have not made attempts to ally with the middle classes. Paul

claims their numbers are insignificant (5%). There may be potential allies

within the elites, but either theyre hiding or we just havent found them.

This despite the obvious signs of rising middle class activism in the shape of a

burgeoning anti-corruption movement, led by activistAnna Hazare(below

left). According to Aseem and his colleagues, Hazares movement is build on a

lower middle class that feels excluded by the state and angry at its withdrawal

as part of Indias gradual liberalization process. Economic mobility has not

ended vulnerability the Lower Middle Class are in a state of constant stress,

and are more politically active than the richer strata: their voter turnout is

higher than for the rich.

For Oxfam India and its partners, this frustrated lower middle class seems the

most promising ally (as well as donor more on that to follow), so whats the

best way to overcome the current level of polarization and start constructing

alliances with progressive fractions of Indias rising middle class?

First, I think we need to get a better picture of both the many fractions of the

middle class, and the world views of each. A decade ago,Elisa ReisandMick

Mooredid a really obvious, but innovative piece of work they went to ask

elites in a number of developing countrieswhat they thought about

poverty and inequality. They found, for example, that elites care much

more about the educational standards among their poor compatriots than they

do about their health. Could we do something similar among the emerging

middle classes?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Diwakarhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Diwakarhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Diwakarhttp://www.ncdhr.org.in/http://www.ncdhr.org.in/http://www.ncdhr.org.in/http://www.ncdhr.org.in/http://www.annahazare.org/http://www.annahazare.org/http://www.annahazare.org/http://us.macmillan.com/author/elisapreishttp://us.macmillan.com/author/elisapreishttp://us.macmillan.com/author/elisapreishttp://www.ids.ac.uk/idsperson/mick-moorehttp://www.ids.ac.uk/idsperson/mick-moorehttp://www.ids.ac.uk/idsperson/mick-moorehttp://www.ids.ac.uk/idsperson/mick-moorehttp://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCIQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fbooks.google.com%2Fbooks%2Fabout%2FElite_Perceptions_of_Poverty_and_Inequal.html%3Fid%3DE6AU-d5r7m4C&ei=blKOUMSeKamX1AWl6oDoCg&usg=AFQjCNFHisaN8NsL40HaShttp://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCIQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fbooks.google.com%2Fbooks%2Fabout%2FElite_Perceptions_of_Poverty_and_Inequal.html%3Fid%3DE6AU-d5r7m4C&ei=blKOUMSeKamX1AWl6oDoCg&usg=AFQjCNFHisaN8NsL40HaShttp://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCIQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fbooks.google.com%2Fbooks%2Fabout%2FElite_Perceptions_of_Poverty_and_Inequal.html%3Fid%3DE6AU-d5r7m4C&ei=blKOUMSeKamX1AWl6oDoCg&usg=AFQjCNFHisaN8NsL40HaShttp://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCIQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fbooks.google.com%2Fbooks%2Fabout%2FElite_Perceptions_of_Poverty_and_Inequal.html%3Fid%3DE6AU-d5r7m4C&ei=blKOUMSeKamX1AWl6oDoCg&usg=AFQjCNFHisaN8NsL40HaShttp://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCIQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fbooks.google.com%2Fbooks%2Fabout%2FElite_Perceptions_of_Poverty_and_Inequal.html%3Fid%3DE6AU-d5r7m4C&ei=blKOUMSeKamX1AWl6oDoCg&usg=AFQjCNFHisaN8NsL40HaShttp://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCIQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fbooks.google.com%2Fbooks%2Fabout%2FElite_Perceptions_of_Poverty_and_Inequal.html%3Fid%3DE6AU-d5r7m4C&ei=blKOUMSeKamX1AWl6oDoCg&usg=AFQjCNFHisaN8NsL40HaShttp://www.ids.ac.uk/idsperson/mick-moorehttp://www.ids.ac.uk/idsperson/mick-moorehttp://us.macmillan.com/author/elisapreishttp://www.annahazare.org/http://www.ncdhr.org.in/http://www.ncdhr.org.in/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Diwakar


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When I asked people about this, the

view was that the middle class (a lot of people still talk in the singular) is

happy to take a stance on universal issues violence is bad, or (as with Anna

Hazare) the political class is corrupt. But when it comes to specific issues that

affect their lives, (paying taxes, accepting dalit kids in their childrens

classrooms) they are much less likely to be sympathetic.

In practice, this means building alliances by finding a way to secularize

poverty away from its Indian reality of being interwoven with class, ethnicity,

caste and religion. Finding such a secular, cross class narrative means

understanding where the lower middle classes are hurting the most. For

example health care, via out of pocket expenditure, and unregulated private

schools, which are often no better than their state equivalent.

Other strong candidates for cross class alliance-building are dealing with

pollution and congestion (rich people and poor still have to breathe the same

air). Ditto access to justice and judicial reform. The best way to engage with

the anti-corruption movement could be to focus on corruption on pro-poor

issues, eg health, nutrition areas that lift poor people up without directly

threatening the Middle Class, as one activist suggested.

But developing this approach seems like uphill work. The default model of

change for most popular organizations and NGOs in India seems to be one of

mass mobilization to put pressure on the state, backed up byjudicial

activism, with little room for building vertical alliances with progressive

fractions of the emerging middle class.
http://www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/?p=12408http://www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/?p=12408http://www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/?p=12408http://www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/?p=12408http://www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/?attachment_id=12474http://www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/?p=12408http://www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/?p=12408


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But what do I know? These reflections are based on a handful of visits and

conversations. Id really welcome the insights of Indian readers on this, as well

as comparisons with other emerging powers like Brazil, South Africa or China.

Tomorrow: an Oxfam India bloggers view of the middle class, and why theyoften dont trust NGOs

zenrdr

This is meant to be a conversation, a chance to compare notes on the ideas in

the book and how they apply (or dont) to future events and debates. (Though

I have to admit that its also a form of therapy what the authors of

Freakonomics call the perfect antidote for that sickening feeling of beingdead in the water once a manuscript has been completed.)

The blog will include regular contributions from me, prompted by events, or

things I read, or the debates that emerge at numerous book launches,

seminars and the like. But it will only work if others get involved that makes

the difference between this being a real discussion, and a barren cyberspace

version of those demented souls on soapboxes, ranting away to a non-existent

audience at Hyde Parks speakers corner in London.

So let us know what you think, what issues you want to discuss, and what you

like/dont like about the book. From Poverty to Power emerged as a big

conversation, involving hundreds of people within and outside Oxfam, and we

are determined to make sure that conversation continues, as we grapple with

the big issues of development climate change, the role of science and tech,

power and politics. This could be fun
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/

What are the aspirations of the youth of this country.docx

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