DREAMS OF THE YOUTH IN THREE INDIAS

Young Indians in urban, rural and deep-rural areas have markedly different ambitions about their careers. Thankfully, these disparate aspirations add up to a vibrant, balanced country

- HARISH BIJOOR

ONE day in February 2024, I was on a flight from Mumbai to Bengaluru. Sat next to me was a young girl of 14. Sitting across the aisle and travelling with her was her older brother, all of 19. The two were on their way to see their grandmother. Ria is just into her early teens and Rishabh (names changed with permission) is just about in the last of his teenage years.

The bubbly Ria settled into her seat and immediately started chatting me up with a signature comment of a frequent flyer, "I hate aisle seats." "So, you fly a lot?" I asked, and thus began our conversation. We spoke a lot, but there is one big thing that caught my attention. At some point, I asked her a question we 'oldies' love to ask the 'youngies' (forgive the ageism, please): "What's your ambition, Ria?" Pop came the reply without a pause, "I want to be a fashion blogger." Midway through the flight, I requested Ria if she could switch seats with Rishabh. She obliged. "What's your ambition, Rishabh?" was popped at him, too.

Without a thought, Rishabh said he wanted to be a radio jockey and that he was already checking out how to go about it.

This planted a thought in my head-to check out from the larger India, quite apart from the hallowed space of air-travellers, what the ambition of the new young are. I started research across urban and rural spaces. We talk of 475 urban agglomerations in India today and a whopping 6,43,700 villages; my research covered a nano percentage of these. But it is nevertheless telling.

New India and the new Indian are divided in ambition. While urban folk by and large are now experimenting with ambition that is less solid in its intent than ever before, rural Indians have embraced the ambitions that exclusively belonged to the Gen Y and Gen Z folks of urban India.