The young will save the world, but only after they have finished finding themselves

Young people splurging on their wedding is not a problem per se, unless the extravaganza is bank-rolled by their middle-class families by taking out expensive loans. (Illustration by Suneesh K.)

Recently a prominent Indian television anchor, after spending time with 1,000 enthusiastic teenagers, tweeted that he was reassured that “a better India” is just waiting to rise. It is a laudable sentiment, one that is commonly expressed by public figures. The young, they always claim, will save the world.

And why not? Young people have abundant energy, dreams in their eyes and are better human beings than older people. Ergo, they will craft a better world too.

But between that noble idea and the reality exists a huge gap. If we take some common markers of betterment, the performance of India’s millennials isn’t outstanding or even a considerable step up over the generations that immediately preceded them.

Take the scourge of dowry, a social evil that stood out like an ugly pustule in the India of the 1970s when deaths from burnings were a common feature and a girl’s wedding was the biggest nightmare of middle-class Indian households. In the new India of the 2000s, we would have expected that scourge to be substantially reduced if not eliminated. Sadly, a World Bank study two years ago found that dowry payments in India's villages have been largely stable over the past few decades, with dowry paid in 95 percent of the marriages. Such sweeping numbers suggest the practice is as pervasive today as it was 30 years ago when today’s middle-aged men and women were young. Nor has it become any less malevolent. A study by Article 14 in September 2022 reveals that “More than 18 women die every day in India in violence related to demands for dowry, which was outlawed in 1961. Although marginally fewer women died in 2021 (6,753) compared to 2019 (7,100), the number of complaints against dowry demands and related violence rose 25 percent in 2021 over the previous year, according to the latest government data.”

While men and their parents are largely complicit in this crime, there is another facet of the great Indian wedding that reveals a sad regression. Younger people today, including women, want more and more extravagant weddings where the money spent (wasted) puts into shade the modest weddings of their parents in an earlier era. While those from ultra rich families have destination weddings where well-known rock stars and Bollywood celebs are in attendance, it is the middle class, that upholder of change and social dynamism, that is splurging wildly on this occasion. The wedding industry is estimated to be worth Rs 3.75 lakh crore with over Rs 50,000 crore spent just on wedding jewellery every year.

So why should young people not have some fun, particularly on one of the most important days of their life? Simply because over 60 percent of weddings in India entail taking out expensive loans for the family. And, of course, all these fancy celebrations come at a great cost to the environment too. It is in effect the most expensive example of the kind of conspicuous consumption that the millennial generation does. According to a report by short-video platform Moj, Indians aged 18-34 now spend the most (77 percent) on mobile phones and apparels.

But perhaps, this is irrelevant stuff.

Let’s take more relevant issues like gender equality, certainly an area where young people can be expected to be far more aware than old fogeys fed on a diet of the woman’s place being at home. Shockingly, though, a wide-ranging Pew report says that young Indian adults (ages 18 to 34) are not much more likely than their elders to express egalitarian views on son preference and gender roles. While 45 percent of Indians aged 35 and older say that men in a family should be primarily responsible for earning money, 42 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 34 agree.

A glance at the political leadership in the country offers another clue to the debate of the ages. The most reasonable, reasoned, low-on-rhetoric high-in-substance interventions in Parliament and outside it have come from politicians like Manoj Jha (56), Asaduddin Owaisi (54), Mohua Moitra (48) and Rajnath Singh (72). The young Turks, men like Kanhaiya Kumar, Jignesh Mewani, Hardik Patel and Aditya Thackeray are still finding themselves amidst their need for populism and relevance.

Sadly, demographics alone won’t guarantee a better India.