Young India: Fuelled by agency but failed by structure

The segment chosen for the study represents leading-edge young people from urban ‘middle India’. Drawn from 12 big and small cities, and belonging to modest income families in the middle and lower middle-income groups of India, this is a group of college-going or college-educated men and women across a variety of institutions and educational courses, quite a few being first-generation college-goers.

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Our overarching conclusion from 100-plus interviews can best be described through the yin and yang lenses that social scientists use to understand the world—structure and agency.

‘Structure’ is about the broader terms and conditions handed down to us (identity, institutions and discourses) that we live within. Yet, generations with varying capacities for enterprise, action and impact make their way in the world. Such a capacity constitutes ‘agency.’

Our study testified to an abundance of agency: enterprise, packed routines, a belief in the self, an ear out for whatever might be the latest opportunity. This agency is anxious to find the pot of gold that hyper-information-loaded social media and political discourses constantly allude to, and is often flailing and exhausted in its pursuit, but interestingly neither defeated nor depressed. At least, not yet. Young India’s leitmotifs are hopefulness and the belief that things will happen in the wake of relentless effort.

Their world is one where you have to constantly try to do something or the other by the force of your own energy, initiative and enterprise in the short-term, while pursuing your dream of a great life in the long-run, the latter defined as a job that brings stability, security and status.

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Most are preparing for competitive exams (for years altogether) and seeking public sector and government positions, while staying occupied by trying their hand at whatever comes their way. “It’s so difficult" and “I’m constantly thinking about what to do next" were common responses.

Nobody sits still, hopping as they do between part-time jobs, college classes, hobby courses and short-term skill building certifications to enhance their employability and mobility. “College until 1pm; then a short nap and then I go to my job at the supermarket," was only one among a common set of narratives about navigating work and education. Even those who didn’t need to work were involved in building their portfolio. “I’m learning to sing, go to college, read, and then I have some work related to the fellowship too," said another.

Young people’s aspirations are focused on self-improvement to equip themselves for whatever life throws at them. “I am doing two-three tasks actually. First, I’m doing a part-time job in an organization, Art of Living. And, I’m also doing studies… preparing for competitive exams and all. Sometimes I teach children," was a typical response with a revolving set of details. They are motivated by and seek meaning, success, recognition and validation, but do not know where to stick around to find it. The frequent feeling is of running breathless through an endless labyrinth, a puzzle space, where old maps are gone and new ones yet to come.

And what of the yang? What of structure?

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No structure, whether education, family or friends, seems to be of adequate help, supported mainly as our interlocutors are by the babble of the internet and the information that can be gleaned from a changing set of people and sources. Parents are appreciated as financially supportive and democratic, but not very useful in either advice or understanding. Peers are seen to be more emotionally supportive, yet sparsely available and mostly unstable as a community. These children of liberalization take comfort in a fairly secure past, but are rendered aflutter by thoughts of an uncertain future.

Those in the 25-30 age cohort who do find a job are suspicious about its permanence. Hustling until they got there has made them both canny and insecure. Alienating workspaces, the looming threat of layoffs in private corporations, and a stymieing and dissatisfying work grind slowly drain them of all vitality. They also report an inability to connect with new people in these alienating urban spaces with crumbling infrastructure, which in turn deepens their trenchant loneliness. The private sector interprets this often as “They don’t want to work hard!"

The list of structural dissatisfactions is long. The constant challenges of gender and caste, apart from universal disappointment with the education system in equipping them with skills for work on one hand and a sense of broader imagination and play on the other, are also part of how they see the world.

Yet, in all this, they display no critique and see no responsibility of the government or the country in finding them jobs. Instead, they see their world as part of the hazy, opaque entity called ‘the market.’ They focus on how to make themselves market-ready, even as what is good enough keeps shifting as a goalpost, inspiring constant fear of being termed redundant.

This is a story of enormous entropy created by resolute agency bouncing off the unhelpful wall of a failing structure. It is a generation of amazing attitude and energy that is slipping through the very large cracks of our structural failures.

Commissioned by Bijapurkar, the study was conceptualized and led by Krishnamurthy, with assistance from a fieldwork team at Auxohub.

The authors are, respectively, a business advisor and associate professor of anthropology at IIT Madras.

This is the first part of a three-part series. Read the second part here and the third part here.