Why young India has stopped looking up to Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi loves wordplay with acronyms.

One of his favorite acronyms is 3Ds — democracy, demography and demand. He regularly keeps boasting that no one can stop India from scaling greater heights in near future as it is blessed with a vibrant democracy, with 65 per cent of its people under the age of 35, and a market of 1.25 billion people.

No doubt, India, in pen and paper, enjoys a demographic dividend, with a labour force outnumbering the population dependent on it.

With 356 million 10 to 24 year-olds, according to the United Nations Population Fund, India has the world’s highest number of young people despite having a smaller population than China, which has only 269 million young people.

However, unless the country meets the needs and aspirations of these young people, the expected economic dividend can turn into a political disaster as well.

The National Intelligence Council of the United State, before a new administration takes over, usually provides a major assessment of the forces and choices shaping the world. In its assessment of South Asia’s security scenario, prior to President Donald Trump's inauguration, it finds the massive increase in youth population in India a major risk for the country and region.

The failure of the government to create yearly as many as 10 million jobs to accommodate this increasingly young labour force in a society riven with social discrimination can radicalise a large section of country’s youth.

India’s youth unemployment crisis is fast becoming seriously acute. As per the World Bank Data, India’s youth employment rate was only 32 per cent in 2015, compared to a healthy 45 per cent in 1991.

In that time period, not only the percentage of youth unemployment has increased, the youth population of the country too has increased to 45.3 per cent. So, job creation has miserably failed to keep pace with the increasing youth population.

Thus, the big question is whether the burgeoning unemployed youth labour force is a blessing as Prime Minister Modi asks people to believe or it can potentially be the curse as "youth bulge" for the country as well.

This frequently used term "youth bulge" was coined by professor Gunnar Heinsohn of University of Bremen, Germany, and it claims that the excess in especially young adult male population predictably leads to social unrest.

The argument supporting this theory is that societies with rapidly growing labour force often creates large pools of disaffected youths due to unemployment and that makes these societies susceptible to youth-bulge-related violence and social unrest.

This "youth bulge" was arguably the reason for the unrest in 18th century France, had caused World Wars I and II, Japan’s occupation of China in 1930s and Marxist insurgencies in Latin America in 1970s and 1980s.

As India has failed to escape youth unemployment crisis, it is one of the countries that are highly susceptible to this youth-bulge-related civil strife.

Its large portion of idle, but aspiring youths are getting attracted to spiteful strands of Hinduism propagated by Hindutva forces as an alternative path of social and economic mobility.

They have become the major support bases for Modi and his Hindutva brand of politics. In 2013, the India Today Group-C Voter Youth Survey of more than 5,000 youths, had concluded Modi as their most-popular figure for the country's highest political post.

The principal appeal of Modi and the Hindutva forces lay in their ability to exploit the sense of insecurity of these unemployed youths and creating a myth of reviving the golden age – achhe din.

A recent survey-based study by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) provides an invaluable insight to the attitudes, anxieties and aspirations of India’s young population.

Employment is the most important concern for India’s youth and an overwhelming majority of them, two out of three, are aspiring to get government jobs while only one in five plans to set up own business. The rising demand for education also shows that young people are looking to move away from menial jobs and informal sectors to skilled jobs in government sectors.

The BJP’s support base among India’s youth is at present twice as compared to the Congress. This increased support for the BJP is not only due to the hopes pinned on Modi making an economic miracle and creating new jobs, but also because India’s aspiring youth is becoming more and more socially and culturally conservative, which is much more worrisome for the country's future as a liberal and inclusive country.

A majority of India’s youth are of the opinion that wives should always listen to their husbands. Even two-fifths of the youth oppose women to do a job after marriage. Three in every five respondents considered a love affair between same sex as wrong and close to half of the respondents are completely opposed to inter-religious marriages. Moreover, only one-third approve inter-caste marriages, though among married respondents only 4 per cent had inter-caste marriage.

It seems that India’s majority youth not only support a Hindu majoritarian leader and his highly divisive politics, they are also following similar social-cultural values — being highly conservative and having misogynistic and homophobic mindset.

The risk posed by this demographic reality of a young Indian population is a very worrying issue. Instead of it being a demographic dividend, the pattern points towards Indian democracy soon facing its "youth bulge".

In spite of bravado on economic growth front, the Modi government has been forced to admit the rising overall unemployment in the country. India’s unemployment has gone up from 3.8 per cent in 2011 to 5 per cent now. The 7.6 per cent GDP growth, if at all taking place, has not been able to create jobs and means little to India’s job-seeking youths.

While Modi’s promised "achhe din" has turned out be a dud, India has reached a critical point.

The youth being restive and impatient, India’s "youth bulge" in the absence of employment opportunities and improved economic prospects might turn against the Modi regime, despite sharing a similar socially regressive mindset.

Also read: India does sadly nothing for its youth