Ethos of Indian Millennials

(Previously titled as “Sprouting Post-Modern Indian Ethos”)

An Indian of the post-independence era has evolved into a person of beliefs, aspirations, attitudes and values contrary to those of an Indian from the pre-independence era. Self-denial for larger public good has been replaced by self-gratification for personal good. The old notion, going back to antiquity, that the public sphere derives its nobility from a separation between the service of public interests and the pursuit of private interests, has been replaced by its opposite. Today an individual is king, and ideologies that emphasise the collective dimension of human destiny have lost their potency.

A perfunctory analysis into the background of the incumbents in top public offices today would show that quite a few of them are not career politicians but persons considered to have been successful in their other careers. Private success is now the best qualification for public office. This may even be true for other countries. Trump (USA), Macron (France) and Duterte (Philippines) have little in common except for one characteristic- they are successful outsiders who were not professional politicians. This new emphasis reflects the triumph of individual agency.

The empowerment of individuals puts an enormous responsibility on every human being: not only does it ignore the importance of luck in success, but it neglects obvious social factors. Better is a lazy boy born into a rich family than a bright young girl born into abject poverty? Still better it is to be born in a social group that could benefit from affirmative action. Notwithstanding its rationale and benefits, affirmative action class driven and is not individual driven. Since opportunities are for individuals, affirmative action does create a flawed competition for the individuals belonging to the non-beneficiary classes. And to tell the losers of that flawed competition that they should try harder adds insult to injury. Hence the growing anger of all those who are left behind.

That anger manifests itself in different forms. At one extreme is the terrorism. Most people, however, will never become terrorists, and their reaction to the cult of individual success, especially when individual success is out of reach, goes in the opposite direction: they want to restore a collective dimension to human destiny. Some find the answer in religious fanaticism like the love-jihad, cow-vigilantism, Ram-temple or the Babri-mosque, while others seek their counter in nationalism with the issues like Vande-mataram to Yoga to Hindustan. Such mindsets expose the vulnerability of societies in which the individual is the be-all and end-all. Human beings cannot experience far away tragedies as a personal loss. However the angry individuals react to any crisis as a global issue, and yet they are unable to manage solidarity within increasingly diverse national communities.

Indian elections are being fought more on a Presidential style, i.e., individualistic and not ideology. Electoral outcomes don't throw up leaders, the leader throws up the electoral outcomes. Such leaders are being given the responsibility of governance, without the checks and balance of democratic institutions. Today leaders are expected to produce change against institutions rather than through them.

What Margaret Thatcher said in 1987 has come to define the current Indian ethos: "… there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."  

For the Millennial Indian – there is no ‘we’ or ‘us’ if there is no ‘I’ or ‘me’ in it.