10 Events That Changed Indian Youth

As the world is turning grey, India is getting younger. With 55% of its population under the age of 25 years, India is one of the youngest nations in the world. This is truly an economic dividend for us. The young India is brimming with enormous energy, enthusiasm and passion .The aspirations are young, the apprehensions are young. The agonies are young, the ecstasies are young. The triumph is young, the challenges are young.

Hence the first issue of Vox Populi is entirely devoted to the youth of India. It is, therefore important for all of us to know about the events that changed the face of Indian Youth. The motive of this debut issue is to illustrate how these events had an impact on the mindset of the youth of India and how has it contributed to the nation building.

ANGRY YOUNG MAN ON THE SILVER SCREEN - 1970s were the most turbulent years of Indian democracy. Scandals, protests, arrests and last but not the least, the Emergency that jeopardized our constitution made people lose faith on the system.

Then entered Amitabh Bachhan whose portrayal of a common middle class, lean figured young man taking on the system single handedly took away the masses with storm. Be it Zanjeer or Shahensha or Andha Kanoon or Deewar, his roles in all these shades on the silver screen gave some respite to the infuriated young India, who regarded him as their role model.

NEW AGE DIRECTORS - The age old family sagas of Barjatyas, campus love stories by Chopras and Johars and suspense thrillers by RGV have now become archaic and a new cult of directors have taken charge to entertain us. Directors with the Midas touch, like Farhan Akhtar, Imtiyaz Ali, Siddharth Sharma, Shimit Amin, Anurag Basu, Rakesh Om Prakash Mehra, Anurag Kashyap and Raj Kumar Hirani, through their movies have depicted a whole new aspect in the lives of youth who have different priorities, are more outward looking and easily accept the change in values with time.

JUST DO IT - Thomas Friedman of New York Times has very rightly said that if there is one thing that can be rightly called as Brand India, then that is India’s software industry. IT professionals of India are the brand ambassadors of our IT acumen and innovation. The Indian It industry has grown by more than 50% annually in the last decade .At present India software is exported to more than 150 countries and accounted for one-fifth of global software development. More than half of the Fortune 500 companies have their development centres in India. I think the reasons are enough to fathom the IT prowess of India.

INDIA CALLING - The NH 8 of Gurgaon can be regarded as the artery of the back office of the world as most of the BPOs are situated on it. Despite odd working hours and fake American and European accents, BPO industry has a lot to offer. BPOs absorb those who have been failed by our education system but one gets a chance of getting decently paid and that too depending on their abilities. Give results or perish is the keyword in this industry .Who would have ever imagined 30 years back that a 20 something who has just completed his college will walk into a plush office with a rock band t-shirts and a pair of denims and will draw a salary which would be more than what their parents had drawn during their mid-careers.

YOUNGISTAAN ON AIR - Although shows like Roadies, Splitsvilla and Emotional Atyachaar cater to a specific youth, yet it is getting acceptance gradually amongst the youth of semi urban India. Channels like MTV, Bindaas and Channel V has given birth to a new generation. Gone are the days when Doordarshan was the only source of entertainment. The birth of satellite channels and DTH services has redefined the entertainment. Chitrahar and Rangoli have been replaced by MTV Super Select and Humlog has been replaced by Emotional Atyachaar. With the winds of Globalization knocking at our doors, the change is inevitable.

BUNTYS AND BUBBLYS - There is one thing common in these names - Shreya Ghoshal, Sunidhi Chouhan, Prashant Tamang, Debojit. You guess it right! Talent hunts. Cynics criticize them for overdoing everything but the fact is that they are present in nearly all the GECs(general entertainment channels).Looking it in the other way ,it has provided a platform to showcase talents, which till now were either lost into oblivion or were confined within their ‘mohallas’. These shows have given a chance to the middle class of India to dream bigger, have higher aspirations and great ambitions. The message is loud and clear-“The Middle class has arrived”.

YOUTH CONSUMERISM - The mall and multiplex culture has fuelled the nation’s economy. The logic is simple the more you consume, the more is the rate of growth of the economy. With disposable incomes, less liabilities and a humongous market, filled with designer and luxury brands, the Indian youth is on a buying spree. The price war and easy accessibility due to malls have changed the rules of the game and has provided a huge variety of choices amongst the gamut of the products. The brands and accessories used by someone is now a criteria for the echelon of that person amongst its peers.

NEW FACE OF SOCIALISING - 15 years from now and postcards and inland letters will become a passé. We are living in a virtual world where tweets have replaced the mustard coloured postcards, G-talks have lessened our telephone bills, our telephone directories are gathering dust as we now have our friends on our Facebook account. Orkut, Gmail, Tweeter, Bloggerspot, Bigadda and God knows what all are the new tools in the hands of Indian youth for “connecting people”.

RANG DE BASANTI EFFECT - Hats off to Aamir Khan who introduced to us a new way of fighting against the injustice-the candle light vigil. Be it the Jessica lal case or Priyadarshini Mattoo case or Nithari killings or the anti reservation protests or the last year’s candle light vigils after 26/11 against the state to wake them up from their slumber, this new form of protests took the nation and the media away with the storm. The Indian youth once again showed that they are no more naïve and they can also raise their voices against issues concerning the nation.

“Youth for equality” against caste based reservations, the “Pink Chaddhi Campaign” against moral policing or the “Jaago Re’ campaign for making people realize their duty to vote were some examples of youth activism.

What An Idea Sirjee!!

“Marketing is about identifying and meeting human and social needs”.

~Philip Kotler.

The plush Idea cellular office at Windsor Building in Mumbai had a very strange look a year back. The Managing Director of Idea Cellular Sanjeev Aga had a very unusual name -9822005556, while the name plate of CFO read 9920712345 and the CMO Mr.Pradeep Srivastava was now 9920785281.Wow!! What an impact a commercial can make on our collective psyche.

Today the marketplace is radically different as a result of new behaviors, new opportunities, and new challenges. The digital revolution has created an information age which promises to lead to more accurate levels of production, more targeted communication and more relevant pricing. At the same time technological advances in transportation, shipping, and communication have made companies to be globalised which in turn benefits the consumers throughout the globe.

At the same time, the companies and ad film makers have now realised that their commercial which has to be aired for some 60 seconds should not only be about selling that product but should also have a SQ i.e. Social Quotient. The product should tell to the consumers how that product could be useful to the society in which they are living.

Not always are ads meant to sell something. If Greenply ,through its ad ,is trying to project the ‘justice delayed is justice denied’ paradigm through its new commercial in which the durability of the plywood is tested ,then Tata salt comes up with a bizzare tagline “kyooki maine desh ka namak khaya hai” which emphasizes the commitment towards the nation.

Commercials have also acted as eye openers. What could be a better example of this aspect than the ‘Jaago Re’ commercial by Tata tea. The tea giant has shown that the tea is not only used as an awakener in the morning but it can also shake us from our slumber and make us think about the nation by not sitting inside the cosy confines of our homes on the polling day but come out and raise our voices against the present state of affairs.

Make no mistake. All this is not social work. It goes into the building of the brand. Brand building is not a one day affair. It takes time and effort along with a good deal of planning. But once a brand starts getting into the good books of the consumers, there is no turning back. Peter Drucker sums it all, “The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself. Ideally, marketing should result in a customer who is ready to buy.” What an idea Sirjee!!

Cinema As Art

Before I get to the topic, I must validate why I choose to write on this subject, that is cinema. It is because I see Cinema as an Artform, and not merely as a source of entertainment. To which arises the question, what is Art? And to which I must quote the young Marx who said, Art is the greatest pleasure a man can give himself. And pleasure here shouldn’t not be mistaken for entertainment.

It is appalling to see how cinema houses run packed with audience when star-studded movies with absent storylines and minimal thought and perish in their own echoes when rare, thoughtful works are played. The most common excuse we meet to counter such a response is that in a world where one goes through endless ordeals everyday, its unfair to expect deep, profound cinema to find acceptance. One is tempted to ask here, isn’t this an act of both ungratefulness and cowardice to be blatantly ignoring attempts to make one realize the realities of human existence. Must fanciful exaggerations and splendor alone count in as cinema.

The answer to such a question cannot be objective. It must undertake all possible notions and myths that go around, which make cinema a very effective medium. One such myth is that the cinema of Charlie Chaplin is purely slapstick. A second viewing of his works such as The Great Dictator etc sans all possible incumbent prejudices provides a rare insight into the psyche of an autocratic mind; the erratic portrayal reflects a hyper real depiction, unlike the present day caricatures.

For the idea of cinema as art to propagate, it is of primary importance that the didacticism be set aside, and portrayal separated from depiction. To recreate the streets of Dublin, to recreate the feelings of a 2-year old who has lost her way into a cremation ground, to recreate the apathy for death in a Prisoner of War, to imagine the extraterrestrial possibilities and making them intelligible on screen is no mean task.

Cinema today looks to unify all other art forms not by amalgamating them, but by synthesizing them in a manner their individual essence is not lost. Ever since Dali stepped in, and writers like Harold Pinter ventured into this sphere, Cinema has only looked ahead. To pull it down by reducing its limits to mere entertainment is not just an injustice to the men of thought, but the men of action who work to paint these thoughts on canvas. Lest the easel is brought down.

Izz Aal Well?

In recent times, India’s successes at International Sports events make us believe that it is fast shedding its image of a nation incapable of producing great sportsmen. For the girls practicing boxing at Mary Kom’s academy in Manipur, sprinters at P.T. Usha’s academy in Kinalur, Kerala, the footballers at the rising Lajong Shillong FC club and many more young and aspiring sportsmen of India these results inspire them to chase their dream of making it big in the global sports arena. But behind the glaze and glory of every success there is also another side which doesn’t look as inspiring.

Let’s look at the following cases –

• Indian cricket team becoming the no. 1 test playing nation with all the money and politics involved in the much hyped IPL T20 tournament and India’s exit from the league stage of T20 world cup (only god knows how IPL is helping India to play better T20),
• Indian football team winning Nehru cup with most of the other participating nations not even sending their best playing teams,
• Saina Nehwal breaking into the top 10 of world badminton ranking with not even a single player close to her from India,
• Somdev Devvarman and Yuki Bhambri’s new faces of prominence in tennis with the fall of Sania Mirza.
• Vijendra Singh and Sushil Kumar winning bronze medals at Olympics in individual events and Vijendra Singh ranking as the no. 1 boxer not even getting nominated for the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award at first (after lot of protests they finally got the award jointly with Mary Kom),

• Vijay Mallya’s Force India doing well in formula-1 with him considering not a single racer from India good enough to drive on F-1 circuit ,
• Pankaj Advani holding five snooker and billiards titles at a time and becoming only the second cueist after Malta’s Paul Mifsud to win both the snooker and billiards world titles with the daily life of a cricket player getting more media coverage than him,
• Shooting which gave India back to back Olympic medals while NRAI (National Rifles Association Of India) treats its best players like toothbrushes-disposable and replaceable,
• HI (Hockey India which was made after dismissing the corrupt Indian Hockey Federation) not even having enough money to satiate the players playing for India or to support a women’s hockey team,

Amidst all this heavy handedness, mismanagement and politics involved in most of the sport governing bodies, not having enough facilities for practicing, not even the money to make a career in many sports and with a small annual budget, the question is “How can the talented but wrongly directed sportsmen from different parts of the country make their presence felt in the world of sports?”

The 4th Idiot

Imagine this situation. Chatur Ramalingam has a little more brains and decides to get his speech proof – read by someone before he delivers. Wins the heart of Virus on Teacher’s Day. Virus praises him in front of Pia, who finds him cute (like most of us actually did!). In the mean time, Rancho, the stud gets himself into trouble with the Insti once again and gets expelled dragging his friends along with him. And this time the now famous Eureka Forbes product too does not come to his assistance. Mona delivers a baby in a hospital (whose business might have doubled after people saw that you could actually drive into the hospital on a scooty!). Pia marries Chatur and they live happily ever after (and yes Chatur takes Virus’s pen as dowry!)

Seems all wrong. Right? Well actually, wrong. This is what actually happens. The ‘ratta maar’ chooran guys get to take the chicks and the studs are left wielding their sticks! (I hope this line won’t be censored J).

I can say this with the ‘been there, done that’ attitude. Now I hope that the Chaturs of the world won’t have the time to read my words, so I can easily represent the others. So what do you think people, differentiates you from those other side of the line guys. The good boys, who do not have anything to worry, except which firm to actually join out of the 5 offers in hand? Not the intellect pals, but the ability to mug and mug till you fill your jug.

Our education system won’t allow otherwise. Mr. Wangdu perhaps lives in Neverland and not India. Here, our esteemed academicians won’t allow you to develop curiosity. In fact, on the contrary, they will kill it by providing you so much information that you will forget what you were curious about in the first place.

Have you ever found yourself asking the question “Why am I studying this? What’s the use of it?” Congratulations friends, you have accidentally stumbled over the “stud syndrome”. This is the syndrome which caught our 3 idiots, changed their lives et al. So next time, when you find yourself asking questions regarding the ‘use of things’ that are supposedly important, you have joined the ‘idiot’ community.

So what do you do, if you are an engineer and do not like engineering? Leave engineering and pursue your interests; that would be your answer. But the real problem arises when you are not a student of ICE but some 3^rd grade college where the best deal you can get is a job offer from one of the many IT Firms in Bangalore. The actual answer is that you stick to your job offer, try and fall in love with engineering and develop an interest in programming.

Moral of the story: Guys, get back to your notes (which are exact replicas of your books), solve the specimen questions (as the teacher himself doesn’t know more than that) and get an introductory priced sachet of Bengali Baba Ka Chooran. Coz in real life, saying “Aal Izz Well” won’t help you.

The Fall And Fall Of Indian Television

Indian tele serials have indeed come a long way. From the “Buniyaad” of Doordarshan to “Balika Vadhu”, the journey has been a mélange of emotions and reality, a game of TRPs and at the backdrop of all of it minting profits out of melodramatic stories. Nostalgia takes me to the time when as a kid I was this huge fan of Kavita Chowdhary who symbolised the empowered woman of the 80s in the serial “UDAAN”. Its signature tune, some dialogues and scenes have been etched in my memory since then. As a teenager while we had still not switched over to “cable connection”, I remember tapping my feet to the songs being shown on Chitrahaar every Wednesday and Rangoli every Sunday. Then the next series which I watched quite religiously though was Aarohan in which the protagonist played by Pallavi Joshi tries really hard to prove her mettle in the Indian Air force.

Though for the past two to three years, there’s been a deluge of serials on various channels dealing with social issues, I believe they project a befuddling picture of the real situation. Take for instance Balika Vadhu being aired on Colors – instead of highlighting the evils of child marriage and plight of young girls forced into early marriage the serial has gained popularity more for it’s characters like Anandi, Sukhna or Jagdish, the jewellery they flaunt whether it’s a marriage, a bereavement or may be just another normal day! The saas-bahu era may have ended and the next generation of teleserials is at its crescendo but they still miss to strike a cord somewhere. In our routine lives we mango people simply get up, go to work for study, enjoy with friends and keep on chasing our dreams. Where on Earth do we have the luxury of time to adapt that “sharyantkari” (plotting approach) OR act like hyper-emotive human beings who have a unique expression in store for every possible situation?

I find entertainment quotient totally missing in most of these serials. There are times when I’ve surfed from 1 to around 50 or 60 channels and had to remain contented with the news channels, the biz news ones or just to keep myself abreast with the recent “panchayat” right from “Yeh rishta kya kehlata hai” to “Do hanso ka joda” to “Pavitra Rishta……Oh god!

These names do give a sensation of feel-good factor, at the same time increasing my anxiety level all the very more. Why don’t we have something like Friends, the Oprah Winfrey Show, etc., all we’ve managed to do is aping international reality shows so we have Indian Idol on the lines of American Idol, Big Boss on the lines of Big Brother, with the entire format being copied. Where is our creativity? Does our creativity lie only in showing ego-hassles between judges, empathy inciting stories of contestants and their slogging to get that fifteen-minute fame on national television???

Not only do these serials need to evolve, our mindsets also need to come of age. Though the inherent psyche behind these shows seems to take you away from the cacophony of our monotonous lives yet that does not give them a right to propel us into a direction where our thought-process seems to be totally being sucked up by a virtual black-hole.

Vox Populi E - Magazine

Change, changing visions, changing perceptions, changing aspirations, changing attitudes and changing identities. The idea of India has undergone a sea of change. As a country, India might be ancient, but as a nation, India is just over six decades old.

In the past 60 years, India has undergone a lot of changes. Some of them well planned and systematic, but many coincidental or plain accidental. But there has been one thing common in all these changes. The torch bearers have always been the young, the wannabes, the strugglers and the go getters who are always brimming with tremendous amount of energy and passion. Driven by this passion the youth have changed the destinies of the nations.

The Mittals and Murthys of today were once the starry eyed commoners of yesterday. In his autobiography, the legendary Hindi poet Dr.Harivansh Rai Bachhan has written that no body, except their neighbours, knew Amitabh until he became the “Angry Young Man” of India in those turbulent 1970s. Some of the ‘Backstreet Boys’ of yesteryears created their own paths and went forward to break stereotypes. They carved their own niche andbecame pioneers.

Today, as India gets ready to take off its third world nation image today, it reaches out once again to its youth forstrength and direction. And the youth, like always will play its part with utmost responsibility.

For the youth of a nation defying all precedents and predictions we proudly present “VOX POPULI”, literally meaning people’s voice.

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