Indian election: Generational shift

The son of an uneducated subsistence farmer in India's Hindi heartland, Anil Kumar Bahe, 25, watched as his parents faithfully voted for the Congress party, which casts itself as the champion of poor families such as his. But in India's upcoming parliamentary election, Mr Bahe, who is completing a postgraduate degree in chemistry, plans to break from his family's political tradition.

Mr Bahe, who aspires to a position as a state college lecturer or a job in one of India's many private pharmaceutical companies, says he intends to support the centre-right Bharatiya Janata party, whose prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, has vowed to create 10m jobs for the young if he comes to power.

Promises of job creation appeal to the chemistry student far more than the high-profile social welfare schemes launched over the past decade by Congress, which Mr Bahe says have not even touched his remote village in the state of Madhya Pradesh. "We've heard about these schemes but we don't see any signs of them being implemented," he says. "But rather than being given money and handouts, people should be given opportunities."

Mr Bahe's attitudes and electoral preferences reflect a dramatic social shift in India that is shaking the political establishment. This shift is being driven by the rising aspirations of youth from humble rural and urban backgrounds, who are desperate to avoid the lives of grinding toil of their parents and find a place in a modern, globalised economy.

Indians born around 1991, when New Delhi began to dismantle extensive controls over the economy, are coming of age and are hungry for the trappings of a comfortable middle- class lifestyle.

This post-liberalisation generation - those between 18 and 23 years old - will account for at least 65m, or about 8 per cent, of India's 814m eligible voters in the election, giving them considerable influence on the outcome. For most of these young voters, jobs and opportunity are the main concern as they prepare to choose between the incumbent Congress, opposition BJP, anti-corruption Aam Aadmi party, and a flurry of state-level parties.

"We want good education, better jobs and a good life," says 18-year-old Jay Ramteke, a farmer's son who is studying geology at the government university in the Hindi heartland town of Sagar. "Everybody is talking about Narendra Modi. Now we have to see: can he deliver?"

Interviews with scores of young people, many from humble, rural backgrounds, at government and private colleges in Sagar suggest it is Mr Modi who is most successfully connecting with the aspirations of young Indians. There is widespread disillusionment with Congress and doubts about AAP's credibility.

"Congress has not done anything - the only thing they've done is promote corruption," says Ranjit Singh, 21, a commerce student, whose father is an army contractor. "Our only hope is Narendra Modi. If he comes as prime minister, development will take place." His friend and fellow commerce student, Rohit Hasreja, 21, whose father owns a small bakery, says: "Modi doesn't fear anyone and he takes whatever decisions he thinks are necessary."

The Hindu nationalist BJP first established itself on the national scene in the 1990s, with inflammatory rhetoric about restoring the mythic glories of India's ancient, pre-Islamic past. But today, Mr Modi has ditched such talk, replacing it with a message focused on economic progress. His speeches are punctuated with "management-speak" to convey his administrative prowess.

In the campaign, Mr Modi is also emphasising his humble origins as a tea-seller's son. It is something he never mentioned in state-level campaigns in Gujarat but he hopes it will boost his national appeal among young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, whose families may be traditional Congress supporters.

"The BJP is not talking about the past, it's talking about a future," says Devesh Kapur, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Centre for the Advanced Study of India. "It's a message of aspiration: we think you can be someone."

Under Manmohan Singh, the prime minister, and Sonia Gandhi, the party leader, Congress has often appeared to see a different India. It is a poorer, more desperate, less hopeful country, where most families struggle to survive and need help to ease their suffering.

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Even Rahul Gandhi, Congress's new generation leader, seems infused with a traditional elite attitude of noblesse oblige. The 43-year-old scion of a family that produced three prime ministers still appears to cling to the idea that the state's job is to protect the poor rather than empower them to escape poverty.

"Congress is a rule of old men over a young country," says Mr Kapur. "They never got how the country was changing. They are all locked into that vision of India that existed when they were growing up - where people were destitute, at the margins of survival, and had no idea of aspiration. It is a vision of India that is no longer true for a majority of Indians."

As recently as 15 years ago, most poor, rural Indians had only hazy ideas of what lay beyond their village or the nearest market town because they were largely cut off from the wider world by lack of telecommunications and roads. Television was rare and even where it was available, was limited to dull fare served up by Doordarshan, the stodgy state broadcaster. Government services such as schools and clinics barely functioned; many families struggled just to get by.

Since then, much of India's countryside has been transformed. The country now has 900m mobile connections, many owned by rural families, and 111m of its 246m households have TV, offering up to 786 private satellite channels in a range of local languages. Much of rural India is increasingly urbanised as families sell farmland to property developers or are drawn to opportunities in nearby towns, aided by better road and transport networks

"India's urban rural-divide is no longer an urban-rural divide," says Jahangir Aziz, chief Asia economist for JPMorgan. "Even if they are living in villages, people are able to associate and empathise much more with urban ideals, urban aspirations and urban lifestyles. You identify with the urban mindset: jobs matter, high-paying jobs matter."

Education has expanded dramatically. From 2001 to 2013, India opened more than 23,000 public and private universities and colleges, adding capacity for 11m students, many of whom receive state-funded scholarships and are the first in their families to be educated. With 22m young people now enrolled in tertiary education, gross enrolment levels have jumped from 11 per cent of age-eligible students in 2004 to 23 per cent in 2011, according to the World Bank.

Poverty has also fallen, although the magnitude of decline is a matter of debate. India estimates 22 per cent of its 1.2bn people live in poverty from 37 per cent in 2005, although critics say the national poverty line is drawn unrealistically low. The World Bank says the number of Indians living on less than $1.25 a day has dropped from 42 per cent of the population in 2005 to 33 per cent in 2010.

But instead of boosting the ruling party, these momentous shifts have brought rising expectations, fuelling fierce disaffection. While the economy expanded at an average annual rate of 7.7 per cent over the decade of Congress rule, growth has slowed sharply from 9.3 per cent in 2010-11 to less than 5 per cent in the past two years, while inflation has been persistently high.

"People's lives have improved but they've only tasted what it could be," says Rajiv Lall, executive chairman of the Infrastructure Development Finance Corporation. "Their most recent and most tangible memory is what happened over the past two years: the momentum they thought they had has suddenly seemed to be shaking. Things they have begun to aspire to have suddenly become less affordable. That's hugely frustrating."

Even more upsetting for many of India's newly educated young people is the discovery that their hard-won degrees do not bring jobs automatically. Just 51 per cent of Indians participate in the labour force - 77 per cent of men and 23 per cent of women. Of those working, 48 per cent are self- employed, 32 per cent are casual labourers and less than 18 per cent have steady, salaried positions.

At 9.4 per cent, the unemployment rate for college graduates is significantly higher than the national average. But companies routinely complain they cannot find qualified manpower. Even those with degrees in technical subjects such as engineering often lack the basic skills required for the job. "Just because they've been to college doesn't mean they've got an appropriate education and can get a job," says Mr Lal. "They are now realising it."

Congress has focused much of its rhetoric on elaborate social protection programmes: its flagship National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, a make-work scheme that promises 100 days of paid, unskilled manual labour to one adult from every rural household, and its more recent right-to-food programme, which will increase distribution of subsidised foodgrains.

While these initiatives undoubtedly resonate with the poorest Indian families, many youth are looking for much more: the tools to rise higher on India's economic and social ladder.

"The thing youth want most is education - if they are educated, they will be employed and they will be self-reliant," says Parul, who studies engineering at Swami Vivekananda University, a private college, whose students mostly receive government scholarships for children from low-income families.

Mr Gandhi seems to have suddenly woken up to his party's alienationfrom India's young aspirers. Recently, he has begun talking about how Congress will help an estimated 700m people, who are already above the poverty level, to "upgrade" to the middle class.

Yet such talk is too late to impress Swapnil Jaiswal, a 21-year-old, now living in Bhopal and taking tutorial classes to prepare for a competitive exam for a position at one of the state banks that still dominates India's financial sector.

Mr Jaiswa says he will cast his vote for Mr Modi come election day. "The country is going at the speed of a tortoise - it is not moving at all," he says. "There are so many people and no opportunities. Congress wants to give everything for free. But we want to be empowered so we can take advantage of all the good things in life based on our own capabilities."

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