Why the Indian politician is still unable to woo Gen Y

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent interaction with students on dealing with exam stress prompts the question, why have we not seen our politicians woo Gen Y more. Apart from the late President Abdul Kalam most of our politicians have chosen to keep the younger generation at arms’ length – clapping politely when they perform at functions, awarding them trophies, giving speeches at universities, but never really talking to them. Indeed, if you were to go by the behaviour of our politicians, you would not be wrong in concluding that they are either afraid of Gen Y or regard them as irrelevant – the latter most likely to be the case.

Such behaviour is all the more mysterious when it comes to our country. As everyone knows, the key to any Indian family’s heart is to engage with their children. It is not far-fetched to say that if a politician, while campaigning, took time out to listen to children’s problems, he might even find himself more popular than if he promised jobs, better infrastructure, fixed law and order problems etc. In fact, it’s a sure thing.

The above point is so obvious that the question remains why haven’t more Indian politicians done it? The answer is simple – they don’t know how. India’s patriarchal system has ensured that politicians have largely till date reached out to the decision-makers – men. With this Modi government, a more open bid has been made to actively woo women through promoting Jan Dhan accounts as a way where she can retain her financial independence and the proposed banning of instant triple talaq. So adult men and women have been brought into the fray, but Gen Y are to be seen but not heard.   

The Prime Minister’s recent move shows the Indian politician’s bid to break away from this Victorian notion but the going will not be easy. Despite the respect for seniority, the younger generation will ask questions that their adult counterparts will probably not think of or dare to – witness how one student asked the PM how he was preparing for the 2019 national polls ‘exam’.

Second, today’s youth cannot be micro-managed. Yes, you can to some extent offer Gen Y sops like government jobs, money etc. and yes tribal, caste and religious concerns still dominate in large pockets of India, but as every parent knows – the youth of India increasingly have a very different set of concerns from their elders. Some of these include – getting married to a person of one’s choice, not following the family profession, dealing with break-ups, family pressure to earn, Internet addiction, safety for women, higher education for girls etc. These are concerns that are coming up again and again in the media and cannot be mended or dealt with in one-line promises. They also cannot be blamed on previous governments – there has to be action, action that often cannot be quantified in five years of power and doesn’t add to GDP or foreign exchange reserves.  

So, why would a politician want to wade into what seems to be a political mess. The answer is, thanks to India’s growing youth population, he will soon not have a choice. College campus agitations, especially in the Capital, have been steadily growing and become more heated as compared to previous years. We have seen a rise in young leaders such as Kanhaiya Kumar, Jignesh Mevani who whether you care for them or not will make their presence felt. If they do not, other youth leaders will come up soon.  

On the online front, the rise of social media platforms means that ‘kids’ are setting the political agenda. Granted, at the moment Gen Y are espousing the praise or blame of one major party or another online but it should not be long before we see some form of common ‘youth issues’ dominating the agenda and given the frustration and eagerness of the Indian youth to see quick delivery it’s likely to be sooner rather than later.

That’s where the Indian politician has been left scratching his head. What are these common youth issues? How do we address them? Rahul Gandhi has resorted to constant tweeting, Arvind Kejriwal to gtalk, to show that they are with it and accessible but what they haven’t realised it’s the substance not the style. The PM has galvanised the youth of India, or at least a section of the youth of India, around the issue of national pride and has seized on an issue that matters to them – exams. But that still just scratches the surface. All political parties need to work out a common strategy that matters to a youth residing in Agartala, Mumbai and Chennai. That road will not be easy to find and even less easy for a party to follow.