What is the happy reality of our generation?
12.06.2025 02:21
Foreign goods, forget about it, mostly sold in black markets.
Very few boys strayed and even fewer girls.
1947–1964 ( Post Independence Generation). (Roughly Nehruvian)
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Schools were fewer. Universities even fewer.
5 Star hotels are dime a dozen.
Now folks on Quora have undoubtably heard the so-called term “Boomer Generation” used in the US. Interestingly enough these time periods dovetail quite nicely with “Indian Conditions” as well.
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IIT’s had just been established.
I know that some will cavil that I am ignoring I. K. Gujral, Chandrasekhar, Deve Gowda, Morarji Desai, even the redoubtable A.B. Vajpayee’s stint as PM. But bear with me, for the moment. This is done on purpose and to make comparisons simpler.
I will first attempt to use the nomenclature used to distinguish “generations” -albeit from a Desi Slant.
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Also, the Indian Economy while growing fast, is not able to provide jobs for sizable number of young men in the nation and that is a problem.
> India’s population was around 365 million.
Live in relationship; Divorce (almost unheard of in my youth) don’t raise an eyebrow.
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Growing up in this decade.
Everything is available today without any delay. You have the money, you got it in today’s India.
Medical Insurance have proliferated along with US style expensive Doctor Bills.
It was very very hard for the general category people to get seats in the few Engineering and Medical Colleges in the State, let alone the IIT’s.
I will also assume that this question is posed vis a vis my generation and compare that to conditions faced by generations today.
There was no TV… Doordarshan of very poor quality only reserved for New Delhi.
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As far as the vast majority of Indians, who lived from hand to mouth, there was hope and relief in a plethora of laws passed.
> Leaders such as Nehru, Rajaji, Morarji Desai etc. were held to the highest standard and they fulfilled that expectation. The idea that they were corrupt was unthinkable, any more than the thought that one’s parents had sex with each other. It was an age, in retrospect, of “innocence” and not just at the level of us kids.
Education has gotten so much more expensive.
I’m going to attempt to taxonomy “Generations” in India as below.
1991- 2014 ( P.V. Narasimha Rao/ MMS)
Your parents chose your career path and also your profession. Aptitude be damned.
Do you wear tights for warmth or to make your legs look better?
Young Kids have a lot of money these days and are getting married much later.
Even though inflation was rising, there was a semblance of stability in the daily routine of everybody. The institutions and arms of the Govt. worked for the most part. Judiciary, Police, Govt bureaucracy etc.
Indian Media is being controlled by a few business houses and the news especially foreign news is presented in a slanted way to suit the way, the Govt. would like it to be seen or not seen at all.
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The Airports have gotten better and nicer.
Study of Law (so important in my Dad’s generation gave way to Engineering and Medicine)
Bank Jobs were highly sought after.
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There are also proliferation of IT cells that offer an altered reality of the world, as they would like to see it and not as it really is.
South Indian Films have now gained an All India Traction and seems to be edging out Bollywood, as it portrays less of a fake India than Bollywood.
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> River Dams, Public Sector undertakings, Five year Plans galore, HMT, HAL, ITI etc. gave us the aam aami the euphoric feeling that we were on the right track to our deserved place as a great power in the comity of nations.
There are Engineering Colleges in almost every street corner, it seems.
There is a general atmosphere of intolerance towards minorities, with people unafraid to say things that would’ve been unthinkable in my day.
The middle class was small, but not that stressed from inflation etc.
1964- 1984–1991 ( Roughly Indira/ Rajeev Gandhi)
> “Secularism” was dinned into our ears until it became “second nature”, to most of us anyway.
2014- Present ( Modi).
On a personal level.
Five Star Hotels were not as ubiquitous as today.
Pluses:
We had to wait for everything. Cars, Scooters, you name it. Nehru’s socialism meant that like the Soviet Union that he admired: There was a wait list for everything.
Computers were just creeping in and opposed by the Labor Unions.
The first flush of aaya rams and gaya rams were creeping into the body politic of our legislature and that is when I left for the USA and that was almost 50 yrs. ago.
2014- Present
The big Cities have gotten bigger and is almost unlivable now, traffic wise.
Boys and Girls were strictly segregated.
Import Substitution was the mantra.
> We grew up basking in the first flush of the pleasant prospect of an “Independent” resurgent India.
Now of course,Today Secularism to many is a dirty word and so is Socialism;
Nehruvian: I belong to the Nehruvian Generation.
People got married the old fashioned way (mostly).
> The horrors of Partition meant that the Govt would make sincere efforts to put all that behind us and accommodate all faiths.
Love marriages were all to be ‘gasped at’ so rare were they at that time.
Redefined
Boys and Girls these days are not afraid to be friends to each other (My opinion overall a good thing)
And then we did not have Google, Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram.
It was to me, anyway, a relatively chaste period.
The first flush of enthusiasm of the Nehruvian age soon turned into despondency as Public Sector Industry after Public Sector Industry were all running in losses.
Women in India seem to have more freedom, even as they feel more afraid of the general environment.
> Indian Political leaders, for the most part, were all men and some women of the highest educational and moral Calibre at all levels.
Indian industry started to make cars and other goods.
Many Indian Journalists have now been co opted so that they too are now in the money making business and currying favor with the powers that be. So how objective can their writings be?
Hospitals everywhere in India, with excellent care offered.
> Idealism reigned supreme, about the Govt. and it people and why not?
Govt. careers, such as IAS, IPS etc. very quickly gave way to Engineering /Medical degrees in the newly developing India (At least in the South).
>Both Central and State. Most of the Leaders were educated in the finest traditions of liberalism, often at Oxford and Cambridge and they had sacrificed their ‘cushy futures” for the cause of independence. When country’s rule passed into their hands, what would one expect?. Little if any corruption at the highest levels, or at least the perception of it.
Ministers etc. were the only ones to have the Indian Flag on their bonnets. (Don’t know why?)
Hindi Cinema had some great songs and tunes, even if many of us in the South especially didn’t understand such words as Ishq, Waqt, Zulf in the Hindi songs.
Foreign Exchange were so hard to come by in case you had to go abroad.
South Indian Cinema had great actors and story lines that we could relate.
Newspapers also heavily censored themselves- clashes were referred to as “communal disturbances” between two communities. No details.
Live-in, LGBTQ, none of these made the headlines.
Life went on in essentially as a late 19th/early 20th century mold.