What is the happy reality of our generation?
09.06.2025 17:53
> “Secularism” was dinned into our ears until it became “second nature”, to most of us anyway.
> 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.
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.
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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.
> 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.
Boys and Girls were strictly segregated.
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The big Cities have gotten bigger and is almost unlivable now, traffic wise.
It was to me, anyway, a relatively chaste period.
Life went on in essentially as a late 19th/early 20th century mold.
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.
Now of course,Today Secularism to many is a dirty word and so is Socialism;
There is a general atmosphere of intolerance towards minorities, with people unafraid to say things that would’ve been unthinkable in my day.
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.
Medical Insurance have proliferated along with US style expensive Doctor Bills.
1947–1964 ( Post Independence Generation). (Roughly Nehruvian)
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Redefined
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.
Schools were fewer. Universities even fewer.
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IIT’s had just been established.
Pluses:
>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.
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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’m going to attempt to taxonomy “Generations” in India as below.
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.
Computers were just creeping in and opposed by the Labor Unions.
On a personal level.
> We grew up basking in the first flush of the pleasant prospect of an “Independent” resurgent India.
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I will also assume that this question is posed vis a vis my generation and compare that to conditions faced by generations today.
Live-in, LGBTQ, none of these made the headlines.
Import Substitution was the mantra.
Hospitals everywhere in India, with excellent care offered.
South Indian Cinema had great actors and story lines that we could relate.
Foreign Exchange were so hard to come by in case you had to go abroad.
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Young Kids have a lot of money these days and are getting married much later.
I will first attempt to use the nomenclature used to distinguish “generations” -albeit from a Desi Slant.
The Airports have gotten better and nicer.
Your parents chose your career path and also your profession. Aptitude be damned.
1964- 1984–1991 ( Roughly Indira/ Rajeev Gandhi)
> The horrors of Partition meant that the Govt would make sincere efforts to put all that behind us and accommodate all faiths.
Bank Jobs were highly sought after.
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).
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2014- Present
Five Star Hotels were not as ubiquitous as today.
Love marriages were all to be ‘gasped at’ so rare were they at that time.
Boys and Girls these days are not afraid to be friends to each other (My opinion overall a good thing)
Nehruvian: I belong to the Nehruvian Generation.
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.
People got married the old fashioned way (mostly).
There was no TV… Doordarshan of very poor quality only reserved for New Delhi.
Foreign goods, forget about it, mostly sold in black markets.
There are Engineering Colleges in almost every street corner, it seems.
Women in India seem to have more freedom, even as they feel more afraid of the general environment.
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.
Very few boys strayed and even fewer girls.
> Indian Political leaders, for the most part, were all men and some women of the highest educational and moral Calibre at all levels.
Ministers etc. were the only ones to have the Indian Flag on their bonnets. (Don’t know why?)
> India’s population was around 365 million.
1991- 2014 ( P.V. Narasimha Rao/ MMS)
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.
Growing up in this decade.
The middle class was small, but not that stressed from inflation etc.
5 Star hotels are dime a dozen.
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.
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?
2014- Present ( Modi).
Education has gotten so much more expensive.
> Idealism reigned supreme, about the Govt. and it people and why not?
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.
And then we did not have Google, Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram.
Everything is available today without any delay. You have the money, you got it in today’s India.
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.
Newspapers also heavily censored themselves- clashes were referred to as “communal disturbances” between two communities. No details.
Study of Law (so important in my Dad’s generation gave way to Engineering and Medicine)
Live in relationship; Divorce (almost unheard of in my youth) don’t raise an eyebrow.