Considering the affluence created by the free-market economic boom in India, the likes and dislikes of the Indian urban youth are no more indigenous. The new Indian global citizen is more aware of brands and less so of politics and heritage.
The new Indian global citizen is more aware of brands and less so of politics and heritage. –Source: globalcc
In urban India today, dhabas have given way to continental cuisine; dietary preferences have shifted from homemade daal and sabzi to a variety of meat, poultry and fish; ‘veg’ is no more the mantra, and there is so much of eating out that it can be disgruntling. Youngsters from and in Delhi do not tire of discussing shopping and food. Consumerism seems, well, to consume the hearts and minds of the new, urban Indian.
At a recent media conference at Goa senior Indian editors complained of the de-politicised youth who, they said, were are no more interested in the tree that gave them the fruit of the economic boom, namely democracy.
A Bombay-based editor shared his agony over the fact that a week after the Mumbai attack last year some 150,000 youngsters swamped the streets to demand martial law because they saw the attacks as a failure of democracy. ‘It’s because we don’t have people like Gandhi and Nehru anymore; people who had a story to tell,’ he lamented.
A schoolteacher reaffirmed this view, saying that today’s youth did not have an Indian role model to emulate. She said many in affluent schools and colleges had it all, making them uninterested in the miseries of the teeming millions whose lot had not seen a change in generations. A teacher for 10 years, she said that she sensed among her fifth- and sixth-standard pupils a widening urban-rural disconnect. ‘They are simply not interested in knowing the other side of the story which we were raised on in a more socially responsible India,’ she complained.
Meanwhile, another senior, yet surprisingly young, editor of a Delhi-based influential magazine remained preoccupied with the variety and quality of food that was on offer in Goa. You could tell she was missing Delhi already even as she made a list of what Goan spices and nuts to take back home with her.
I asked her the reason for this preoccupation. Her honest response was: ‘This fancy, continental food and drink thing arrived in India in a big way just in the last five or six years. It’s still a novelty. We’re overwhelmed and loving every minute of it.’ Good copy for an eatery’s advert, you think.
Celebrity TV food show host Vinod Dua could not agree more, literally calling food and drink his ‘life support,’ with a wry smile that had its own generosity. He volunteered to take us on a tour of the many wondrous beachfront shacks — read gourmet restaurants-cum-bars — that line some 50 odd miles of Goa’s seafront.
Unlike at Thailand’s resorts there’s little that’s indigenous left here save Konkani seafood or chicken curry; the range of the local food available is dwarfed by the huge choice in continental cuisine. And India is savouring every helping of it.
Back on a tiring five-hour-long flight to Delhi via Bombay on a budget airline which sells snacks on the plane, it struck one that the passenger profile did not reflect the diversity of India as hungry travellers ordered their chicken sandwiches. The average age of the passengers was representative of the emerging young middle class; people in their teens and 20s sporting designer, western outfits outnumbered the older generation by a huge margin; these were no backpackers but young office executives or college students.
The increased mobility among the youth, travelling for both business and pleasure, reflects the massive overhauls that Bombay and Delhi air traffic hubs are undergoing. Existing plane bridges cannot match the sheer number of planes parked on the tarmac at a given point, and have been restricted to catering to international flights only. As I recall, the flight that took me to Bombay from Dubai last year had to circle the Indian skies between Bombay and Pune for an hour before a parking bay became available on the ground at two in the morning.
Delhi today can mirror only itself. Another city its size is unimaginable. Infrastructure building projects, including the world’s latest mass rapid transit metro technology, can be seen in the massive metropolis. The capital territory is now flanked by the new cities of Noida and Gurgaon.
Even as the partially functional metro is being built, Delhiites remain skeptical of any decrease in their city’s vehicle population.
Statistics reveal monthly automobile purchases in Delhi outnumber the total new sales in Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai put together. The city’s wide boulevards and flyovers choke with traffic all day. Still, it doesn’t seem to get enough of its SUVs and other luxury vehicles.
Delhi’s malls and markets, studded with specialty global brands, betray the shoppers’ insatiable appetite. Here, again, the customer profile is increasingly younger than, say, 10 years ago. They shop like there’s no tomorrow. The contrast of swanky south Delhi with its poorer twin in the north is, however, unmistakable. The brand equity of the rising south does not find resonance in Chandni Chowk, for here still live the multitudes of the have-nots.
Historically, Delhi has been not one but many cities. Spread from Shahjahanabad in the north to Tughlaqabad and Lutyen’s Delhi to Mahroli in the south, here’s India’s sprawling capital with its eyes set on the future. In this time warp of sorts, however, there remains a multitude confined to the past for not getting the hang of the free-market economy. Third World development patterns dictate that in India’s capital the south must be richer than the north.
New face of urban India
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