What is the happy reality of our generation?
Last Updated: 16.06.2025 07:58
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.
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 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.
What kind of person makes you think "how come there are people like that"?
1991- 2014 ( P.V. Narasimha Rao/ MMS)
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?
> 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.
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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.
Medical Insurance have proliferated along with US style expensive Doctor Bills.
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.
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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).
Computers were just creeping in and opposed by the Labor Unions.
The middle class was small, but not that stressed from inflation etc.
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There was no TV… Doordarshan of very poor quality only reserved for New Delhi.
IIT’s had just been established.
And then we did not have Google, Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram.
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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.
Five Star Hotels were not as ubiquitous as today.
What does it mean when a British person says "I can't be asked"?
Boys and Girls these days are not afraid to be friends to each other (My opinion overall a good thing)
The Airports have gotten better and nicer.
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.
What was the worst spanking you got growing up?
Foreign goods, forget about it, mostly sold in black markets.
I’m going to attempt to taxonomy “Generations” in India as below.
> “Secularism” was dinned into our ears until it became “second nature”, to most of us anyway.
Growing up in this decade.
Schools were fewer. Universities even fewer.
Ministers etc. were the only ones to have the Indian Flag on their bonnets. (Don’t know why?)
How do you know when your skirt is too short?
Very few boys strayed and even fewer girls.
Bank Jobs were highly sought after.
There is a general atmosphere of intolerance towards minorities, with people unafraid to say things that would’ve been unthinkable in my day.
Live-in, LGBTQ, none of these made the headlines.
Young Kids have a lot of money these days and are getting married much later.
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.
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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.
> 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.
> India’s population was around 365 million.
Have you ever secretly watched someone while they were doing something private?
I will first attempt to use the nomenclature used to distinguish “generations” -albeit from a Desi Slant.
2014- Present ( Modi).
> Idealism reigned supreme, about the Govt. and it people and why not?
What’s the worst thing you caught anyone in your family doing?
>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.
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.
> We grew up basking in the first flush of the pleasant prospect of an “Independent” resurgent India.
> The horrors of Partition meant that the Govt would make sincere efforts to put all that behind us and accommodate all faiths.
> Indian Political leaders, for the most part, were all men and some women of the highest educational and moral Calibre at all levels.
Hospitals everywhere in India, with excellent care offered.
Why do I (45, male) feel like I'm crushing on a girl (19, female)?
Redefined
The big Cities have gotten bigger and is almost unlivable now, traffic wise.
5 Star hotels are dime a dozen.
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.
Now of course,Today Secularism to many is a dirty word and so is Socialism;
2014- Present
1947–1964 ( Post Independence Generation). (Roughly Nehruvian)
People got married the old fashioned way (mostly).
Education has gotten so much more expensive.
1964- 1984–1991 ( Roughly Indira/ Rajeev Gandhi)
Indian industry started to make cars and other goods.
Life went on in essentially as a late 19th/early 20th century mold.
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.
Newspapers also heavily censored themselves- clashes were referred to as “communal disturbances” between two communities. No details.
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.
Pluses:
Your parents chose your career path and also your profession. Aptitude be damned.
On a personal level.
South Indian Cinema had great actors and story lines that we could relate.
Study of Law (so important in my Dad’s generation gave way to Engineering and Medicine)
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.
Import Substitution was the mantra.
Nehruvian: I belong to the Nehruvian Generation.
Boys and Girls were strictly segregated.
Foreign Exchange were so hard to come by in case you had to go abroad.
Women in India seem to have more freedom, even as they feel more afraid of the general environment.
Everything is available today without any delay. You have the money, you got it in today’s India.
There are Engineering Colleges in almost every street corner, it seems.
Live in relationship; Divorce (almost unheard of in my youth) don’t raise an eyebrow.
Love marriages were all to be ‘gasped at’ so rare were they at that time.
It was to me, anyway, a relatively chaste period.