EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
The manifestos of major political parties announced recently are bristling with promises for the youth. For good reason. As India votes to elect a new Lok Sabha beginning April 19, that demographic will be represented by a mammoth swathe of 210 million youth aged between 18 and 29, constituting 22 per cent of the total electorate—a size that beats Russia in terms of population and is big enough to form the eighth-largest country in the world. Among them will be 18.4 million first-time voters. With a much higher degree of youth investment in politics than ever before, they have emerged as a decisive component of the Indian electorate. A few simple data points illustrate that. Historically, the democratic process was characterised by youth apathy. Till a decade ago, the percentage of youth voting ranged at levels that went even seven percentage points below the overall voter turnout. That gap started narrowing in 2014, bringing us to the present moment where the youth are putting a new coat of paint on politics and electoral outcomes.
Clinching proof already came in 2019, when the turnout among the band of voters in the 18-29 age bracket was a high 67 per cent, just 1 percentage point below the total turnout. That amounted to 153 million votes. A post-poll survey by Lokniti-CSDS showed that youth voters tilted the balance overwhelmingly in favour of the BJP. The survey found that 41 per cent of the youth voters, or nearly 63 million, had backed the BJP. That constituted as much as 57 per cent of the vote dierence of 110 million between the Congress and the BJP. It was also 7 percentage points higher than what the BJP got from the youth in 2014. The time had clearly come for greenfield politics.
As a result, the campaigns of major parties and their leaders in Election 2024 are increasingly being tailored to the tastes of the young and moving into newly buzzing channels of communication. On April 13, just a week before the first phase of voting, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was found bonding with seven top Indian gamers. In March, he engaged in light-hearted banter with social media influencers who run popular YouTube channels like BeerBiceps and Curly Tales. As for Congress scion Rahul Gandhi, who at age 53 is still within the elastic stretch of the ‘youth leader’ concept, the connection is organic enough. From Q&A sessions and town halls at universities to masala dosa breaks with delivery boys, greasing the groove with bike mechanics and having jobless youth clamber on top of his campaign vehicles, Rahul makes sure he exudes the vibe. In fact, his social media team, which runs bustling spaces across platforms, may have been more alive to the potentialities of these newer modes of communicating. Modi had already mined the concept of politicians having “non-political, candid” conversations, say with his 2019 interview with Bollywood star Akshay Kumar. But what set the ball rolling into these newer pastures was the popular Sunday Brunch programme on food and travel blogger Kamiya Jani’s Curly Tales channel, when she featured Rahul in January last year during his Bharat Jodo Yatra. The show went viral and has garnered 1.7 million views till date. Recent Curly Tales episodes starring two Union ministers—a vadapav-and-Chinese food session with Nitin Gadkari (3 million views) and a home dinner with Smriti Irani (1.7 m)—have kept that front buzzing.
But what moves the young voter? The modes of communication signal a natural spirit of dialogue and camaraderie on all sides. The content of these conversations, though, presents an interesting binary between the approaches of the ruling party and the Opposition. The BJP’s is a pride-based approach, seeking to create and tap into a positive emotion around identity themes like religion and nationalism. It certainly has its resonance. In the India Today Mood of the Nation (MOTN) poll in February, 23 per cent of respondents in the 18-24 age group chose the Ram temple in Ayodhya as Modi’s biggest achievement, 6 percentage points above the national average. A buzz about India’s global image forms a ‘nationalist’ corollary to that Hindutva appeal, with the G20 presidency, the success of Chandrayaan-3, the promise of making India the third-largest economy and the proposal to bring the Olympics to India in 2036 feeding into that. This is the dream encompassed by Modi’s concept of making India ‘Viksit Bharat’ (Developed India) by 2047.
On the other hand, Congress and the rest of the Opposition are taking the hard nuts-and-bolts, existential approach. They point to the greyer tones in the economy, especially unemployment. The share of educated unemployed youth in the 15-29 age group had climbed to 66 per cent by 2022—from 54 per cent two decades before. Historic highs on the joblessness front form the leitmotif of Rahul’s overall discourse. The party’s concrete guarantees for the youth strike right at this area of despair: including an innovative assured apprenticeship scheme with a stipend of Rs 1 lakh per year for freshers, the filling up of 3 million government vacancies and a onetime write-o of educational loans, with job reservations via the caste census part of the blend. Younger Opposition leaders like Bihar’s Tejashwi Yadav, 34, are also mining this territory with a singular focus. How this will be delivered is not really addressed.
Overall, there is a new consciousness that we choose a design plan for India’s future by electing a new government. Also, an instrument with which to manufacture that future. The youth has, without doubt, the most stakes in the future. That is why, for this cover story, we have labelled young voters in the 18-29 age group as ‘Gen-V’ or Generation Viksit Bharat, as they are the ones who will reap the benefits the most if India emerges as a developed country when it celebrates 100 years of its Independence. All major parties are talking the language of aspirations, though in dierent ways. Which way will the youth turn? Executive Editor Kaushik Deka captures this vital segment of the electoral landscape in our cover story this week while our editorial team fanned out to reach a gallery of young voters from across India, who we feature speaking their minds in an expansive Youthspeak section. Good time for them to speak, vote and have a say in their own future. In population ratio terms, India has begun to descend from the crest of its famed ‘demographic dividend’. This may be the last chance for the parties to harvest it.