There is a curious spectacle unfolding in India.
Young men and women are taking to the streets, challenging a political establishment that many of their parents continue to admire. The controversy surrounding the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has become a rallying point, but I suspect something much larger is at work.
India’s young were promised a demographic dividend: education, opportunity, prosperity and a place in the world’s fastest-growing economies. Instead, many have encountered unemployment, examination scandals, economic insecurity and a widening gap between political promises and everyday reality.
SIR may be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.
But what interests me most isn’t simply why these young people are protesting.
It’s how some of them came to question political and ideological beliefs that their own parents hold so dearly.
After all, these youngsters didn’t arrive from Mars. They grew up in the same homes, attended the same family gatherings and were exposed to many of the same beliefs. Somewhere along the way, something changed.
The Paradox of the Educated Parent
Consider India’s educated, economically comfortable middle class. Accomplished professionals, successful entrepreneurs, academics and retired executives. Many are enthusiastic supporters of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whom they credit with restoring national pride and providing decisive leadership.
Their political preferences are theirs to hold. But among the more devoted, admiration sometimes becomes something less healthy: an unwillingness to question.
Criticism of government policy becomes an attack on India by vested interests. Dissent becomes evidence of an international conspiracy, invariably involving mysterious “toolkits” whose existence apparently requires less proof than the allegations they supposedly explain. Questions about religious claims become assaults on civilization. Contradictory evidence is dismissed before it is even examined.
Yet these are often the very parents who invested considerable resources in giving their children the best education possible.
They spent a small fortune on education that enabled their children to think. The trouble began when the children started thinking for themselves.
How did this happen?
Perhaps the answer lies not in differences of intelligence or education, but in how successive generations acquire, retain and challenge their beliefs.
From Inherited Certainty to Examined Conviction
For generations, children inherited more than their parents’ property. They inherited political loyalties, religious beliefs, social prejudices and attitudes toward authority.
Family supplied the beliefs. Schools and community institutions reinforced them. Society rewarded conformity. Questioning elders was disrespectful; questioning religious or political authority could be considerably worse.
Then came the smartphone. And, just as importantly, remarkably affordable mobile data.
Suddenly, a young Indian could watch political debates in London, examine education systems in Scandinavia, encounter competing interpretations of history and observe young people elsewhere challenging their governments.
The smartphone became an intellectual passport, allowing its owner to venture beyond the worldview of the family living room.
And comparison is a profoundly subversive activity.
A young person who is constantly told that India is the world’s greatest civilization might reasonably wonder why other countries seem to deliver better public services, educational opportunities or individual freedoms.
But there’s an interesting cognitive dimension to this generational divide.
Scientists call it cognitive offloading: delegating mental tasks to external tools or other people. Perfectly sensible when remembering telephone numbers. Rather more troubling when we outsource our judgment on important matters.
For some, political leaders, religious authorities and WhatsApp groups have become convenient substitutes for independent thought.
Why trouble the brain with evidence when the family WhatsApp group has already reached a unanimous verdict?
Gen Z is hardly immune. It can just as easily surrender its judgment to an influencer, an algorithm or an AI chatbot.
And not all young Indians reject Modi or Hindutva. Many remain enthusiastic supporters. Nor are older Indians universally deferential to authority.
The real divide, therefore, may not be generational at all.
It may be between inherited certainty and examined conviction.
Between accepting something because a trusted authority says it is true and believing something because one has critically examined the evidence.
The internet has not automatically made young people better thinkers. But it has given them unprecedented opportunities to question what they have been taught.
Whether they exercise that opportunity is another matter entirely.
When the Promise Collides With Reality
There is another reason young Indians may be growing disillusioned.
They are living with the consequences of decisions their parents can sometimes afford to regard as abstractions.
For a comfortably retired professional, unemployment may be a statistic. For a twenty-four-year-old engineering graduate sending out her hundredth job application, it is her life.
For an established businessman, communal polarization may be something to argue about at the club. For a young person trying to build a life across India’s religious and linguistic boundaries, it can become a daily obstacle.
For a parent with a settled career, a leaked examination paper is another regrettable headline. For a student who has spent two years preparing for that examination, it can be catastrophic.
The older generation may judge the government by the greatness it promises. The younger generation increasingly has reason to judge it by the future it delivers.
There is a considerable difference.
The Real Demographic Dividend
For decades, India touted its enormous youth population as an economic advantage. Millions of young workers, engineers, entrepreneurs and consumers were supposed to propel the country into a new era of prosperity for everyone.
But a demographic dividend is not an inheritance. It is an investment that must be made.
And when the promised opportunities fail to materialize, the very generation expected to power the economy begin questioning those who govern it.
Yet perhaps something more consequential is emerging.
What if India’s greatest demographic dividend turns out to be intellectual rather than merely economic?
A generation increasingly willing to question inherited beliefs, challenge established authority and demand that national greatness be measured not by political slogans, but by the opportunities and freedoms available to ordinary citizens.
That would be a dividend no economist could easily quantify. And one that no government could afford to ignore.