Tuesday, 15 September 2009

Lacuna in Understanding of Indian youth


While doing a literature review, I was amazed to find that there are so few studies done on "Indian Youth" under any discipline.

Figures as per Indian Govt, state that youth population in India is above 500 million. (I try to define youth in another articles.) and yet there is very little done on youth studies in India.

If we compare to US and other western countries, the libraries are full of books, journals, articles and researches on youth.

If we try to google, "Study on Indian youth", we do get some links, after all Google never returns zero. However, just look at the studies - they either look at youth as a consumer (some one to be understood to capture the markets) or as a broken entity with problems. You'll find studies on " Alcohol and youth", " Crime and youth" and so on.

Unfortunately, I could not find even a single article on Indian youth that allows us to understand their pysche, that allows us to understand them sensitively.

The kind of work done by Dick Hebdige or Erik Erickson in the west is way ahead. Indian youth has just remain an insignificant phenomenon as long as "circle of study" is concerned.

Although, I'd accept my ignorance that I've just began my investigation and I might not know some of the coveted researches or studies.

Have you ever heard about any study on Indian youth subculture ?
Have you ever heard about study on how youth attitude has changed post liberalization ?

List goes on.

The only point I am trying to convey is that there exists a gap on youth study in India which should be addressed.

There are certain studies I came across that I'll share in this blog, but overall there is mystery around Indian youth which needs to be uncovered.

Not only will this help policy makers, marketers, organizations understand youth to offer better proposition, but also it'll empower the youth through giving them insights which otherwise are hard to arrive at.

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