love_gundu22
Praveen Gurwani
The Book of Job
Career choices, as always, are guided by Mammon. But today's youth are discovering new, unconventional routes to the same god
Children of ‘glabourisation’: You can make a career in hair dressing; learn at salons like Nalini & Yasmin
A 20-year-old high school dropout with strawberry red hair made it to the cover of Time magazine earlier this year. Chun Shu represents a new breed of Chinese youth that has been dubbed 'linglei' - a young person with an alternative lifestyle. Her claim to fame is having authored a bestseller titled Beijing Doll. Her take on the birth of the linglei is intriguing: "People born in the 1970s are concerned about how to make money, how to enjoy life... But people born in the 1980s are worried about self-expression, how to choose a path that fits one's own individual identity."
Well, here's the million-rupee question I found myself asking: will India ever have its own linglei? A tribe Time might feature under the cocky headline 'India's youth finally dare to be different'. The answer is yes, and no. Yes, change is in the air, but no, we won't actually see a linglei phenomenon in this decade. Because the chief concern of India's born-in-the-1980s generation is what Chun Shu describes as "how to make money, how to enjoy life". But worshippers of Mammon are taking note of this new fact - there are many more routes today to the same god.
To understand how and why the future is looking different, we need to first delve into our past. Traditionally, there have been two paths to upward mobility. Those who can, inherit. Those who can't, achieve. The first generation of achievers was born in the post-Independence era. More accurately, they were 'strivers' who came from small towns and large families. Taking advantage of newly created job opportunities - especially in the governmental sector - the strivers laid the foundations of the "great Indian middle class". A respectable and secure life. But for the next generation, they wanted more.
Strivers gave birth to the first generation of 'achievers' - kids brought up to see higher education as their only means of economic salvation. Striver-parents inevitably used their own example to goad their kids on. "You have all the comforts and the support we never had. You can do better." Besides, striver-parents had nothing to pass on. The kids would simply have to secure their own futures by making it to the best professional colleges. And thus began India's eternal affair with medicine and engineering, the two career choices that came to define the aspirations of every middle-class student in India. By the early 1990s, MBA had joined this list. Achievers strongly believe in the idea of 'merit' - that getting through tough competitive examinations such as JEE and CAT is the answer to life, the universe, and everything career-related. The other alternative is 'studying abroad', which has really been a euphemism for making the Great Escape from India to a colder, gentler place.
So how are things changing, you might ask. Aren't we still a nation egging its youth onto achievement? The boom in entrance exam coaching and board exam classes certainly seems to say that. But there are some new undercurrents. For the first time, there are questions being raised about the medicine-engineering route to success. There are two reasons for this. There are 'achiever' parents with kids making career choices today, who are open to a wider range of possibilities. Financially, they are secure enough to allow their children to take some risks, make some mistakes. 'Achiever' parents believe they must guide, but not goad. And they are happy to see their offspring become 'actualisers' - those who pursue their dreams and maximise their true potential.
The patterns in education
VOCS POPULI: Demand for courses which are perceived as vocational or 'job oriented', e.g., BMM (Bachelor of Mass Media), BMS (Bachelor of Management Studies) in Mumbai University.
E-FUNDS: Rising cost of education and aspiration to study abroad means parents must set aside substantial amounts for education funds.
GLABOURISATION: Glamorisation of jobs involving manual labour. Cooks, tailors and barbers are now well-paid chefs, fashion designers and hair artists.
ACTUALISING: The shift away from traditional middle-class careers like medicine and engineering to make a career choice based on the young person's potential and abilities.
BLIND DEBT: Students and parents taking huge education loans without realistically evaluating whether the course will significantly improve their future job prospects.
VITAMIN M: MBA and, now, media are the two hottest post-graduate career choices. They are perceived to score high on the other M factor - money.
At 23, Samit Basu is one such actualiser. He dropped out of IIM-Ahmedabad, realising that the MBA was not his true calling. "I felt like an idiot dropping out of IIM-A, having worked reasonably hard to get there, but it felt like the right thing to do." He hasn't regretted it. Penguin recently published Basu's first novel, a science fiction fantasy called The Simoquin Prophecies. But Basu makes his living chiefly as a correspondent for Outlook magazine, a natural choice of vocation since he's also completed a media studies course in the UK.
Which brings me to my second point - broadening the definition of 'achievement'. Slowly but surely, more professions are joining the list. Professions which were regarded as unconventional, but which now offer good money and growth prospects, have now become acceptable - even cool. The biggest gainers here have been media and entertainment. Courses like Mumbai University's BMM (Bachelor of Mass Media) attract some of the city's brightest undergraduate students. As well as those disenchanted by the mainstream. Says Sreeram Ramachandran, second-year student at Mumbai's Jai Hind College: "Over 25% of the students in my BMM class have joined after a year of BSc, BCom or engineering. They'd rather 'waste a year' than waste a lifetime in a field they have no interest in."
Meanwhile, Amit Masurkar, 21, dropped out of an engineering course at Manipal to pursue his dream of becoming a filmmaker in the new Bollywood. "I know my choice is risky but I've found the right fit," he says. He's assisted a film unit, written scripts and is considering making a documentary. "You can make a living at this," he adds. In a pre-Ram Gopal Verma world, he would've been seen as a loser. Today, he might even be the envy of his former classmates.
A little more radical was Warada Bhide's decision to become a hairdresser. Warada was all set to do her post-graduation in English literature in the UK when she signed up for a hairdressing course at the hip Mumbai salon, Nalini & Yasmin, on a lark. She discovered it was something she liked, and that it promised much more as a career. Hairdressing and other such careers did not even come under the unconventional category. They were simply untouchable. But that's changed due to 'glabourisation', that is, the glamorisation of jobs involving manual labour. Yesterday's cooks, tailors and barbers are today's chefs, fashion designers and hairdressing artists. Jobs that were formerly for People Like Them, are now OK for People Like Us. Especially those of us who just aren't academically inclined.
And there are sound economic reasons for this. We want better ambience, better service and are willing to pay much better for it. A simple haircut at Juice (popularly known as the people who created Aamir Khan's Dil Chahta Hai-look) costs Rs 800. Naturally, the stylists get paid handsomely. There's another plus point here: with a bit of experience and clients who swear by you, you can strike out on your own. Catering, fitness, personal grooming, niche retailing, interior design... are just some of the areas where we'll be seeing young people setting up 'soul proprietorships' - small enterprises that bring in the bucks, and provide an individual with flexibility and creative satisfaction.
The youth we rarely talk about
The needs and aspirations of the middle-class youth are being met by the educational marketplace. What no one knows is whether enough is being done towards upward mobility for the strivers, strugglers and mere survivors - estimated to be about 100 million in number.
There are the likes of Satyendra Dubey, who made it to IIT from a small town in Bihar. But are there enough Dubeys out there, for whom striving for an education has resulted in a quantum leap?
A study by Marika Vicziany of Australia's Monash University on 'prospects for Dalit students' paints a dim picture. Vicziany surveyed a sample of 50 Dalit students enrolled for BCom degrees at Mumbai University, and found that a majority f these first-generation college-goers were very optimistic about the future and aimed for 'some computer-related employment'. However they were handicapped by lack of guidance on where to seek employment or how to effectively compete in the job market.
The study concluded: "It is the students from the best Mumbai colleges who get the first pick for these (IT and other New Economy) jobs. The dalit students are a long way down the scale of educational achievement despite their college training, and are simply not competitive in the new labour market." Although there was no evidence of 'deliberate discrimination', Dalit students lacked the informal social network that generates information about where the jobs exist.
Satisfaction is high on the agenda of the other potent class of youth in India - the inheritors. It's understood you'll join the family business - be it films, politics or making plastic buckets. The practical thing to do is 'piggyback' on what the family has founded for you; the cool thing, however, is proving you can do it differently, or better. The inheritor's role model would be someone like MTV youth icon Anil Ambani, who's carrying on his father's legacy and also leading the company's diversification into New Economy businesses. And yeah, he's got that degree from Wharton.
Today's inheritor believes in getting the best education money can buy, preferably overseas. Studying abroad has become a status symbol, as well as a style statement. The entire breed of young politicians carrying the family's legacy forward boasts a foreign degree (or two) on their resumes.
Foreign universities offer another distinct advantage: they're a lot easier to get into. Let the achiever-types slog for the CAT. Inheritors would rather pay their way, and go the GMAT route.
That brings me to one final, but major trend which we will see more of: 'E funds', or education funds. Senior executives are saving for their children's college education in the US. Middle-class parents are bracing themselves for the rising costs of favoured courses like engineering and MBA. They are even willing to take on huge loans to send their kids abroad - it's a risk they'll take for the anticipated future returns.
The bottomline is Indians are no longer passive recipients of education - they are active consumers.
Achievers and inheritors are visible, their needs are being met by the educational marketplace. What I don't see happening is upward mobility for strivers (See 'The Youth We Rarely Talk About'). The System does not offer today's strivers the same level-playing field and abundance of chances that the post-Independence generation of our fathers had. Ideally, it should.
Take the alarming attrition rate in the call centre industry. I am yet to meet a graduate from any respectable college who sees it as more than a temporary blip in his or her career graph. Says Robin Almeida, who's done a stint with Wipro Spectramind: "It's easy money. But no one sticks on too long... You have to try and move on to something better." It's seen as a dead-end job by such youngsters. When the night shifts gets too much, they can afford to quit - it's only pocket money. Instead, why not hire a striver, for whom working at a BPO would be a huge opportunity? Probably because they lack the language skills and confidence required to get the job in the first place.
Which brings me back to the original question: is the Indian youth ready to walk down a different path? There is at last a large enough mass of young people who have no memory of pre-liberalisation India. They have the benefit of financially secure parents, and are the first to grow up in abundance and prosperity. Though old habits - especially what the middle-class have - die hard, this generation will change many of the rules of the game. They will make choices based on instincts other than survival - because the latter is more or less assured.
Already, only one student out of 78 in class 12 of Delhi's prestigious Vasant Valley School takes up the medical entrance exam. And just four opt for computer science. "There are lots of people opting for economics, psychology and for the liberal arts in general. Students have figured that by dropping maths and science you are closing off only a few career options while the majority of careers are still open," says R. Krishnan, head of the senior secondary school. For every Rohan or Mohan jumping into software or a US-bound plane, there will be an Amit the filmmaker or Samit the writer.
As linglei novelist Chun puts it: "There's no reason to stick on the normal, boring road when there are so many other ways to do things." As long as those things pay, whispers her Indian counterpart, nodding in agreement.
By Rashmi Bansal, Business World
Career choices, as always, are guided by Mammon. But today's youth are discovering new, unconventional routes to the same god
Children of ‘glabourisation’: You can make a career in hair dressing; learn at salons like Nalini & Yasmin
A 20-year-old high school dropout with strawberry red hair made it to the cover of Time magazine earlier this year. Chun Shu represents a new breed of Chinese youth that has been dubbed 'linglei' - a young person with an alternative lifestyle. Her claim to fame is having authored a bestseller titled Beijing Doll. Her take on the birth of the linglei is intriguing: "People born in the 1970s are concerned about how to make money, how to enjoy life... But people born in the 1980s are worried about self-expression, how to choose a path that fits one's own individual identity."
Well, here's the million-rupee question I found myself asking: will India ever have its own linglei? A tribe Time might feature under the cocky headline 'India's youth finally dare to be different'. The answer is yes, and no. Yes, change is in the air, but no, we won't actually see a linglei phenomenon in this decade. Because the chief concern of India's born-in-the-1980s generation is what Chun Shu describes as "how to make money, how to enjoy life". But worshippers of Mammon are taking note of this new fact - there are many more routes today to the same god.
To understand how and why the future is looking different, we need to first delve into our past. Traditionally, there have been two paths to upward mobility. Those who can, inherit. Those who can't, achieve. The first generation of achievers was born in the post-Independence era. More accurately, they were 'strivers' who came from small towns and large families. Taking advantage of newly created job opportunities - especially in the governmental sector - the strivers laid the foundations of the "great Indian middle class". A respectable and secure life. But for the next generation, they wanted more.
Strivers gave birth to the first generation of 'achievers' - kids brought up to see higher education as their only means of economic salvation. Striver-parents inevitably used their own example to goad their kids on. "You have all the comforts and the support we never had. You can do better." Besides, striver-parents had nothing to pass on. The kids would simply have to secure their own futures by making it to the best professional colleges. And thus began India's eternal affair with medicine and engineering, the two career choices that came to define the aspirations of every middle-class student in India. By the early 1990s, MBA had joined this list. Achievers strongly believe in the idea of 'merit' - that getting through tough competitive examinations such as JEE and CAT is the answer to life, the universe, and everything career-related. The other alternative is 'studying abroad', which has really been a euphemism for making the Great Escape from India to a colder, gentler place.
So how are things changing, you might ask. Aren't we still a nation egging its youth onto achievement? The boom in entrance exam coaching and board exam classes certainly seems to say that. But there are some new undercurrents. For the first time, there are questions being raised about the medicine-engineering route to success. There are two reasons for this. There are 'achiever' parents with kids making career choices today, who are open to a wider range of possibilities. Financially, they are secure enough to allow their children to take some risks, make some mistakes. 'Achiever' parents believe they must guide, but not goad. And they are happy to see their offspring become 'actualisers' - those who pursue their dreams and maximise their true potential.
The patterns in education
VOCS POPULI: Demand for courses which are perceived as vocational or 'job oriented', e.g., BMM (Bachelor of Mass Media), BMS (Bachelor of Management Studies) in Mumbai University.
E-FUNDS: Rising cost of education and aspiration to study abroad means parents must set aside substantial amounts for education funds.
GLABOURISATION: Glamorisation of jobs involving manual labour. Cooks, tailors and barbers are now well-paid chefs, fashion designers and hair artists.
ACTUALISING: The shift away from traditional middle-class careers like medicine and engineering to make a career choice based on the young person's potential and abilities.
BLIND DEBT: Students and parents taking huge education loans without realistically evaluating whether the course will significantly improve their future job prospects.
VITAMIN M: MBA and, now, media are the two hottest post-graduate career choices. They are perceived to score high on the other M factor - money.
At 23, Samit Basu is one such actualiser. He dropped out of IIM-Ahmedabad, realising that the MBA was not his true calling. "I felt like an idiot dropping out of IIM-A, having worked reasonably hard to get there, but it felt like the right thing to do." He hasn't regretted it. Penguin recently published Basu's first novel, a science fiction fantasy called The Simoquin Prophecies. But Basu makes his living chiefly as a correspondent for Outlook magazine, a natural choice of vocation since he's also completed a media studies course in the UK.
Which brings me to my second point - broadening the definition of 'achievement'. Slowly but surely, more professions are joining the list. Professions which were regarded as unconventional, but which now offer good money and growth prospects, have now become acceptable - even cool. The biggest gainers here have been media and entertainment. Courses like Mumbai University's BMM (Bachelor of Mass Media) attract some of the city's brightest undergraduate students. As well as those disenchanted by the mainstream. Says Sreeram Ramachandran, second-year student at Mumbai's Jai Hind College: "Over 25% of the students in my BMM class have joined after a year of BSc, BCom or engineering. They'd rather 'waste a year' than waste a lifetime in a field they have no interest in."
Meanwhile, Amit Masurkar, 21, dropped out of an engineering course at Manipal to pursue his dream of becoming a filmmaker in the new Bollywood. "I know my choice is risky but I've found the right fit," he says. He's assisted a film unit, written scripts and is considering making a documentary. "You can make a living at this," he adds. In a pre-Ram Gopal Verma world, he would've been seen as a loser. Today, he might even be the envy of his former classmates.
A little more radical was Warada Bhide's decision to become a hairdresser. Warada was all set to do her post-graduation in English literature in the UK when she signed up for a hairdressing course at the hip Mumbai salon, Nalini & Yasmin, on a lark. She discovered it was something she liked, and that it promised much more as a career. Hairdressing and other such careers did not even come under the unconventional category. They were simply untouchable. But that's changed due to 'glabourisation', that is, the glamorisation of jobs involving manual labour. Yesterday's cooks, tailors and barbers are today's chefs, fashion designers and hairdressing artists. Jobs that were formerly for People Like Them, are now OK for People Like Us. Especially those of us who just aren't academically inclined.
And there are sound economic reasons for this. We want better ambience, better service and are willing to pay much better for it. A simple haircut at Juice (popularly known as the people who created Aamir Khan's Dil Chahta Hai-look) costs Rs 800. Naturally, the stylists get paid handsomely. There's another plus point here: with a bit of experience and clients who swear by you, you can strike out on your own. Catering, fitness, personal grooming, niche retailing, interior design... are just some of the areas where we'll be seeing young people setting up 'soul proprietorships' - small enterprises that bring in the bucks, and provide an individual with flexibility and creative satisfaction.
The youth we rarely talk about
The needs and aspirations of the middle-class youth are being met by the educational marketplace. What no one knows is whether enough is being done towards upward mobility for the strivers, strugglers and mere survivors - estimated to be about 100 million in number.
There are the likes of Satyendra Dubey, who made it to IIT from a small town in Bihar. But are there enough Dubeys out there, for whom striving for an education has resulted in a quantum leap?
A study by Marika Vicziany of Australia's Monash University on 'prospects for Dalit students' paints a dim picture. Vicziany surveyed a sample of 50 Dalit students enrolled for BCom degrees at Mumbai University, and found that a majority f these first-generation college-goers were very optimistic about the future and aimed for 'some computer-related employment'. However they were handicapped by lack of guidance on where to seek employment or how to effectively compete in the job market.
The study concluded: "It is the students from the best Mumbai colleges who get the first pick for these (IT and other New Economy) jobs. The dalit students are a long way down the scale of educational achievement despite their college training, and are simply not competitive in the new labour market." Although there was no evidence of 'deliberate discrimination', Dalit students lacked the informal social network that generates information about where the jobs exist.
Satisfaction is high on the agenda of the other potent class of youth in India - the inheritors. It's understood you'll join the family business - be it films, politics or making plastic buckets. The practical thing to do is 'piggyback' on what the family has founded for you; the cool thing, however, is proving you can do it differently, or better. The inheritor's role model would be someone like MTV youth icon Anil Ambani, who's carrying on his father's legacy and also leading the company's diversification into New Economy businesses. And yeah, he's got that degree from Wharton.
Today's inheritor believes in getting the best education money can buy, preferably overseas. Studying abroad has become a status symbol, as well as a style statement. The entire breed of young politicians carrying the family's legacy forward boasts a foreign degree (or two) on their resumes.
Foreign universities offer another distinct advantage: they're a lot easier to get into. Let the achiever-types slog for the CAT. Inheritors would rather pay their way, and go the GMAT route.
That brings me to one final, but major trend which we will see more of: 'E funds', or education funds. Senior executives are saving for their children's college education in the US. Middle-class parents are bracing themselves for the rising costs of favoured courses like engineering and MBA. They are even willing to take on huge loans to send their kids abroad - it's a risk they'll take for the anticipated future returns.
The bottomline is Indians are no longer passive recipients of education - they are active consumers.
Achievers and inheritors are visible, their needs are being met by the educational marketplace. What I don't see happening is upward mobility for strivers (See 'The Youth We Rarely Talk About'). The System does not offer today's strivers the same level-playing field and abundance of chances that the post-Independence generation of our fathers had. Ideally, it should.
Take the alarming attrition rate in the call centre industry. I am yet to meet a graduate from any respectable college who sees it as more than a temporary blip in his or her career graph. Says Robin Almeida, who's done a stint with Wipro Spectramind: "It's easy money. But no one sticks on too long... You have to try and move on to something better." It's seen as a dead-end job by such youngsters. When the night shifts gets too much, they can afford to quit - it's only pocket money. Instead, why not hire a striver, for whom working at a BPO would be a huge opportunity? Probably because they lack the language skills and confidence required to get the job in the first place.
Which brings me back to the original question: is the Indian youth ready to walk down a different path? There is at last a large enough mass of young people who have no memory of pre-liberalisation India. They have the benefit of financially secure parents, and are the first to grow up in abundance and prosperity. Though old habits - especially what the middle-class have - die hard, this generation will change many of the rules of the game. They will make choices based on instincts other than survival - because the latter is more or less assured.
As linglei novelist Chun puts it: "There's no reason to stick on the normal, boring road when there are so many other ways to do things." As long as those things pay, whispers her Indian counterpart, nodding in agreement.
By Rashmi Bansal, Business World