Youth In Contemporary India

This book endeavors to be a study of identity in Indian urban youth. It is concerned with understanding the psychological themes of conformity, rebellion, individuation, relatedness, initiative and ideological values which pervade youths’ search for identity within the Indian cultural milieu, specifically the Indian family. In its essence, the book attempts to explore how in contemporary India the emerging sense of individuality in youth is seeking its own balance of relationality with parental figures and cohesion with social order. The research questions are addressed to two groups of young men and women in the age group of 20-29 years-Youth in Corporate sector and Youth in Non Profit sector. Methodologically, the study is a psychoanalytically informed, process oriented, context sensitive work that proceeds via narrations, conversations and in-depth life stories of young men and women. Overall, the text reflects on the nature of inter-generational continuity and shifts in India.

This book traces the heightened time-consciousness that has emerged since the 1990s in popular Indian discourses – across cinema, television, print and consumer culture – and argues that these anxieties concerning time are symptomatic of the struggle between labor and capital. Drawing on critical theory, cinema and media studies and Marxist-feminist concepts, Kapur shows how the recent political-economic shift in India toward neoliberalism has been accompanied by a new emphasis on youth and a preoccupation with change, novelty and the acceleration of time, with profound consequences for conceptions of time, youth and the relations between generations.

Contributed articles presented at a national seminar held at Aligarh on 1-2 May, 1991.

This book comprises the first nationwide study based on face-to-face interviews with 5000 youth to capture the popular mood of this important demographic segment of contemporary India. It records their perceptions of various issues, ranging from modernity, development, globalization and unemployment, to leisure and lifestyle, social networks and family, and their hopes and aspirations for the future. While it breaks some myths about them, on one hand, it helps strengthen some commonly shared perceptions about them, on the other.

This edited volume advances the conceptual framework of the 'everyday urban' to unpack the ways in which processes of modernity in India shape young subjects and, in so doing, centers the analytical categories of childhood and youth. In rejecting simplistic binaries of agency, and teleological logics of development and modernity, the authors focus on the complex pathways of negotiation and conflict that mark the lives of young people across various historical and contemporary contexts in urban India. Chapters are organized across two key themes: Shaping Modern Subjects and Being Modern Subjects, while spanning multiple disciplines including anthropology, history, sociology, disability studies, and psychology. Together, the contributions aim to advance the field of childhood and youth studies in South Asia and beyond.

This book provides a comprehensive understanding of youth development and protection in the Indian context. It reviews the demographic and socio-economic background and future prospects of Indian youth. The book discusses the role of family and culture in the upbringing and development of youth, changing political and socio-economic situations, and the influence of parents and teachers in shaping the future of the youth. The book highlights the nature of adversities faced by children and youth and the subsequent impact on their mental health and well-being. It also examines the efficacy of various skill development programmes and national and international policies designed for the youth. The book will be of interest to students, teachers, and researchers of population sciences, population studies, psychology, childhood studies, development studies, sociology, and youth studies. It will also be of interest to policymakers and NGOs working with children and youth.

Social and economic changes around the globe have propelled increasing numbers of people into situations of chronic waiting, where promised access to political freedoms, social goods, or economic resources is delayed, often indefinitely. But there have been few efforts to reflect on the significance of "waiting" in the contemporary world. Timepass fills this gap by offering a captivating ethnography of the student politics and youth activism that lower middle class young men in India have undertaken in response to pervasive underemployment. It highlights the importance of waiting as a social experience and basis for political mobilization, the micro-politics of class power in north India, and the socio-economic strategies of lower middle classes. The book also explores how this north Indian story relates to practices of waiting occurring in multiple other contexts, making the book of interest to scholars and students of globalization, youth studies, and class across the social sciences.