A review by kamila79
Dreamers: How Young Indians Are Changing Their World by Snigdha Poonam
4.0
Snigdha Poonam set out on an ambitious project - she wanted to find out what young Indians dream of, do, aspire to and simply what they are like. In India youth is categorised as anyone at the age 15-34, which comprises over one third of the population. Writing a book about half a billion people is a challenge and it’s clear the task overwhelmed Poonam. “Dreamers. How Young Indians Are Changing Their World” is truly about only a handful of Indians, mainly men, in a very small area of the country, and this disappointed me. The author herself comes from Ranchi, the capital of Jharkand, and the majority of people she interviewed and followed come from this region. Her portrayals of young entrepreneurs, an aspiring actor and a fashion model, conmen working for a scam call centre, a visionary English teacher cum motivational speaker, inventive fixers, a wanna-be politician and the first female president of the students’ union in India (of Allahabad University) are fantastically colourful, detailed and captivating. She tries to be objective but from time to time mentions how difficult it was interacting with some of them and endure their arrogance, patronising attitude, sexism, aggressive behaviour and double standards. I found her being opinionated and being embarrassed about it a very human trait.
As a middle class Indian journalist she is well aware of the fact that India and the ruling party BJP under Narendra Modi constantly fails young Indians, while at the same giving them the impression it cares about them. The majority of India’s youth are uneducated, unemployed and unemployable and it is relatively easy to brainwash them and make them fall into a populist trap. There is a lot of potential in Indian young people to thrive, yet corruption, oppressive social norms and standards and very poor level of available education nip their potential in the bud: “At the moment, fewer than 17 per cent of India’s graduates are immediately employable. Only 2.3 per cent of the Indian workforce has undergone formal skill training (compared to 80 per cent in Japan and 96 per cent in South Korea).” Indian youth are already called a ‘scarred generation’ by the International Labour Organisation and politicians are often criticised of wasting lives of hundreds of millions of people. Young Indians, full of ideas, dreams and plans, grow up to be also angry and frustrated - either with old or current politics, lack of prospects for the future, or the feeling of always being inferior to others. What made me very sad and worried is the conclusion one draws from “Dreamers”: “Like it or not, young India is what it is - unsatisfied, unscrupulous, unstoppable. Few young Indians I met had a clear sense of right and wrong; fewer gave a damn about it”. During my trips to India I was always astonished and deeply shaken by the enormous scale of the lack of ethical spine, lack of empathy and sympathy towards others, omnipresent hypocrisy. I have met generous and kind people but the high tolerance of abuse, violence and cruelty towards other people and animals is for me one of the negative characteristics of Indian culture. You don’t really need to look for it, you just need to read any newspaper, though it is in fact impossible to spend more than one day in India and do not see atrocious inequality and the aforementioned lack of empathy.
During my own travels in India I was also able to easily notice big differences between the regions, cultures and young people in this large country. The acknowledgement of the vast array of perspectives and cultures is what is sorely missing in the book. Poonam focused of the male, Hindu point of view from small and medium-sized towns of north-central India, having written about only one woman and only one Muslim man. I was hoping to learn more about young Indians from Nagaland, Kerala, Kashmir, Rajasthan, Sikkim or Tamil Nadu and to explore the perspectives influenced by various landscapes, upbringing, languages, education, religions and family background. I realise I learned more about those young Indians, whose profiles are most often showcased in the media, but am still ignorant about the realities and voices of the marginalised and ignored. I wish Poonam had made more effort and travelled the country more widely and as a result produced a book much broader in scope and more comprehensive, while still being deeply engaging.
As a middle class Indian journalist she is well aware of the fact that India and the ruling party BJP under Narendra Modi constantly fails young Indians, while at the same giving them the impression it cares about them. The majority of India’s youth are uneducated, unemployed and unemployable and it is relatively easy to brainwash them and make them fall into a populist trap. There is a lot of potential in Indian young people to thrive, yet corruption, oppressive social norms and standards and very poor level of available education nip their potential in the bud: “At the moment, fewer than 17 per cent of India’s graduates are immediately employable. Only 2.3 per cent of the Indian workforce has undergone formal skill training (compared to 80 per cent in Japan and 96 per cent in South Korea).” Indian youth are already called a ‘scarred generation’ by the International Labour Organisation and politicians are often criticised of wasting lives of hundreds of millions of people. Young Indians, full of ideas, dreams and plans, grow up to be also angry and frustrated - either with old or current politics, lack of prospects for the future, or the feeling of always being inferior to others. What made me very sad and worried is the conclusion one draws from “Dreamers”: “Like it or not, young India is what it is - unsatisfied, unscrupulous, unstoppable. Few young Indians I met had a clear sense of right and wrong; fewer gave a damn about it”. During my trips to India I was always astonished and deeply shaken by the enormous scale of the lack of ethical spine, lack of empathy and sympathy towards others, omnipresent hypocrisy. I have met generous and kind people but the high tolerance of abuse, violence and cruelty towards other people and animals is for me one of the negative characteristics of Indian culture. You don’t really need to look for it, you just need to read any newspaper, though it is in fact impossible to spend more than one day in India and do not see atrocious inequality and the aforementioned lack of empathy.
During my own travels in India I was also able to easily notice big differences between the regions, cultures and young people in this large country. The acknowledgement of the vast array of perspectives and cultures is what is sorely missing in the book. Poonam focused of the male, Hindu point of view from small and medium-sized towns of north-central India, having written about only one woman and only one Muslim man. I was hoping to learn more about young Indians from Nagaland, Kerala, Kashmir, Rajasthan, Sikkim or Tamil Nadu and to explore the perspectives influenced by various landscapes, upbringing, languages, education, religions and family background. I realise I learned more about those young Indians, whose profiles are most often showcased in the media, but am still ignorant about the realities and voices of the marginalised and ignored. I wish Poonam had made more effort and travelled the country more widely and as a result produced a book much broader in scope and more comprehensive, while still being deeply engaging.