New realities for India’s younger generations

how we live — By Bob Riel on February 20, 2008 at 7:35 am

The economic advances that have been made during the past decade or so in India are beginning to change the country in ways that reach beyond bank accounts and consumer goods. India’s younger generations, for example, have developed high expectations for their careers and are even beginning to question centuries-old social values. Business Week reports on the changes:

For Ravikiran M.S…security and stability simply aren’t enough. The 24-year-old programmer is brimming with ambition. He rides a motorbike to work and hopes to buy a car. And he expects quick promotions, dreaming of becoming a CEO. “I want the posh life,” he declares.

Ravikiran is typical of India’s in-a-hurry younger generation. With the tech-services boom, the country’s college grads are coming of age in a time of economic optimism, and unlike their parents and grandparents, this group has vibrant job prospects and high hopes. The challenge for companies is to harness their energy while reining in inflated expectations… “It’s a very different generation,” says S. Gopalakrishnan, chief executive of Indian tech giant Infosys Technologies. “They want immediate rewards.” …

The challenge for companies is to address both the desires and frustrations of the younger generation. These become abundantly evident in the cafés and bars of Bangalore. As the city has developed into India’s Silicon Valley, it also has become the country’s bar-hopping capital.

“We need capitalism with a human face,” says P.B. Devaiah, a 20-year-old industrial engineering major at a local college. Sitting with friends at Java City, a crowded coffee shop, he complains that much of the programming in India is the equivalent of sweatshop labor, where new hires are expected to spend as much as 12 hours a day writing code. “We’re being used as machines,” Devaiah says.

When the conversation turns to social issues, India’s young people are likely to erupt in grousing about arranged marriage, the caste system, and interactions with Westerners…One of the biggest concerns is the changing role of women. The tech industry was once almost exclusively male, but by last year about 35% of employees were women…

Veena Parashuram is one of this new generation of Indian women. The 26-year-old engineer grew up in a village so primitive that she never used a spoon, fork, or napkin until she went away to boarding school at age 10. When a teacher told her girls could become anything they wanted, “my mind opened up,” she says.

Although her parents wanted her to submit to an arranged marriage and settle in their village, she went to engineering school in Bangalore and the Netherlands, where she met a German man. The couple married to ease the difficulties of getting work permits, but Parashuram says “the concept of marriage is pretty weird.” While she’s planning a traditional Indian wedding, she says, she doesn’t “like to follow rules that were set down hundreds of years ago.”