Sunday Posts

India is the world's most exciting Higher Education market. One may receive this with a tinge of skepticism, simply because one has heard this before. But it would be wrong to think that India was always the world's most exciting Higher Education market. That would have been China in the past, and America before that: India's moment is coming now. Part of it is simple demography: National Intelligence Council's Global Trends 2030 ( see here ) highlights some of the fundamentals. In terms of what it calls the Demographic Window of Opportunity - the years when the proportion of Children (0 - 15 years) is less than 30% and the proportion of the seniors (65 years and above) is less than 15% - India arrives now: Its DWO stretches from 2015 to 2050 (see page 24). This closes in Russia and the United States in 2015, and China, which remains a relatively youthful country, has only 10 years left (till 2025). The other exciting demographic opportunities may be much smaller ...

Indian media, and the global media has caught up lately, is completely obsessed with Anna Hazare and his Lokpal bill now. Indeed, Anna Hazare has caught the public mood by picking up the issue of corruption, which is all pervasive in India, and he is the man of the moment. His struggle at this moment symbolizes the rift between the new India, the India of the young people, and the old India, of the Raj mentality, of privilege and unaccountability, and this is why he is suddenly so popular. The government, inept and clueless, has made the matters worse by arresting Anna Hazare . Farcically, the reason given for arrest was a bungled attempt to impose conditions on the protest - the government wanted to have the power how many people can come to protest, whether they can come by car or by foot, how long they can protest etc - and they had to make a swift about turn when the comical nature of the arrest became clear. Now, the momentum is completely with Mr Hazare and the government is ...

The term Generation Y was introduced to my life when someone, reading some of my writings, wrote back to me that I am old and Gen X, and do not understand the new, Indian Generation Y at all. I am of course guilty as charged - I do find today's college-going young adults a world removed from my own time - and therefore, promptly accepted the labelling on the basis of the face value. Further exposition to the concept allowed me to accept this as a fair claim - that people born after 1980s was exposed to a different world of opportunities and affluence in India than my generation, those born in late-60s and 70s, and also grew up with a different value set. I went to Senior School in early 80s, and I recall most of my friends in my school days had parents who worked for the government - I went to an average, inner city, vernacular-medium school - and everyone had a fairly straightforward view of life. Our rebellion extended up to smoking cigarettes, our girls made us sweat for holding...