Youngistaan?

As the 2009 Lok Shabha Elections comes to its fifth and final phase today, I can’t help but wonder about the 100-odd million young Indians in the 18-24 years age group who are eligible to vote and who are expected to have woken up in order to exercise their right to vote this year. Why? Simply because, if one is to believe the Indian media, a great deal of India’s political future now rests on them.

To make this dream come true, this year, leading Indian political parties have risen to the challenge of taking India’s youth to the polls and winning over their franchise. Taking cues from Barack Obama’s successful presidential campaign, they have left no stones unturned, wooing India’s youth from every corner, reaching out through available technologies such as the internet and the mobilephone.

Opposition leader L K Advani has been exemplary in this respect, and has set benchmarks for others to follow. Another leading light has been Jaago Re!, a much-applauded media campaign by a non-partisan NGO called Janaagraha and supported whole-heartedly by Indian corporate Tata Tea. According to media reports, Jaago Re! has been successful in registering close to 600,000 new voters on their website (whose content is entirely in English) – although it’s uncertain at the moment if all 600,000 new voters fall in the 18-24 years age group.

The question is, of course, whether these internet-savvy mobilephone-wielding English-speaking mostly-urban youths in the 18-24 years age group – what FMCG giant Pepsico labels as ‘Youngistaan’ in their marketing campaigns in India – will be large enough and strong enough to exercise and exert their power to carve out India’s political future.

In the last Lok Shabha Elections in 2004, only 10 per cent of this group of youths had exercised their right to vote. I wonder what their count will be this year.