People of every generation, particularly the land’s senior citizens, can be heard expressing their disillusionment about the people of their succeeding generation, the section of youth in particular, on a multitude of counts, specially their disrespect and disfavour of virtually every aspect of the land’s time-honoured customs and traditions. The remarks by the elderly, downgrading the ways of life of the young in society, obviously, doesn’t go down well in the latter’s camp. Sociologists describe generation (equivalent to peelige in Kannada) as all of the people born and living at about the same time, regarded collectively. The average period generally considered to be about thirty years, during which children are born and grow up, become adults and begin to have children of their own. Going by the above description of the term generation, post-independent India has already hosted two generations and a third is well on way. The gap between the promises being made by different political parties with an eye on winning at the hustings and execution of the key policies needs to be guarded against further widening.
While inter-generation contrasting features of aspirations of people and their chosen routes for a lived reality are bound by the many compulsions of their periods, given the steady rise in the country’s headcount and disproportionate rise in resources supporting life, the set of compulsions is witnessing their compulsive nature, unlike in the past when the relation between needs and resources was in the zone of comfort.
