MUMBAI - An offbeat smash-hit Hindi movie, Chak De! India - loosely
translated as C'mon India! - has become a cheerleading anthem across India,
from celebrating sporting victories to stock-market bull runs.
In a country seriously hooked on movies, sports and politics, Chak De! has
struck a chord since its release in August and visitors might be forgiven for
thinking the film's title sound track is
India's signature tune, representing a country on a roll.
Not missing the bandwagon, India's ruling Congress party announced its slogan
as "Chak De Congress' for elections in the western Indian state of Gujarat. And
the Birla Institute of Management Technology, Delhi, organized an event with
the theme Chak De, focusing on team building and leadership.
The feel-good movie, also released internationally, is based on a true story
about the passionate struggles of India's national women's field hockey team.
Amid the hoo-hah, Chak De! India offers a jarring clash of
contradictions in a country famous for its extreme contrasts. The gung-ho
chest-thumping sounds a surreal disconnect between billionaire Indians
splurging on US$60 million private jets as birthday gifts (industrialist Mukesh
Ambani) and an India in which the majority of people struggle for survival with
minimal drinking water, sanitation, electricity, roads, schools and health
services.
Yet India does throb with this distinct, unfamiliar pulse of energy that Chak
De! captures, more so in a generation born in the 1980s, growing up in
a India confidently opening up to the world in the 1990s and moving into
leadership seats in the late 2000s.
Demographically, India has the largest below-40 population in the world, and is
expected to keep this position for the next 40 years. A prevalent view holds
that the current young generation is the most vibrant, positive, self-confident
the country has seen since independence in 1947.
Brand marketers have tuned into the difference, and say the change is huge.
"There's a big difference in outlook as youngsters today have far more
opportunities than we did," Rajiv Raja, popular jazz flutist and executive
creative director of a leading advertising agency, Bates India, told Asia Times
Online. "They live more for the moment, for today than tomorrow, change jobs
more often than we did, and want to cram more into one single life. We had to
make best use [in an India] of scarce resources while the younger generation
now makes the widest possible use of ample resources."
Bates factored the difference in attitude in its successful campaign for a life
insurance product, Tata AIG, with their latest advertisement featuring a
90-year-old man regretting not having invested for the future when he was 30.
"He regrets having spent more time watching his boss' company grow, rather than
his own kids grow," says Raja.
The breathless consumption rush doesn't run with the anxiety of making hay
while the sun fleetingly peeps through clouds, but with the deeper trust that
the going is going to be good for some time. "The 20-something generation in
India is far more self-confident and less diffident than we were at that age,"
Amy Fernades, an senior print media editor in Mumbai, told Asia Times Online.
"Our parents had a colonial hangover and in the 1980s we fought to throw it out
as youngsters. But younger Indians now have no such baggage. They are proud to
be Indian."
The Chak De! India movie touched that essence of an India with new-found
self-belief, and touched iconic status. Featuring India's biggest Hindi movie
star, Shahrukh Khan, it moved audiences with its slickly produced underdog-wins
story of a down-and-out hockey coach named Kabir Khan inspiring an equally rank
outsider women's hockey team to World Cup victory.
The lead character, Kabir Khan, was significantly named after Kabir, the
15th-century Indian poet saint who propagated unity among different religions.
Secular tensions continue to be one of India's biggest challenges.
As it will with its "Chak De! Congress" electoral slogan, the Congress party
flashed the "young" card in the last general elections in 2005, with nearly
half the electorate in the 18-40 age group. The party unleashed young political
faces - mostly children of aging leaders - and watched the media-savvy young
politicians woo the largest young electorate in the world. They articulated
efficiency, accountability and the commitment to remove corruption. The
Congress stunned the nation with unexpected electoral success.
Mission accomplished, the old political powerbrokers took over plum posts in
the administration, with some of the veterans not even winning or standing in
the elections. The young faces were shunted aside. Now, with prospect of
mid-term general elections, young politicians such as Rahul Gandhi (Congress
leader Sonia Gandhi's son) have been given a more active organizational role in
the key electoral state of Uttar Pradesh.
These young leaders will take over an India far more professional and
matter-of-fact with the "Chak De"-charged outlook replacing India's famously
casual chalta hai (anything goes) attitude.
"Youngsters these days are very different from what we used to be," says
Saganika Bannerjee, a teacher for disadvantaged children in Mumbai, and with
two daughters in their early teens. "They are very focussed, are better
informed on many issues, know what they want and won't settle for anything
less."
A nation's character is said to be played out on sporting fields, and India's
brash new face was unveiled recently through cricket, the country's favorite
obsession. Reality played out fiction when the Chak De! tune was played
at the Wanderers Stadium in Johannesburg when a young, inexperienced Indian
team unexpectedly won a cricket World Cup in South Africa in September.
Banished to oblivion was any sub-continental diffidence, as the youngsters in
their twenties played what critics called "fearless cricket" and triumphed over
more experienced teams in the inaugural Twenty20 World Cup, in the game's
latest, shortest and most exciting international version.
More crucially, those of the younger generation are far more open to changing
themselves for the better, the basic key to changing society for the better -
as is prominently evident in the quantum jump in young Indians taking to
self-development practices such as Vipassana, the ancient Indian non-sectarian
method of mind purification.
In Dhamma Giri, the premier Vipassana center near Mumbai, young faces -
including from the corporate, advertising and entertainment world - are
predominant among those sitting and serving in courses, dispelling outdated
myths that meditation is only for the elderly or for those giving up the world.
Vipassana courses are being offered in business schools, elementary schools, in
leading technical colleges such as the Indian Institutes of Technology and
recently even in the BMC (Bombay Municipal Corporation) schools, connecting
with a global demand where even two nations bitterly in conflict such as Israel
and Iran have one significant factor in common: long waiting lists with young
applicants for Vipassana courses.
A depth and maturity in outlook facilitates India's fast-growing
non-governmental organization (NGO)network. "Volunteers from colleges are more
willing to explore issues, and spend time with children without just the idea
that it will look good on the resume," says Madhura Kapdi, communications
officer at Child Relief and You, one of India's biggest and most visible NGOs.
While Chak De! echoes across the country, so do the contradictions, as
for instance in the country's labor force. Krishnan Menon, a consumer marketing
analyst, wrote, "Perhaps, India, with all she is currently armed with, is
better positioned as the world's Superbrain."
A recently released "India Labor Report 2007" by staffing company TeamLease
Services, however, says "youth unemployability" appears to be a much bigger
problem than unemployment itself. Over 82 million of the country's young
workforce have been deemed as not having the basic skills that they should have
learnt in schools and colleges.
The study says that a looming skill deficit in India could be more disruptive
than the infrastructure deficit as it increases inequality. "Unless there is a
radical overhaul in the education and training system, this issue cannot be
solved," says the study.
The balancing answer in the new "Chak De! India" lies in India's gift to
humanity, the Eightfold Noble Path, as taught by Gotama the Buddha. Taking the
middle path, and understanding that everything changes and nothing lasts
forever, makes the road ahead less bumpy. "Sometimes winning is everything,"
says the Chak De! movie tagline. The young India will realize that
sometimes life offers more valuable lessons when we lose.
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