Profiles in Identity A study of Indian vouth at cross-reads of culture PULIN K. GARG eINDIRA J. PARIKHCONTENTS Statement | Part I 1 How the book began ? Part Wo 3 The body of the book To what end this book then ? Our dilemma Reflections 7 The shift in family roles 14 The shift in the nature of work 14 Shrinking of frontiers 15 The context of the growth in India 16 The discontinuities in life space 16 Evidence 19 Ghosts who walk by 19 Arvind, Harish Echoes and Shadows 36 Tarun, Pankaj The Castaways 51 Indravadan, Govind The Forlorn 70 Bharat, Kartikeyaxii The Rolling Stones 88 Prabhu, Lokanathan Smooth Sailors 106 Mahendra, Rahul Heir Apparents 120 Sadashiv, Shekhar Retrospect 139 The first phase 139 The home as the centre of life The second phase 155 College as the focus of life Emergence of new identity 168 Process of elitism 172 Entry into the world of post-graduate education 180 The encounter at post-graduate education 182 Revival of conflicts 185 Search for resolution 187 Resolution of conflict and search for resolution of heterosexual relationships 189 The Summing Up 196 Role-orientation vs self-orientation 202 Felt feelings vs should feelings 203 Closeness vs individuation 204 Experienced growth vs validated growth 205 Social identity vs work identity 206 The context of growth 214 Appendix : Glossary of Names 220 STATEMENT Part I How the book began This book originated in my encounter and confrontation with the youth of India at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. I had undertaken to organize and teach a course titled Career, Roles and Identity. The students with their typical wry humour abbreviated the name of the course to ‘CRY’. The course was divided in three parts. The first dealt with the process of growth in the home setting. The second examined the development of the youth’s identity during his under graduate and post-graduate life. The third explored the world of work in the urban setting. Paul Goodman, Eric Erikson, Freud, David Riesman, Irving Goffman and Jacque Ellul were some of the mentors around whose ideas the course was first organized. It was largely conducted through the ‘experience-based learning’ technology. As the course progressed, I found myself defend- ing the ideas of the mentors. The group slowly but steadily countered the age old concepts like ‘Oedipus Complex’, ‘The Mass Culture’ and ‘Alienation’. The whole currency of knowledge of the social scientists got questioned. I felt drained, futile and very often at a loss. A remark by a student in the course, “What you say may exist but does it really happen,” followed by another statement— “I do understand the ‘how’ of what you speak but it does not have any sense for me”—made me sit up with disbelief. From then on, the data that the group generated gave me the first clue fora new perspective. Hundreds of hours of listening unfolded the phenomenological panorama of transformation of youth. I have tried to integrate this data. PI-1 1