06/04/2023, 09:44 We are shrinking India by highlighting our differences & young India isn't happy: Harsha Bhogle

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We are shrinking India by highlighting our differences &

young India isn’t happy: Harsha Bhogle
HARSHA BHOGLE 25 December, 2019 06:05 pm IST

Harsha Bhogle | File Photo | Facebook: Harsha Bhogle

I
think young India is speaking to us. It is telling us what it wants to be; and that it doesn’t
want to be what we are telling it to be.

For many years now, I have been bullish on India. There is a reason. My generation grew up in an
India that was still feeling the after effects of being plundered by colonial England. My parents’
generation weren’t just short on resources, they also had their confidence sucked away by a
terrible, repressive environment. We were luckier but we still didn’t know what we were capable of

I was in my early 30s when two quiet gentlemen brought about a revolution. Maybe Narasimha
Rao was forced into opening up India by the calamity that would have befallen us otherwise.
Maybe Manmohan Singh had no choice but to deliver the budgets he did. But they saw the writing
on the wall and they acted

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06/04/2023, 09:44 We are shrinking India by highlighting our differences & young India isn't happy: Harsha Bhogle

The effects of liberalisation on my generation were beyond what we could have dreamt of. If at 32, I
was asked to imagine an India of opportunity, I wouldn’t have imagined half of what I was
privileged to see. As India opened up we were allowed to believe we could be as good as anyone
else in the world. And to our great joy, we discovered that we were indeed as good. We had never
thought of ourselves that way. We became the blessed generation and our children benefited from
it, they dreamt higher than we knew.

India under 30 now is brimming with possibility. Their minds have been opened, they are proud
Indians but they are citizens of the world. And India under 40 is showing that it has the ability to
take on the world by getting into leadership positions. This India is more confident, better
informed, more aware and far more ambitious than we could ever have been. It is a beautiful India
and it has been nurtured by people who are liberal and secular at heart. Those are beautiful words.

So what should we, the generation that reaped the benefits of liberalisation and openness, be
doing for the next? Quite simply, putting an arm round their shoulder, patting them on the back
and getting out of their way for we can at best be the banks to their rivers.

This is a great time to be a benevolent government; to think of education, of infrastructure, of

technology; to remove barriers, to embrace openness, to free this beautiful generation to take India
beyond where we think it can be.

So why are we creating fear? Why are we driving wedges into society? Instead of giving this
generation wings to fly, why are we putting a weight on their backs? Why are we obsessed about
our neighbours when, as an economic entity, they aren’t even in the same book, let alone on the
same page as us?. We are shrinking our country by highlighting our differences and young India is
telling us it isn’t happy.

So, other than writing lengthy emotional posts, something that is easy to do, what should my
generation do? Forget changing the world, we can encourage five people, maybe ten and that will
be enough. I have seen that happen in front of my eyes. At a low point in my career, I got to work
with young people. Their energy was an eye-opener. All I had to do was pat them on the back
sometimes, provide a window to a new world. No more. In the last three years, these young people
have made CricBuzz an extraordinary success. It is just a small example in a small sector but it
tells us what is possible.
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Winning elections isn’t a good enough reason for highlighting differences between us. My naive
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view of the world tells me that creating opportunities through liberalisation and openness and Read Next Story

togetherness could win more elections.

So my appeal to people in power, to those my age and older is simply this. We have played a very
nice innings, we have been lucky to have been Indians for the last twenty five years. Let us not
burden the next generation with talk of war and cultural differences. They are going to be better
than we were. Let them be. In a happy, open, secular, liberal world, they can become the best in the
world.

Pardon me if this post appears self-indulgent. These are just my thoughts and that is why they
appear on a personal platform.

(The article was originally published on Harsha Bhogle’s Facebook page)

Also read: This is why Modi will win the war protesters have waged against him on CAA

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