India is a young country: around two-fifths of its 1.4bn people are under the age of 25. That makes them an important constituency in the general election, which will end on June 4th. Yet getting their vote is not straightforward. Just before the election, data released by India’s election commission showed that less than 40% of eligible first-time voters were registered to vote. Some youngsters are disappointed with what they perceive to be a lack of economic progress since the last general election, in 2019. “I am voting for nota,” shrugs Jitender Kumar, a 24-year-old from Katihar, a small city in eastern Bihar. nota stands for “none of the above”.

Mr Kumar’s complaints are echoed by other young Indians elsewhere. Unemployment and the rising cost of living were the main concerns voters cited in a survey conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (csds), a think-tank in Delhi, in the run-up to the election. “We are told we can all be entrepreneurs…but actually there are no routes to success,” says Isha, a 26-year-old radio producer in Patna, Bihar’s capital. In the csds survey, 62% of respondents said it had become harder to get a job over the past five years.

A survey of people between 18 and 35 published in February by the Centre for Policy Research (cpr), a think-tank, and Mint, a financial newspaper, found that 57% of respondents did not believe that employment prospects would improve over the next five years. Educated young Indians are particularly badly affected: 41% of Indian graduates under the age of 25 are unemployed, compared with 8% of those who had primary or lower-secondary education (see chart). This partly reflects the fact that better-educated youngsters are more likely to have family support that allows them to keep looking for jobs. But it also suggests that there are not enough jobs that match their qualifications.

Despite this, few young Indians blame many of their problems on Narendra Modi, the prime minister, and his Bharatiya Janata Party (bjp). Mr Modi has governed India for the past decade and is expected to continue to do so for another five years. On the contrary, they are only slightly less likely than older people to approve of Mr Modi’s government: fully 44% of the youngest respondents (born after 1996) identified with the bjp in the cpr survey, compared with 48% of those born after 1980 and 52% of those born before 1980.

Why is Mr Modi so popular among the seemingly disillusioned young? In part, their preference for the bjp reflects the party’s general success. It has used its deep pockets and organisational heft to ensure that people around the country associate improvements in living standards with Mr Modi’s time in charge. It presents any government programme, be it the distribution of free grain, which 800m people benefit from, or the building of new roads and the installation of electricity and water connections, as a gift dispensed by the prime minister himself. Adverts for government hand-outs carry his picture; the party’s manifesto comes in the form of 24 “Modi guarantees”. “We are struggling, but all the good things my family has—cooking gas, bank accounts, electricity—we owe to Mr Modi,” says Siyaram, a 23-year-old who runs a food cart in Patna.

The bjp is also savvy on social media, where most young people consume news, says Prateek Waghre of the Internet Freedom Foundation, an advocacy group in Delhi. Mr Modi directly communicates with nearly 100m followers on X (formerly Twitter). The prime minister has almost 90m followers on Instagram, which has between 360m and 500m active users in India, most of them younger than 35. He sweet-talks Indians on his monthly radio show, short clips of which make it onto WhatsApp and Instagram. The bjp was also early to build relationships with influencers on Instagram and YouTube. By contrast, Congress, the main opposition party, has only belatedly started targeting young people through social media.

Many young people also think Mr Modi’s government has raised the profile of the country. A study published earlier this year by the Observer Research Foundation, a think-tank, found that 83% of urban Indians between 18 and 35 approved of the country’s foreign policy. Fully 83% regarded the country’s g20 presidency, a rotational position touted by the government as Mr Modi’s personal achievement, as an effective way of tackling India’s interests abroad. Certain development policies also find near-universal approval. Though some young people may not think that the government has improved their own circumstances in particular, they still appear to view Mr Modi as having done some good for the country in general.

Some of these problems also predate the bjp. Job growth has lagged economic growth: the economy grew by an average of 6.4% each year over the past 30 years, but the number of jobs only grew by 1.6% a year between 2000 and 2012 and not at all between 2012 and 2019. Young people are particularly affected. They have become better-educated over the past two decades, yet their employment situation has deteriorated over the same period. Labour-force participation has fallen and unemployment has risen among people under the age of 30. The bjp’s latest manifesto vows to create more employment opportunities by investing in infrastructure and manufacturing and by promoting entrepreneurship. But those plans are thin on detail.

This lack of progress may eventually come back to bite Mr Modi. So far, protests against the dire employment situation have been sporadic, most notably in response to an army reform that reduced benefits for new recruits. Yet there are reasons to worry: turnout in the first two phases of the election has been lower than in 2019, suggesting waning enthusiasm for Mr Modi’s personality-focused politics. For now, young people seem willing to give the government the benefit of the doubt. Unless he delivers on jobs this time around, they may not do so again. ■

Courtesy: The Economist