Cover Story: Elections 99 :The Mind of Young Voters

Youth and politics have proved among the more lethal cocktails in human history. In contemporary India this has been the engine driving every emergent political trend -- Indira Gandhi's swerve to socialism in the late '60s; the mass movement against her a half-decade later; the more recent passions of Mandal and Mandir. It was to ascertain the mind of this segment of Indian society -- aged 18-21, numbering 56 million and comprising 8 per cent of the electorate -- that India Today commissioned ORG-MARG to carry out an opinion poll on voting preferences, political proclivities and broader social attitudes. Taking recourse to a fully structured questionnaire, the survey team met 3,208 respondents between September 3 and 6. The sample was carefully chosen to guard against urban or rural, gender and socio-economic biases. A chunk of this group comprises those who have come of voting age only with the ongoing election.

To look at the results of this opinion poll only in terms of the party young India is likely to opt for is to miss the wood for the trees. Rather, the overwhelming mandate it gives to mainstream politics and its patent dislike for mavericks and those with an extreme agenda -- it is no longer fashionable to be identified with the Left -- indicates the youth as a community are turning establishmentarian. With a few minor variations -- the radio is a greater source of information in rural areas than in urban -- there is a near total convergence of views, never mind geographical and socio-economic divides. The millennial Indian is patriotic and traditional but willing to experiment with modulated change. In sum, he is a confident individual wedded equally to his roots and to pragmatism. Some would turn up their noses at this "middle classisation" of India. Others would hail the birth of an Indian-style neo-conservative consensus. Either way, today's Indian has sent out a message that the nation should evolve along the straight and narrow -- no more, no less.