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When you are 20, you want to take on the world. When you are 40, you find the world has taken you on. When you are 60, you decide it doesn’t matter one way or the other.
And when you are 80, if you live that long, you realise that both you and the world are illusions. When all these generations collide on one plate, as they do in India today, there are bound to be tectonic shifts.
India is a young country and the present generation represents “Money Today”. This is a confident and impatient generation, born or growing up in the 1990s, without chips on the shoulder about colonial legacies.
And this is no longer a metro phenomenon; it has spilled over into smaller cities. This 20-something generation wants reforms because it gains. The 40-plus but 60-minus generation, however, opposes reforms because it will be the loser.
After all, how do you face the prospect of retrenchment when you are 45 or so and too old and stubborn to learn new skills?
And then there is the 60-plus generation, which frames policies with its eyes on the rear-view mirror, without realising that the world it knew has turned upside down.
In geological tectonic shifts, the Himalayas are still rising, but only by a few millimetres a year. In the demographic tectonic shift, India should rise by much more, but not without pain.
The post-Independence India wasn’t a gerontocracy and references are made to the tryst with destiny pledge finally being redeemed.
The time has come for the torch to pass on to a new generation of Indians.
