The Times They Are A-Changin'

Gen Z, now poised to test the waters of the job market, will spring many surprises on the employers of the day. This very young, energetic and bold generation is willing to trample on some traditions to be able to lead a more meaningful life, finds a BW-Businessworld - XBSL study

- Madhumita Chakraborty

IN 1964, WHEN BOB DYLAN penned the lyrics of the song we use as a title for this report, his desolate generation took to music, lyrics, literature, satire and the hippie style of life to cock a snook at the war-ravaged world they had lost respect for. As Dylan sang: As the present now/ Will later be passed/ The order is rapidly fadin’/ And the first one now/ Will later be last/ For the times they are a-change in’. In India, the ripples on the societal framework were more subtle, as a wave of industrialization began to change the way people lived their lives and thought.

The economic status quo and the safety and shelter of a feudal framework were crumbling. The landlords of yore (the Zamindari rights were abolished in 1951) were entering “service” in government departments or getting qualified for cushy corporate jobs in multinationals. Agrarian labor was flowing to urban areas to find employment as a manual workforce in mills and factories. Every segment of society pined for a steady source of income and job security and was willing to die for it. Customs like the “arranged marriages” within communities, were perhaps among those last vestiges of the feudal status quo that this generation (born between 1946 and 1964) desperately clung on to.

Since then and especially the information technology revolution of the 1970s and 1980s and the liberalization of the economy that came in its wake, social mobility has gathered break-neck speed. It has also delivered a few knocks on old customs like that “arranged marriage” in the two generations that followed the baby boomers.

In half a century, the ambling bullock carts that once roamed mud paths have been overtaken by speeding vehicles of many makes − and road rage. Many societal mores have been squashed in the process to make room for a more convenient and urbane lifestyle.