How Free Are We?

The state of freedom in a digital world.

- Paranjoy Guha Thakurta

INDIA STANDS AT A UNIQUE JUNCTURE IN ITS HISTORY WITH ROUGHLY HALF ITS POPULATION BELOW THE AGE OF 25. India is poised to become the country with the highest number of people on the planet in less than five years. Like the rest of its population, India’s youth reflect the plurality of arguably the most diverse country on the globe. Despite attempts by the ruling dispensation to impose monolithic notions of “national unity”, India’s diversity remains one of its great strengths. Among the biggest challenges confronting the country’s youth are a broken education system, lack of opportunities for decent jobs and abysmal public healthcare facilities. We are projected to provide the planet close to one out of five software engineers. However, certain demographers believe we are home to the world’s most under-nourished, ill and illiterate in terms of sheer numbers; we have more mobile phones than usable toilets.

Young women and men in India understand that the flip side of diversity is the deep divisions and inequalities that exist. Divisions not only on the basis of age, gender and sexual orientation but also class, ethnicity, region, religion and—last, but not least—the most pernicious system of discrimination of them all, the caste system. Indian society was always iniquitous; it was the land of the opulent maharaja coexisting with the indigent. In recent years, however, the gap between the rich and the poor has widened and made India among the most unequal countries in the world. The youth cannot but be aware of these ugly aspects of the country they live in. But a majority of young India today realizes that they have particular advantages that the older generations did not have, the advantages that modern technology brings.