STARS in Their EYES

Vivan Marwaha's examination of India's millennial culture is weighed down by its predictability

- Palash Krishna Mehrotra

WHAT MILLENNIALS WANT

Decoding the Largest Generation in the World

by Vivan Marwaha

PENGUIN VIKING

Vivan Marwaha's What Millennials Want is the latest addition to the trickle of books on 'Young India'. It tells us nothing we don't know already, from the practice of arranged marriages to the primacy of religion. Moreover, Marwaha's conclusions have a stirring blandness. On demonetisation: This is a generation that supports bold action. The book ends with a sarkari insight: India's millennials are defined by their diversity, talent and potential, and they currently stand at a crossroads. The author tries to rescue the impoverished observation with the braggadocio of scope: ...having camped out across 13 Indian states talking to more than 900 millennials, I can write with confidence...

Marwaha is a master at stating the obvious, which he thinks the use of italics will hide: a government job is a “oneway ticket to a better life. A 'user researcher' by profession, his obsession with 'expansive data sets' means that the reader will find herself drowning in a sea of statistics. The individual stories rarely give us flesh and blood; the author is unable to make us 'see' the characters. Their only role is to illustrate the stats.