CALCUTTA, India -- Tarun and Ketan are often seen hanging out at Delhi's tony Connaught Place, home to cafes, upmarket restaurants, nightclubs and a movie palace. Both in their early twenties, Tarun still lives with his parents, but Ketan has already moved out on his own a few months back after dropping out of college mid-way, sharing a swank two-bedroomed "baarsati" -- a penthouse apartment of sorts -- with a 24-year old so-called lady friend, Anjali.
His conservative parents are dismayed and annoyed because in Ketan's immediate Gujarati community, no one has ever lived unmarried with a woman, let alone giving up studies. But Ketan ignores his parents' feelings. For, few twenty-year olds in his Gujarati community earns as much as Ketan does and can afford to live on his own earnings.
By average Indian standards, Ketan is indeed doing well for himself. He works in a Gurgoan-based call center at night and during they day, he hawks personal insurance products. By working two jobs, he earns about $600 a month, not much by global standards but a decent sum in a country where the average annual income is about $500. He is also a favorite to his bosses because besides being a tireless worker, he just wants to work night shifts so that he can carry on "the insurance agency business during the day."
So, all Ketan's parents get from him is a shrug.
"Uh, there's nothing on between us", he says. "We are just friends living together to spread the expenses of a nice apartment."
For Anjali as well, sharing makes sense because for one; the fully-loaded apartment is just a block away from the software training institute where she is an instructor, and two; unlike Ketan, her earnings are relatively modest: about $350 per month. Besides, her parents, who live in a small town near Kolkata, "don't know everything" about her living arrangements. "And," she says, "my parents may never find out because I am seriously considering moving to a new job soon in Chandigarh (Punjab), that offered a much higher pay."
Taruun however, isn't quite as disobedient to his parents as Ketan, although being a good friend of Ketan, he too believes in working hard in order to live the good life. Nearly a year back, Tarun decided to throw his cushy job in a leading media house and joined the call center where Ketan works for a 70 percent pay hike. "I don't mind working my butt off, if the pay is good," he says. "And right now I am taking it easy, but next year when I am through with my college, I'll need to start searching for a job that pays higher so that I can buy my Hyundai Santro -- an $8,000 car."
Stories about young Indians earning more and even daring to lead a lifestyle beyond the imagination of earlier generations are dime a dozen now. They no longer make news. But what is news is that suddenly, while most of the developed world is struggling to create new jobs, thanks to the implosion of IT-enables services, IT, and other services industries, India is experiencing a job boom and a tremendous growth in employment opportunities.
It is this sudden surge in earning opportunities that is turning the country's youngsters into a brash lot, quite to the dismay of their conservative parents.
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"Indian parents tend to be conservative, doting and demanding," says psychiatrist Sampat Sinha, "so when they find that their children just out of teens blowing money like they never imagined, or even demanding to live on their own, they threaten to commit suicide or jump off buildings, but in the end they come around."
Indeed, the Indian economy has never done so well in the past. "There is a feel-good everywhere," says PK Choudhary, managing director, ICRA Limited. "Thousands of jobs are added every day especially in the IT, financial services and the informal sector."
According to estimates arrived at by Business Today, an Indian business magazine, "at least 2.2 million jobs will be created in India's private sector over the next two years."
And along with this boom has come the changing lifestyle of India's younger generation.
"A new generation has arisen which no longer clamors for permanent jobs, but is ready to adapt to a new footloose work culture," says Ananda Dutta, regional head of a headhunting outfit. "Loyalty no longer matters if the pay is right. Which is why employers now have to deal with the problem of attrition. With so many call centers, so many malls, marts, hypermarkets, and other service-oriented industries mushrooming, industry jocks are only too willing to jump jobs for better prospects."
But living in a globalized environment has also taken its toll.
"Indian kids have become way smarter," said Jamal Mecklai, the elderly CEO of Mecklai Financial, a finance advisory outfit, "smarter than we were. But the lure of money is making youngsters drop out of college to take up jobs that pay much more than what they can ever get out of their parents as pocket money."
An Indian in his first job can easily earn between 8,000 and 10,000 rupees ($175 to $220) a month, which may only be a tenth of their U.S. counterparts, but considering that according to World Bank calculated purchasing power parity, Rs. 1 in India can fetch much more than $1 can buy in the United States, Rs. 10,000 per month is certainly a lot more than pocket change to an average youngster on the street. Which is why, "catching 'em young and watch 'em grow" seems to be the watchword of anybody and everybody -- from politicians wooing them for votes to marketers of consumer goods -- targeting the youth segment. Youngsters' spending power has forced even conservative companies like Bajaj Auto to spiff up motorbike models.
About half of India's 1 billion people are under the age of 25; it's reckoned that they have about $5 billion to spend. Add to that a slightly larger amount that doting parents will lavish on them. "Which company will walk past a $10.5 billion cash pile without trying to dip in," queries Asif Ansari of advertising firm, Ogilvy & Mather.
Meanwhile the job boom that is providing unprecedented spending power to the country's youngsters has a new critic. The lure of money emerging as the driving force of the Indian youngsters is the biggest danger facing the country's young men and women today, says Father K.T. Emmanuel, head priest of a church in Mumbai.
"A good college education is vital in the long run for career growth," he told his congregation on a sultry Sunday morning recently.
Indeed, God forbid, but what if the employment bubble bursts one day?
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