Times are changing: India's youth a mix of old and new

The young in urban India want the country to change and progress faster. Paradoxically though, they remain overwhelmingly conservative in their values and materialistic in their aspirations.

The young in urban India are mostly a happy lot, and have high expectations from life. To meet these expectations, they want India to change and progress faster. Paradoxically though, they remain overwhelmingly conservative in their values and materialistic in their aspirations.

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These are the findings of the annual Hindustan Times-MaRS Youth Survey,which also revealed that the youth picked Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a bigger political icon than the more youthful Rahul Gandhi or Arvind Kejriwal.

About 77% of those polled in the survey — covering more than 5,000 respondents aged 18 to 25 across 15 cities — said they are very happy with their lives while 62% have high expectations from their future. More than half said they know that if they don’t do well, the country won’t progress.

Yet, when it comes to personal choices, they remain conservative, under the pretext of upholding tradition. Respondents, from both genders and across cities, said they pray regularly (56%), want to live in a joint family (67.4%) and prefer religious rituals over a court marriage (88%).