Obviously, such cataclysmic events dont happen every now and then. Yet, everybody has the right to locate himself/herself within the co-ordinates of the nations proud history. It cannot be a prerogative of those born in such historic times. Others, too, must be given a chance to have a historical reference point for their otherwise insignificant existence.
Politics being the mess that it is, not many would want to find a reference for their existence in relation to Indias political history. This is where economic history comes in handy. Unknown to everybody, the brief economic history of the nation has been exciting enough to classify generations according to the twists and turns that it has been through.
In these times, it is tempting to classify Indians into the pre-reform generation and the post-reform generation. But this sounds too general and hackneyed. Also, it does not adequately capture the change that has taken place in the minds of the millions over time.
The first structural change and policy break came in the mid-60s. The seeds of change in the mindset were literally sown in Punjab and eastern UP, but the mindset of the nation changed for good. The obvious reference is to the green revolution. Thus, Indians can be classified as belonging to either the pre-green revolution era (PGRE) or the post-green revolution period (PGRP).
The world view of these two groups is very different. The key difference is in the positions they take on stability and growth. The PGRE Indians are far more conservative in their approach and prefer low but stable growth. In other words, they are comfortable with the Hindu rate of growth. The PGRP generation favours high growth, even at the cost of a greater degree of instability. The career choices made by these sub-groups bear out their preferences.
Politically, the PGRE people tend to be more conservative, though they would never admit to it. They have an abiding faith in the State and are wary of the private sector.
The older lot in this sub-set can be termed the socialist siblings. They are still trying to grapple with the savings gap and the foreign exchange gap. In closing these gaps, or indeed resolving other types of disequilibria in the economy, they never try to get the prices right; instead they try their best to get the intervention right.
The relatively younger lot in this sub-group display strong interventionist tendencies. The quality of intervention here has been replaced by quantity, and the ideology of planning has been replaced by the wanton desire to impede. The objective function was to control, culminating in the birth of the bureaucratic brood.
The great structural retrogression was a consequence of the activities of this brood. But it was in getting out of that bind in the mid-80s that the nation produced the market minors. These are the great synthesisers of the nation who inherited the past with their eyes on the future. They reinvented the wheel of market forces. But due to some strange genetic quirk, these market minors did not grow into market majors. Instead, the progeny of planned liberalisation has been replaced by the coterie of globalisation. The only analytical tool they now have is a hammer and consequently every problem for them appears to be a nail.
It was with the second structural break in 1991 that the nations nascent elements lost their reference points in domestic landmarks. The generation of this period consists of the new offspring of the old orthodoxy who do not have any national specificity.
So, the next time you are asked which generation you belong to, dont be temporally deterministic and conceptually insipid by referring to a decade. Find your moorings in the economics of the times. For, we are all condemned to be the children of a lesser subject.
