Book Review: What Young Indian Wants

Chetan Bhagat is the biggest selling English language novelist in Indian continent. He is often considered as a youth icon. In the recent past, he has been writing op-ed columns for different newspaper, articulating youth issues and national development. His recent book What Young Indian Wants is the collection of Bhagat’s articles and essays on many relevant issues, published in various newspapers, precisely on three aspects society, politics and youth. In this latest book, he raises questions; demands answers and presents solutions for a more prosperous India. He tries to bring out some important issues facing India today. Though the book features politicians as a mirror of the contemporary culture, he also denies blaming politician alone.

I am not much fan of his fiction writing, but I quite admire his easy-to-understand language in the book. I have read almost every book he ever wrote. However, that doesn’t mean I am his diehard fan.

The first section of the book is about the Indian society. For a sustainable change, society has to change in terms of its behavior, attitude and values. Contrary to many people, he doesn’t blame politician for every wrong in the nation. We love blaming politician and abusing them for mistake. Here, he tries to tell the reader what politicians are not doing and how to make them do it. He also tried to convince why should make peace with our neighboring country and questioned the judiciary system for handful powerful persons along with one of his most popular article in support of Anna Hazzare’s movement.

He also highlights importance of culture and social values for driving country towards prosperity. United States values wealth, competition, individualism and religion; and these pretty much constitutes the essence of American society and culture. He has bluntly accepted the fact that Indian society lacks a set of good values. As a result, scams keep happening, nepotism flourishes and government doesn’t care about its people.

He has also distinguished how the people acquire property in US and India. Americans have created a system in which wealth is created with hard work, innovation, talent and enterprises. In the American society, people who display these qualities move up in life whereas most of the Indian billionaires inherited property from their forefathers.   

Another topic he has picked up for this book is politics. He has maintained neutrality in terms of political parties, commenting always on the issues rather than personalities. For him, the inability to progress is because it simply doesn’t have a system to get the best person for the most responsible jobs in the country, especially in the political arena. In addition, he also underscored the lack of institutions to train students for political career. The political parties are blamed not having proper induction methods of taking in bright young workers, conducting training programs in place to make sure that best talent gets a chance to shine. Pedigree is quite common in south Asian continent to get into politics, but then again he argued that it just gives a break. The person needs to perform.

He has also talked in a greater length about Indian youths and their aspirations. He perceived youths as an impressionable, open to ideas and willing to accept that things need to be different. Majority of youths are confined to lucrative career. More than that, the writer is asking to set goals to live a balanced, successful life. He is further suggests youths to be sincere, not serious. He asks youths not to get disturbed by the so called four storms in life—disappointment, frustration, unfairness and loneliness of purpose. These are inevitable. Like monsoon, they come into our life at certain intervals and we just need to keep the raincoat handy to not let the spark die.

While talking about the education, he tells that if India’s population is not trained to face the globalized world, India will become the nation of servants and clerks. There are hidden benefits of illiteracy to politicians. Therefore, he urged to take initiation from primary level in this regard. He says there is an urgent need of revamping to bring them in sync with the modern world. He further pushed for connecting rural schools with high speed internet connectivity.

The writer asks to build decent English language skills so that they can get frontline jobs irrespective of their graduation specialization. Prior to this, he says there are fundamental flaws in the Indian education system. One of the major problems that Indian education system facing today is course content itself. Creativity, imagination and innovation should have their proper place in the course content. These are the things that bring best out of any student. This can only makes leadership who show excellence, benefits society and help people. He tells that rights education is largely responsible to produce open minded, visionary and articulate leadership. In his imaginative letter to Bapu and Mrs. Gandhi reflects the same spirit.

Every nation has a dream. The American dream is that life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It also says that everyone has a right to prosper and succeed through hard work, innovation and excellence. So, what is Indian dream? Mr. Bhagat says that Indian dream should be is that every citizen should work hard and once successful, every citizen should give back to society that made her or him what he or she is.

Finally, this book is a comprehensive outlook into the turmoil facing the nation, its hope and aspirations of the billion minds.  However, this book failed to inspire me. He has presented good suggestions. He seems to have deeply influenced by the progress of the nation where he lived as banker. The solutions he has offered are logical but given the political turmoil and culture, there is little hope that it works in India. Non-fiction should really need in-depth research, powerful presentation and intellectual dialect, but he lacks that. A little deep thought would have made the book impressive. His work is often tagged as a ‘Bubblegum Literature’ and this too falls in the same category.