The current issue of India Today (July 2, 2001) features a cover story titled “The Luckies”. The subtitle reads:

“The opening up of India has created its most fortunate and happening generation — wealthy, glib, global and well-groomed.”

I picked up an issue imagining the story had something to do with my generation: youth aged anywhere between 18 to 25, who started working between 1998 and 2000 and got caught in the upsurge of the dotcom boom. Youth who found that just a few months later, they were capable of leading an independent lifestyle, and just a year later, enjoying benefits that their parents took over a decade to get to. Then the bust comes along and they’re left wondering what the hell just happened.

Speaking for myself, I started working in May 1998. In Jan 1999 I moved to Bombay with whatever money I’d earned, and Rs. 2000 from my parents. From then on it was just my ability to balance earnings against expenditures that sustained me. Now as of June 2001, I’m jobless due to a voluntary decision to quit the pointless pursuit of building Yet Another Portal, and pursuing an academic life. I can afford to do this: in just three years of working, I’ve managed to save up enough to sustain me for a whole year unsupported. Or even longer now that I’m with my parents again.

My generation has had it good so far. Money came easy, and growing up watching our parents keep tight budgets has taught us to do so too — to some extent at least. It won’t be so easy now on, but we have our savings to coast on while we reacquaint ourselves with the new realities. And we’ve had the taste of a liberated life.

The unlucky ones are the upcoming batch of first-time job seekers. They’ve hurried through their education — some even jumped it — in the hope of getting their share of the good luck their seniors have had. And now when they are ready to jump, the wave is gone. And gone with it are the dreams they’ve spent the last 3-4 years waiting to see turn real. It can’t get more disappointing than that.

In that sense, we truly are the luckies. Which I hoped was what India Today had covered in the lucid detail they are famed for (I’ve never read India Today before).

What they’ve covered instead is a generation of spoilt kids who live off their rich businesspeople parents, don’t understand the value of the money they’re spending (one profiled kid has monthly expenses exceeding Rs. 1 lakh), and have no proper grounding for their professional futures. All India Today has done is glorified these kids. The only comparision between these spoilt kids and the rest of the country is in the closing statement of the editorial: “...when the Luckies grow to maturity they will do well to remember that not everyone in India is quite so fortunate.”

I’m disappointed at India Today. These kids are not worth a cover story. India Today should at least have made this a comparision story with the dotcom luckies who are truly liberated, even if they don’t deserve it either.