ABSTRACT
The post-liberalisation era has seen the Indian economy grow at unprecedented rates. In what may be termed as a missed opportunity, the huge demographic dividend that lends India a comparative advantage over other emerging economies is fast nearing its saturation point. The structural dynamics of India’s economy, with labour-intensive manufacturing largely missing from its growth puzzle, have created their own set of challenges, not to mention the spectre of joblessness that is haunting a large segment of young India today. In the wake of these developments, the chapter decodes the aspirations of India’s youth by looking at their occupational choices and their career priorities. The study finds a major shift in the occupational profile of young India between 2007 and 2010, with an increasing proportion of India’s youth pursuing studies in place of other occupations. Second, it would be a mistake to think that with the onset of economic liberalisation, the clamour for government jobs would have subsided. A government job remains the most coveted profession for a vast majority of India’s youth and in this respect, today’s younger generation is not any different from the earlier one. Finally, though young Indians are moving internally like never before and international mobility among them is still very low.
