IIndia is a young country: around two-fifths of its 1.4 billion inhabitants are under 25 years old. This makes it an important constituency for the general election, which ends on June 4. However, getting their vote is not easy. Just before the elections, data released by the Election Commission of India showed that less than 40% of newly eligible voters were registered to vote. Some young people are disappointed with what they perceive as a lack of economic progress since the last general elections in 2019. “I vote for NOTICED“, shrugs Jitender Kumar, a 24-year-old from Katihar, a small town in eastern Bihar. NOTICED means “none of the above”.
Mr. Kumar’s complaints are echoed by other young Indians elsewhere. Unemployment and the rising cost of living were the top concerns cited by voters in a survey conducted by the Center for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), a Delhi-based think tank, in the run-up to the elections. “We are told that we can all be entrepreneurs… but in reality, there is no path to success,” says Isha, a 26-year-old radio producer in Patna, the capital of Bihar. In the CSDS According to the survey, 62% of respondents said it had become more difficult to find a job over the past five years.
