PRESS RELEASE: Indian Youth in a Global Context

Date: 21 Sept. 2007. Press conference at 3.30 PM. Seminar Time: 4 pm to 6 pm.
Venue: The Wheels, Hotel Taj Ambassador, Nr. Khan Market, Delhi

Presentation by: Dr. Mats Lindgren, CEO and founder of Kairos Future Group. Mrs. Anna Kiefer, Director of Kairos Future International.
Key note speech by: H.E. Lars-Olof Lindgren, Ambassador of Sweden to India

Young Indians are focused on their careers and are much more status-oriented than youth in Europe. These are two conclusions of the new survey “Global Youth” made by Kairos Future, an international research and strategy firm with headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden. With this project, Kairos Future extends its yearly youth values and lifestyle surveys in Sweden and Scandinavia to a truly international level. The survey covers 17 countries and India is one of them. The aim of the survey is to provide companies, authorities and organizations with strategic information concerning future consumers, employees and citizens.

Indian youth are happiest in the world!
Young middle-class Indians are the happiest people of all in the survey. They are much more satisfied with all aspects of their lives compared to the other nationalities. Over 50 percent of the young Indians are very content with their lives as a whole, which can be compared with pessimists such as the young Japanese or Germans, where only 17 and 27 percent respectively, are very satisfied with their lives. This satisfaction is also reflected in optimism about tomorrow.
- Indian youth are strikingly more optimistic about their own future and also about the future of society. The general picture in other countries is that young people tend to be personal optimists but societal pessimists, says Dr. Mats Lindgren, CEO and founder of Kairos Future Group.

Career and status are important…
In Europe, most young people seek a good living environment above all and work-related aspects in life are relatively less important. The priorities of Indian youth and young people in other “new economies” are different; for them it is work, a good career and a position with high status that are
important.

- The young Indians focus on work is also reflected in their values, they emphasize endurance, entrepreneurship and hard work, explains Mrs. Anna Kiefer, project leader of “Global Youth” and Director of Kairos Future International. But they also seek freedom and they want to be rewarded for their efforts, she adds.

Young Indians’ consumption behavior is also influenced by their status-orientation. For a majority, the right brand is more important than the price of a good and certain brands are perceived to be important for expressing one’s identity.

… while having children is quite unimportant!
Traditionally, the family is a strong focal point in the Indian society and even though it is important for young Indians, they show surprisingly little interest in having a family and children of their own.
- When asked about what constitutes a good life, there are many other aspects that are just as important, or even more important, than having a family and children, says Anna Kiefer. For example, feeling free, living and eating well and spending time with friends are more emphasized.

Perhaps the young Indians are too busy climbing the career ladder to have the time to think about their private life?

Economic growth – one key to optimism and happiness
One explanation behind the optimism of Indian youth is to look at the link between national economic growth and general optimism since they tend to be interconnected. In Kairos Future’s survey, those who have grown up in countries with rapid economic growth are significantly more optimistic and also
more satisfied with life in general. Young middle-class Indians are a good example of a generation who have seen their country’s economy grow, which brings more opportunities and possibilities for them than for their parents.

On our way to a global youth culture?
Could you talk about a global youth culture, just because young people buy the same clothes, watch the same TV-programs, share songs with each other, upload pictures at Flickr and share movies on Youtube? Hardly, young people differ, just like older generations, between countries and continents.

– But there are several signs of an emerging global youth culture, because young people in different countries are more similar than adults, says Mats Lindgren. In addition, youth differ the same way throughout the world. Hence, when middle-aged Indians, Americans and Swedes speak of young people as different, they have identical experiences of that “difference”, he adds.

About the survey
Kairos Future has during the period 1990-2006 surveyed and analyzed over 17 000 replies from Swedish and Scandinavian high school students aged 18-20. The latest survey “Global Youth” included over 22 000 replies from 16-29 year olds and 30-50 year olds in 17 countries in Europe, North-America and Asia. They have answered questions about dreams and ambitions, what is important in life and work life, what is their ideal society and what determines their consumption
patterns. The older age group is a reference sample that makes it possible to distinguish young people’s values from general contemporary values. The survey was web-based which means that the sample for e.g. India covers only middle-class youth and is not representative of the whole population.
The survey has been conducted in collaboration with the Swedish Institute, Fondation pour l’Innovation Politique (Fondapol) in France, The Swedish Region of Södermanland, Fortum, The Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) in Taiwan and The Institute for Information Industry (III) in Taiwan. The data collection has been made in collaboration with Zapera.
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