Reports about people in their 20s, including women, participating in late-night parties have become more frequent. Consumption of liquor is a feature of these gatherings and reports about such parties are generally received with indignation and laments about decline in standards.
This is perhaps natural in a society that has been quite puritanical and strait-laced in recent history. But it is not clear whether late-night parties and young men and women drinking alcohol really mean the end of civilisation as we have known it.
Without holding a brief for the party-goers, it is helpful to understand the broader social and economic context in which these parties happen.
To put things in a historical perspective, ‘social drinking’ among men became accepted among the middle classes at least in the 1980s. But women were not yet in the game, although by this time educated middle-class women had become a prominent feature of the employment landscape. This meant that they had greater economic control in their lives. Female employment around this time was mostly in public sector banks and in administrative positions in family-controlled private companies. The culture that prevailed in these workplaces did not permit loosening up or ‘having fun’ of any kind.
Things changed significantly from the 1990s – and not just on the economic and employment front. Urban, educated, middle-class women went to work in the nascent IT industry and call centres.They also became more assertive and insisted on more freedom. Rise of the IT industry and call centres and increases in wage levels were also accompanied by changes in workplace environments. The earlier bureaucratic setting of government companies and the feudal structures in family-owned companies gave way to more professional offices where people were selected and were rewarded, by and large, according to their individual merits.
People who entered the workforce since the 1990s also had a generally better upbringing, in the economic sense, than their parents. They were also less burdened by things like having to take care of elderly parents or marrying off sisters, which had been major considerations in most middle class families just a generation earlier. Young people now not only have more money than their parents did at a comparable age, there are also fewer demands on the money of the younger generation.
More philosophically, it was also perhaps time for a strait-laced society to loosen up and indulge itself. Often in the past, puritanical habits were a product of economic compulsions and fear of criticism, rather than choice and individual judgment about right and wrong. We cannot also forget that the more puritanical generation of the 1960s and 1970s played an important role in encouraging corruption and nepotism, which have now reached serious levels and are often viewed as the hallmarks of life in India. Therefore, it would be hasty to confuse clean habits with an ethical approach to life or having a few drinks at a party with lack of ethics.
Evidence of concern
It is true that the 20-somethings are active party-goers. But theirs is also the generation that responded actively to Anna Hazare’s call for fight against corruption and for probity in public life. It is anybody’s guess whether this will translate into cleaner government and public institutions in the decades to come, but at least it is evidence of concern among the youth with the present state of affairs and the problems afflicting public institutions.They have also shown readiness to come to the streets to express their concern, rather than just talk about it from the comfort of their armchairs at home.
There is another dimension to young women becoming party animals. This probably means that women’s liberation, the movement that began in the west after World War II has now arrived in India – in what is called the age of globalisation. With education and economic independence, this development was perhaps inevitable. To be fair, women do not just dance at late-night parties. They can also be seen unwinding themselves and coming out of their traditional shells and inhibitions in gatherings like Ravishankar’s Art of Living events.
In any event, it is apparent that some kind of a feminine revolution is in process – regardless of whether one likes this or not. An illustration of changing tastes and ideas is available in the attire in which leading lady singers of yesteryears and the present generation appear in public. One cannot recall Lata Mangeshkar or P Sushila appearing in public without the pallu of their saris covering their shoulders and wearing the kumkum on their foreheads. When we can compare this with the appearances of singers like Shreya Goshal or Alka Yagnik, the contrast is striking.
But it would be silly to form moral judgments with reference to the respective dresses of the two generations. The change merely underscores the obvious – namely, that things just do not remain the same.
Considering the changes that have happened all around, the moral indignation in some quarters to reports about late-night parties and youngsters drinking can be viewed as exaggerated and ill-informed. It might not, after all, be the end of civilisation. Possibly, a greater concern to some groups could be the evolving role of the urban, educated, Indian woman who might no longer be the dedicated and caring housewife (remember the movies of the 1960s?), with an added feature that she now also earns a lot of money for the family. Considering the gender imbalance in the Indian population and the rising economic status of women, they will probably be more assertive in the traditionally male-dominated society.
(The writer is a faculty of law at the University of Ottawa, Canada)