Urban millennials in India have had much to reveal in five years

livemint.com:

covid pandemic, at a time when prompt data was hard to come by. The results of the survey’s 10th round, which took place in June, have been published in Mint over the last two weeks, starting 15 August (bit.ly/3YH0IoF). The latest round, which covered 10,072 respondents, sought to understand the views of urban Indians on the country’s newfound status as the world’s most populous nation.

Varied themes such as this have been at the core of the surveys, trying to decode the psyche of India’s digital natives in different ways in each round. The first round, whose results were published in August 2018, covered 5,000 respondents across 180 cities (we’ve grown coverage significantly since then). The job market was already under stress, and we found that over two-thirds of young respondents were finding it ‘extremely’ or ‘fairly’ difficult to find a job.

This was an eye-opener at a time when many were pointing out the economy’s ‘jobless growth’ and debate was rife around the state of employment ahead of the 2019 general elections. Considered the ‘holy grail’ for consumer-focused businesses, millennials and post-millennials are often under the scanner for their choices. They can make or break consumer-facing industries; remember that in 2019, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman blamed this generation for a slump in car sales because they allegedly preferred ride-hailing apps.

Several such views—both with and without basis—on young India’s quirks and inadequacies feature in drawing-room chats as well. Not all theories about this little-understood generation are true, as these surveys have found time and again. Take the same case; the survey conducted in late 2019 showed that millennials were, in fact, more likely than