Youth, Consumption, and Social Change in India Today

The category of the youth is problematised by the contemporary dispensation, i.e. the neoliberal era and its diverse manifestations—one among which is, the escalated consumption patterns. The forms this consumption pattern assumes are quite new and complicated. It lures through an explosion of technological options for appropriation of various and shifting ideas of the „self‟. The „self‟ of an individual is a vector of these technological and communication consumptions—computers, mobile phones, gaming consoles. The self is also up for repeated scrutiny as well „upgradation‟ by the individual himself/herself as well as by the society at large which provides these modes and means of consumption. This then manifests itself in terms of identity crises as the individual is unable to develop a sense of coherent identity. This paper seeks to understand the relationship of the Indian youth to consumption, mediated by the social changes that saturate its existence.