Every day, the older men running our politics keep pushing Gen Z voters further away, observes Binu Alex.
Key Points
- Think about the first-time Lok Sabha voters lining up for 2029. Around 12 crore of them.
- Add the Gen Z voters who have already voted once in local elections. Around 25 crore. Every one of them angry.
- That makes roughly one in every four Indian voters a Gen Z voter. Not a group anyone can afford to alienate.
I never took notice of Gen Z slang.
It rotated in my house like the mosquitoes that never die, even with a repellent.
But after a forced ministerial resignation, it started rubbing against my timeline more than I expected.
I have two Gen Z kids at home, after all.
As I have already said, I no longer post on Sundays. But heavy rain kept me from church this week, so I sat at home instead.
I decided to use the morning to collect these slang words. Let me share them with you.
Most of you are probably already familiar with these. I clearly was not.
When I crack a joke that would have had my classmates in splits, my daughters look at me like I have said something illegal.
I was not that bad in my generation, I thought. Maybe they just did not have the context.
Brain Rot, they call it. I did not take any notice.
My jeans are old. They were bought to last, and they have lasted. They are also tight.
My daughters want to throw them out. I resist.
Tight jeans are out of fashion, they tell me. I never knew that. Nobody complained.
When I go to office, I am not walking a ramp, I told them. I am there for comfort.
The longer my jeans last, the more I trust the brand. That is just economics.
They call this Aura Loss. I did not take any notice.
When we travel, I look for small eating joints in Kerala. Limited menu, but everything fresh.
My daughters prefer the fancy cafes. So naturally, I drag them to a thattukada instead.
Mid, they say. I did not take any notice.
They watch reels of police cracking down on young protesters, and it makes them angry.
What angers them more is the defending of it. Anchors shouting over guests, panelists going after the youth instead of the police.
Not on TV, mind you. I have not watched TV news in 25 years.
This is on reels, shared by their classmates and friends.
Cringe, they shout. I did not take any notice.
My daughters are not saints either. They fight, sometimes with real heat.
One of them always runs to me or my wife, accusing the other of Rage Bait.
What is that? Never heard of it. I let it go.
When we talk, my younger one replies with 'bet' instead of 'okay'.
I used to write 'You bet' occasionally. She says it out loud a hundred times a day.
Somewhere along the way, 'cheee' became 'eeeeee'. The 'ch' just disappeared.
The Coldplay Generation Gap
When my daughter was in college in Mumbai, she once called asking if she could go to Coldplay.
I thought it was some film from a metaverse. I said fine.
Then she mentioned the ticket cost ten thousand rupees. I panicked.
It took me a while to realise Coldplay is a music band, not a movie.
The next day, my partner mentioned his daughter wanted Coldplay tickets too. He had no clue either.
That made two fathers whose daughters' choices were a mystery to us.
And that is roughly what the government also realised this July, when it finally gave in to a set of demands it had no real choice about.
But the story does not end there.
Roughly One In Every Four Indian Voters Is A Gen Z Voter
Every day, the older men -- boomers in their language -- running our politics keep pushing Gen Z voters further away.
Playing the victim card will not work on this lot.
Forcing a 15-year-old girl to apologise did more damage than they realise.
Maybe change will start from them, though our generation stayed mostly silent. Maybe it will not. There are reasons either way.
Now think about the first-time Lok Sabha voters lining up for 2029. Around 12 crore of them.
Add the Gen Z voters who have already voted once in local elections. Around 25 crore. Every one of them angry.
That makes roughly one in every four Indian voters a Gen Z voter.
Not a group anyone can afford to alienate.
There is one more number worth remembering. Within a couple of years, women voters will equal or outnumber men.
Somewhere in all this slang and rage bait and Coldplay confusion, a very old lesson is quietly repeating itself: The people we stop listening to are usually the ones who end up deciding everything.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff
