Word: urbanism
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...demographic that is too large for any political party to ignore. Of India's 1 billion citizens, 40% are under 18; 70% are under 35. In the cities, voting rates among younger citizens are as many as 20 points lower than they are in rural areas, but growing. "Urban youth is emerging as a key electoral group," says Jai Mrug, an election analyst based in Mumbai. "It could be a huge sample of voters freshly added to the polls." The country's political future belongs to those who understand that their issues are India's issues...
...Skeptics say that the new activism of young urban voters is nothing more than an élite phenomenon, and that this Indian election, like nearly every one that has preceded it, will be decided by the masses in India's villages, who vote for the candidate most likely to bring them bijli, pani, sadak - power, water and roads. But even young people in rural areas are looking for something new: not just a better life, but a better system. Vikram Rai, for example, is a 29-year-old college lecturer in Darjeeling, in northeastern India, who can't understand...
...Safety First young rural and urban voters are also connected by their worries over security. India's cities may be the main targets for terrorist attacks, but many of its villages have become battlegrounds of a different kind. Maoist Naxalite groups have attacked more than a dozen polling stations in five different states since voting began, killing 29 security personnel. Vinay Ikka, a 30-year-old farmer and social worker, lives in Jashpur, a village in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, in a small house surrounded by a mango and lychee orchard. He loves the forest life, but fears...
...rapid migration of young people out of villages and toward the cities is also blurring the distinction between rural and urban voters. B.D. Raghu, 26, commutes two hours by train, each way, to Bangalore from his home in Mandya, a village 62 miles (100 km) away. He has been doing this every day for eight years, working as a ticket collector in a parking lot, as a warden in a youth hostel, then as a counter clerk in a juice bar and now as the office manager for a local advocacy group, where he earns about $100 a month. "When...
...India's young people will, of course, require more than just one election. Shekhar Deshmukh, a Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation fellow who is studying patterns of migration to the cities, says that he has noticed a hopeful change among young people, even in the poorest villages and urban slums: they question why their lives are as they are. "In this generation they are expressing their views very openly," he says. "Maybe in the next generation they will act. But it will take time...