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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

The rise of anti-establishment India

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AAP is most popular among the young, reflecting a generational shift in India that poses a problem for Modi as newer parties seek to capitalise on the lack of jobs  


Tommy Wilkes & Manoj Kumar -


Twenty-seven-year-old Rupinder Kaur Ruby is a political novice but her message is clear: Jobs for young people.


Grabbing the microphone, the law student tells a few hundred supporters in a dusty village square in the northwest Indian state of Punjab that the ruling parties have failed them.


“Punjab is not in a good place. And the youth are the most affected. They want to fight back,” she said, raising her fist to cheers, as the crowd covered her in garlands before heading off to canvass for votes in a state election on Saturday.


Ruby is one of several inexperienced candidates her Aam Aadmi (Common Man) Party is fielding to tap anger among an increasingly aspirational but frustrated youth, and to challenge Prime Minister Narendra Modi as his party heads into five state polls over the next month starting with Punjab.


A strong showing by AAP, which won a handful of seats in Punjab in the 2014 general election and governs the city-state of Delhi, would serve as a mid-term warning for the still-popular Modi as the economy fails to fulfil expectations.


The young in Punjab have been hit hardest by factory shutdowns, amid allegations that corruption has hastened the economic decline of a relatively rich state of 28 million people bordering Pakistan.


Unemployment tops voter concerns there, according to a recent poll, and young people are less and less willing to work their parents’ fields in the state known as India’s “bread basket”.


Most recent opinion polls show Congress, India’s main opposition party, in the lead in Punjab, ahead of AAP which has been criticised by rivals for failing to flesh out how it would boost employment were it to come to power.


But Ruby’s party is most popular among the young, reflecting a generational shift in India that poses a problem for Modi as newer parties seek to capitalise on the lack of jobs.


Nearly two-thirds of India’s 1.3 billion people are under 35 — a demographic “bulge” that will create the world’s largest working-age population before 2050.


Despite average annual economic growth of 6.5 per cent between 1991 and 2013, India added less than half the jobs needed to absorb new entrants into the workforce.


The incumbent Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) party that rules Punjab alongside Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party and Congress, have governed the state alternately for decades with a focus on Sikhism, the state’s dominant religion and farm subsidies.


Those priorities resonate less among the young, and now all the main parties are promising free smartphones and Rs 2,500 ($37) a month for the unemployed.


“The other parties are all the same,” said 30-year-old Jaskaran Sharma, who works as a truck driver in the Middle East and was helping with Ruby’s campaign in between jobs. “She is energetic, and young people understand the system,” he said in the village of Teona.


Punjab’s official unemployment rate in 2015/16, at 6 per cent, was above the national average of 5 per cent, according to the Labour Bureau, although economists say the figures do not reflect the true picture.


Levels of underemployment are higher; only 17 per cent of Punjab’s population earns a regular wage.


AAP, which scored surprise wins in local elections in Delhi in 2013 and 2015 on a broad anti-corruption platform, is led by 48-year-old Arvind Kejriwal, a former tax inspector who hopes to expand into other regions by channelling anger over unemployment.


“The youth are looking for change, and for that they are going to take a risk with AAP,” said Ashutosh Kumar, a professor of political science at Panjab University.


The ruling party, led by the wealthy Badal family, still commands support among older generations and better-off farmers, while Congress is attracting voters who see AAP as inexperienced. — Reuters


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