The other day, I heard someone describe the older generation as though they had been imported from another planet. They apparently do not understand work-life balance, do not talk enough about feelings, stayed too long in one organisation and, in the final indignity, still ask their children how to use an app. Every generation eventually invents a vocabulary for its own superiority, then wonders how the previous one managed to survive without it.

The ‘olders’ are now obsessed with their views on Gen Z. Their anxieties, expectations, aspirations and relationships are analysed as though a new species has arrived and requires decoding. We debate what they want from employers, how they view money and success, and whether they will stay in a job for more than one year.

Young Indians are entering a society and economy unlike the one their parents entered, and they should not be asked to inherit its rules unquestioningly. But somewhere along the way, fascination with the young has acquired an odd condition: the old are increasingly expected to prove that they deserve a place in the world they helped build.

The Older Generation Was Never One Block

The older generation is not one homogeneous block. The small-town entrepreneur who built a first-generation business, the homemaker whose economic contribution never appears on GDP calculations, the public-sector employee who spent three decades inside one institution, and the farmer who educated children through uncertain harvests did not live the same lives merely because........

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