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One week India’s youth are dancing on Instagram reels, lip-syncing to songs whose lyrics would alarm their grandparents and grammar teachers alike, the next week they are marching on the streets, demanding institutional accountability, examination reforms and justice. Depending on which photograph is circulating on social media, commentators confidently conclude that India’s future is either gloriously enlightened or hopelessly doomed.

The latest obsession is choosing which image “truly” represents India’s Generation ‘Z’. It is an entertaining exercise. It is also statistically absurd. Imagine trying to define India by comparing Virat Kohli with a traffic policeman eating vada pav. Both are Indian. Neither can be boxed into the 1.4 billion people.

The problem is not Gen Z. The problem is our addiction to symbolism. India has nearly 370 million people belonging to Gen Z, making it one of the world’s largest youth cohorts. They live in megacities and mountain villages, attend IIT coaching centres and government schools, code artificial intelligence, drive delivery bikes, prepare for UPSC, work on farms, sell on Instagram, and probably, waste entire weekends debating whether pineapple belongs on pizza.  Yet every debate reduces this extraordinary diversity into two photographs: One dancing, one protesting.

Apparently, sociology has now become a game of “spot the representative Indian”. This says far more about adults than about young people. Older generations have always insisted that youth must come with a conventional operating manual. Boomers wanted obedient children. Generation X........

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