India's Next Generation
Updated: Oct 3
For Revant Singhania, India's young generation is driving growth while navigating fierce competition and deep inequality.
India is often understood through extremes: its enormous population, its poverty, its rapid economic growth, or its ambitions on the global stage. But for Revant Sighania, growing up in Mumbai means seeing a country that is far more complicated than any one of those images.
He sees high-rise buildings alongside extreme poverty, world-class universities alongside students who lack basic resources, and a fiercely competitive education system that can transform a person’s life while also exposing enormous inequalities in access.
In this conversation, Revant reflects on India’s development, the role of young people, education, competition, corruption, inequality, institutions, religion, caste, and the direction he believes his country is heading.
Beyond the Stereotype
Q: What is the most misunderstood thing about India?
Revant:
I think India is thought to be like a very backward and underdeveloped country.
But if you notice the big cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, a person would actually see the real country, which is actually not underdeveloped.
It’s got such good infrastructure and it’s got very good roads and buildings which can even compare to the standards of the US.
India also seems to be like a very growing country. It’s one of the fastest-growing economies. That’s why the growth in our country is so fast. The infrastructure is just developing at a very fast pace.
A Generation Driving Growth
Q: You mentioned that India is growing very quickly. What role do you think young people are playing in that growth?
Revant:
I think the elite are just bringing new perspectives into the economy and the country.
That’s why they’re always researching and innovating new things.
We’ve got one of the best institutions, like IIT, in our country.
Q: IIT: is that a school?
Revant:
It’s a university. It’s like maybe a Harvard or something. There are multiple of them all over. I think they’re in 10-plus cities.
Q: Is it public, like government-funded?
Revant:
It’s government-funded, but you have to sit for an entrance exam. If you only score like the top 1% of people, only then do you get into IIT. So it’s a public university but extremely competitive.
Extremely competitive.
Indian universities surprisingly are even more competitive than the ones in the US. Even sitting for the medicine exams to be a doctor or to be an engineer, it’s very, very hard. And even to become a government servant, there’s an exam called the UPSC, which is a very tough exam to crack.
That’s why the people who are going into these colleges are actually the top, and they research so much that they, again, like the youth are contributing to the country and the economic growth because they’re constantly researching and innovating new things.
The Competition to Change Your Life
Q: How does that competition play into your everyday life? Do you think it’s a toxic environment, or do you think it helps?
Revant:
I think the competitive environment is good.
People coming from rural areas do not have as many opportunities. But in India, because of these exams, someone can turn their life.
From being a farmer’s son, they can become like a very rich person after getting a very high-paying government job or going to IIT or becoming a doctor.
That’s why it’s obviously competitive, because so many people are studying for the same exam and only like the top 1% or 0.1% of people are selected. That’s why it does become a very, very hard exam which people study for their entire life for it.
There are cities which are just coaching centers. There’s a city called Kota in India where people just go for two years and it’s just tuition classes to study for these exams.
Q: So it’s almost like the entire city exists around preparing for these exams?
Revant:
Yeah.
The Farmer’s Son
Q: Do you have any personal stories that show what that kind of competition can do for someone’s life?
Revant:
I’ve seen one of my friends.
His dad was the son of a farmer, and he did the UPSC exam and became something called an IAS officer, which is an administrative officer working for the government.
And he’s completely turned his life.
Who Gets the Chance to Compete?
Q: But does the son of a farmer in rural India, for example, actually have enough resources to study for these exams?
Revant:
I think in India, the rural areas are particularly not as well developed. That’s why people do not have the resources to study for it. There’s maybe no Wi-Fi and computers.
I’ve heard many stories of people where they study under a streetlight. They somehow get books and they just study as much as they can, and they still manage to crack them.
Trust in Institutions
Q: Do young people trust institutions in India? Take security, the government, or other institutions. Do you think there’s a consistent effort by the government to help young people?
Revant:
I think there is.
But also in India, in many developing countries, there’s a lot of corruption.
Rich politicians are obviously just embezzling money. And there was also a paper leak: a very big national exam called the NEET to become a doctor. The leak a few months back.
It just shows how much corruption there is, and the youth is not happy about this with the government or with institutions.
But somehow you end up trusting the institutions that you are in. I mean, at least you hope that they will be doing the right thing. But there is a lot of corruption where people do get paid seats into jobs, into government jobs.
Mumbai’s Two Worlds
Q: How does inequality play into your everyday life? When you’re in Mumbai, for example, how do you experience your country’s inequality?
Revant:
All over India there’s very, very big inequalities.
I live in Mumbai, where a few people are living in these high-rise buildings, living a very, very luxurious life, spending like hundreds and thousands of dollars every day.
And then right outside your house, we just step outside and we see people dying out of hunger and at such high levels of poverty.
It’s just ingrained in everyone’s daily life. They see people like this, but they still go back to their own house and they’re comfortably living. But there is very big inequality.
What Young People Want to Change
Q: Do you think young people have a need to change that in the future?
Revant:
I think young people do.
The youth often really want to change this inequality.
Any country will have inequalities, and at least reduce the amount of inequalities where there are rich people, but also they don’t control such a large percent of the wealth that the poor do not have anything.
India’s Direction
Q: What role do you think Modi is playing in India right now? Where is he trying to guide the country?
Revant:
I think Modi is doing a very, very good job. I may be biased, but I think he is doing a very good job.
Guiding India for its growth, bringing it on the world map, bringing it to something like a superpower, where he’s bringing new industries and new things and improving the infrastructure.
It’s a great thing you would never know, and you would have never seen before.
Religion and the State
Q: What role do you think religion plays in the government and also in the social structure of India?
Revant:
I think religion does play a role in the social structure of the country.
India is a secular country.
There is a lot of religious equality. Like jobs and all, you wouldn’t discriminate people based on their religion, at least for government jobs.
Because India is a secular country and everyone has got equal opportunity when it comes to that.
The Caste System
Q: Do you think the caste system is very outdated and should be changed in that way?
Revant:
Yeah, it is.
I think the caste system is not a good system at all. But it's slowly going away in India.
It’s still there in rural villages and all this. But in the major cities we don’t see a caste system as much.
What Development Looks Like
For Revant, development is not an abstract statistic.
It is visible in the roads and buildings of Mumbai. It is visible in India’s universities, its research, its infrastructure, and its growing role in the global economy.
But so are the contradictions.
A student can rise from a farming family to become an IAS officer. Someone from a rural village can study under a streetlight and still crack one of India’s hardest exams.
At the same time, another student may not have Wi-Fi, a computer, or access to the coaching and resources that make competing possible.
In Mumbai, the contrast can be even more immediate: high-rise buildings and extraordinary wealth can exist directly beside extreme poverty.
Revant sees both sides.
He believes India’s growth is real. He believes young people are helping drive it. He believes competition can give people an opportunity to change their lives.
But he also believes that opportunity has to become more widely accessible.
And that leaves India with a question larger than economic growth alone:
Who gets the chance to participate in it?
For Revant, India’s next generation will have a major role in answering that question.
They are the students competing for places at IIT. The young people preparing for the UPSC. The researchers and innovators contributing to India’s economy. And the generation that sees inequality in its everyday life and increasingly wants to change it.
India’s future, as Revant sees it, is therefore not simply about becoming richer or more powerful.
It is about what its young people do with the opportunities (and inequalities) they inherit.
About Youth4Truth
Youth4Truth speaks with young people around the world about the political, economic, and social systems shaping their lives.
We believe young people don’t just experience these systems: they have perspectives on how they work, where they fail, and what should come next.
This is their story.
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