Abstract- India has the largest youth population in the world. Any policies or decisions taken for the population at large and youth in particular, cannot ignore to understand various attributes related to youth. The current research paper is an attempt to know and understand the preferences of youth with regards to various attributes related to their day-to-day habits, beliefs, ethos, preferences and career aspirations. Various observations suggested that young people generally knew how to access internet; spend most of their time on mobiles; could read, write and understand English but could not speak it confidently; were dependent upon parents for financial resources; wanted to pursue a career with reputation; and felt that the time-management was the biggest challenge. They also gave their opinions regarding their beliefs about themselves and the societal norms. Analysis like these can help the marketers and policy makers in designing and implementing policies and strategies targeted at youth segment.

Key words– Youth, preferences, beliefs, attributes, ethos, India

The demography of India in the contemporary times is historically placed in a way that could lead India towards becoming a superpower. India is the second most populated country in the world after China. According to a UN report cited in The Hindu (2014) India had the largest youth population in the world with 28% of the population belonging to the age group of 10-24 years’ old. About 356 million people belonged to this age-group in India. If this segment of the population developed into a productive human resource then there would be a surge in the economic growth. They would earn and spend more and thereby participate in the economic growth through contributions in production and consumption. This would further lead to an increased GDP for a long period of time till this segment of the population retired from the workforce. For a country that can enjoy such a demographic dividend for about four decades, it surely holds promises for future economic growth and development.

It is thus very important to understand the preferences of youth so that the efforts by policy makers, sociologists, anthropologists, economists, and businessmen amongst others were put in the correct direction. Their participation in production and consumption would be greatly influenced by their preferences and beliefs. Hence the objective of this paper was to understand the habits, preferences, beliefs, ethos, etc. of the youth and thereby gain a fair idea regarding selected attributes.

METHODOLOGY

A primary data collection was done for this exploratory research. Sample size was 100 youth. But 96 responses were analyzed since four were incomplete for certain responses. All the respondents belonged to the age group of 18-24 years and included 54 females and 42 males. The survey was conducted through a questionnaire based on informal discussions and a testing of a draft questionnaire through a preliminary survey. The questionnaire was further revised to incorporate the changes based on the observations and suggestions from the preliminary survey. Respondents were given the liberty to choose more than one options in certain questions. Frequencies have been cited for various attributes. The research area was Adipur city of Kachchh district, which is also called an education center due to the presence of about 15 institutions of higher learning in the vicinity. Attributes included were related to habits, preferences, beliefs, ethos, opinions about self and the societal norms, etc.