India in 2020 - Do You Buy This Image?

One of the quieter classics of science fiction is a book by Marya Mannes called "They". It is about a society that hunts down the old because old age is seen as a crime. As the plot thickens and time passes, a younger generation comes to realize that it too is getting old. It then decides to waive the idea of old age as criminality.

India in 2010 is in a similar phase.

A land that worshipped tradition and seniority is suddenly making a fetish of the new. We have dumped the old fears of Malthus to relook at demography and claim that 70% of our population is under 25. We proclaim ourselves as the youthful society, convinced that youth, consumption, innovation is a combined elixir that will launch us into the next century.

Think about it. In 10 years, our population will be middleaged . Ours will be a society with a midlife crisis. Middle age in India will be like a collective menopause . It will affect the psyche of the whole society....

In 2020, India will become middle-aged . The trouble with middle age in India is that Indians treat it like old age.(1) It also affects genders separately. India will become a society of boring men and purposive women ready after childbirth to resume careers and their lives. Men will become iconically fatter, slower and spend more time in beauty clinics. Hair dyes would do little to hide the fading youth.

The crisis of middle age will lead to a gender battle. By 2020, Indian women will be more professional , more at ease with their careers and their bodies, more sexually demanding. Freedom for women by that time will have become much more real. It is a reality men will not be able to take.

Men caught in their professional , patriarchal grids and kept adolescent by their mothers will not have grown, except grown predictable. Their ambitions will slow down; most of their careers would be at snail's pace. Unemployment will be higher and they will find that the idea of a permanent job disappeared a decade ago.

In the meanwhile, the consumer revolution would have created a different kind of freedom for women. Women will become more inventive, not just about consumer products. We will be a society of vital women hungry for life, contending with a patriarchy that has run out of steam and ideas.

The one saving grace will be the women's reservation Bill guaranteeing 33% seats in Parliament . The Congress would always be remembered fondly by women for creating a wave of politics that will give India new ideas about peace, passion and sustainability. Women will begin colonizing public spaces leading to strange domestic events. There will be a feminization of men ?they will sit at home with their aged mothers. Another sign would be the increasing prevalence of male "kitty" parties as membership of clubs become more difficult and exclusive.

Consumer gurus will make a killing on two trends. The consumption of Viagra-like potions will increase, increasing with it the number of sexual quacks. The number of potions advocated by traditional healers will increase exponentially. There will be a great increase in cosmetic surgery for fat men. But gym membership won't increase and middle-aged men will remain more wedded to their middle in 2020.

The second trend that people will begin noticing is the increasing presence of men in satsangs. Religious ashrams will become a place for middle-aged boy scouts and fundamentalists. The satsangs will become more shrill and voyeuristic, condemning women too busy to attend to men or their mothers. Ever sensitive to new demands, some spiritual foundations might open special sections for men in the middle. One packaged course could be called "spirituality in the age of the middle".

India would be in a civil war of genders, which society as a whole might not recognize clearly . For the first time, the Indian family might have to rethink itself . Old ideas such as the sanctity of the family, the inviolability of the mother-child bond could show signs of fraying. The problem will be an explosion of freedom in a society that feared freedom . Freedom in India would still be seen as licence. Society's normative system might suddenly fall apart. Domestic space might become more battle-ridden or emptier than public space.

This is when the first of the reactionary movements demanding a return to the traditional family could mushroom across India. There would be a burst of evangelical family movements led by matriarchal women. Religious foundations and cultural groups could take on the role of marriage consultants . But life will become more interesting. Children will find it easier to discover themselves. Men in particular will realize that the old IIT-careerist patriarchal male whose sexuality ended at 30 is a doomed creature. Signs of a different sexuality, a different sense of conversation between men and women will hint at a whole new ?and different - world.

The writer is a sociologist