What might slow down the India growth story?

Weak infrastructure, an overburdened judicial system, wage inflation, geopolitical disruptions, slowdown in the global economy etc. are the reasons often cited. While these are all valid concerns, not much attention is paid to a rather touchy-feely social issue that might arguably be as important as the often debated issues mentioned above. And, that is the question of how driven today’s youth are.

Speaking from my own personal experience, I have noticed that my parents’ generation had a raging fire in their bellies to succeed. They had to go the extra mile even to make ends meet. So they put all their ingenuity to use and worked really hard to improve the standard of living and establish themselves firmly in middle and upper-middle class sections of society. They also drove their kids to do well academically and did a great job of imbibing in them an appreciation for the value of good education. Horror stories about how freshly minted engineers could not even get a job that paid 1800 rupees per month had been told and retold several times.

Conditions today for India’s urban youth appear to be vastly different. Economic progress and jobs have brought affluence. At the same time, there are far more distractions as well. Cable and satellite television, online games, social networking sites etc. are just a few examples. And, these are only the “benign” distractions. Clearly, there are far more dangerous ones as well.

Given these conditions, I wonder whether the urban college kids of neuve riche parents are as driven to succeed as older generations. What would be the incentive to toil through a grueling professional degree program followed by higher education when alternatives include relatively well paying BPO jobs that provide enough disposable income enabling lavish spending on discretionary products?

Difficult situations drive people to succeed. Affluence breeds complacency. Ironically, the hurdle to growth might be growth itself. How does a society avoid falling into such a trap?