DREAMERS: HOW YOUNG INDIANS ARE CHANGING THE WORLD
600 million Indians, more than half the population, are under twenty-five. This generation lives between extremes: more connected and global than ever, but with narrow ideas of Indian identity; raised with the cultural values of their grandparents, but the life goals of American teenagers. These dreamers are the face of a new India. Angry, and frustrated with being marginalised by both globalisation and India’s old politics, they place hope in the Modi government’s exclusionary nationalism and, above all, in their personal truths: shape your own future; exploit, or be exploited.
Snigdha Poonam tracks these young fortune-seekers — aspiring Bollywood stars and clickbait gurus, the Cow Protection Army hoodlums and Allahabad University’s first female Student Union President — all united by the belief that they were born for bigger and better things. Dreamers brings to life their boundless ambition and extraordinary imagination to create opportunities in the unlikeliest of spaces.
Excerpts
The Guardian | The scammers gaming India’s overcrowded job market
Buzzfeed |The Angry Young Men
Hindustan Times |The Angry Young Woman
Reviews
The New York Review of Books | Lost Calcutta
Economist | The anger and ambition of India’s youth
Times Literary Supplement | The Spectres of India
Financial Times | Generation vexed
Times of India | Why is young Hindu man angry
Dreamers is a racy, riveting read in which Poonam goes beyond the headlines to probe how those were made in the first place
Hindu | Risk takers who don’t give up
“It introduces us to an unforgettable set of characters from among India’s 600 million youth: entrepreneurs, leaders, followers, gangsters and scamsters, but also hungry and vulnerable young people with dreams in their eyes.”
The Wall Street Journal | Limited prospects, global ambitions
Foreign Affairs | An Indian Nightmare
"Dreamers smashes the slick hype that has been constructed around India’s aspiring middle classes, calling our attention to the corruption, frustration, and dashed hopes bubbling beneath the surface."
"This craving for respect is replicated at every level, and it is this which may have more of an impact on India’s place in the world in coming decades than any economic success the country might have."
"The craft behind Dreamers extends, at times, to physical courage. Throughout, it involves patience, intelligent curiosity, sympathy, and doggedness."
New Statesman | Empty Promises
Los Angeles Review of Books | The Million Trumps of India
"Intrepid reportage comes from the depths of young male rage and desperation, where everyone seems determined to out-scam everyone else on multiple levels.”
The Nation | The Dreams of India’s Restless Generation
“How they make do in the absence of an economy that works for them, the ways they try to make better or at least bigger lives for themselves.”
Australian Foreign Affairs | Gulf between ambition and reality
“Her book does what so many others that purport to draw the definitive picture of contemporary India do not: it tells the story from the inside out.”
Interviews
Asian Culture Vulture | Aspirations, hopes and fears of a nation on the move
"Young Indians are increasingly looking outside to fulfill their dreams of wealth and power.
This mix of underutilised talent and misplaced chauvinism means both good and bad things for the world."
"Like it or not, young India is what it is: unsatisfied, unscrupulous, unstoppable."
FirstPost | A generation's anxieties
"The young men weren't just talking about their own dreams but also what they want for their country and what they want from the world."
Columns
Guardian | Ian Jack
Business Standard | Sunil Sethi