Sometimes, when you want to check a hypothesis like this, it’s best to go to the smallest, least complicated place it’s being tested. Which is, in this case, of course, Mizoram; a state where the new chief minister, Lalthanhawla, explicitly told The Indian Express that the Congress’ defeat of the former insurgents in the Mizo National Front was because of “young people who were born after the peace accord of 1986 and cast their votes for the first time.” Mizoram’s younger voters don’t care which of their fathers fought which in the 1970s. Participants in those fights didn’t get this in time.

India’s going through a demographic transition that is unprecedented. No other country has undergone it when it’s also had universal suffrage. When the US came close — the bulge being the post-WWII “baby boom” — the political effects were striking, from the election of Kennedy onwards. (The photograph of JFK’s inauguration makes the sudden shift explicit: it is a sea of old-fashioned top-hats with Kennedy alone bareheaded. Perhaps Obama will show up at his inauguration without a tie.) It’s particularly noticeable how young India is when one returns from abroad: it was depressing, I remember, to be moving from somewhere where I was below the average height to somewhere where I was above the average age.

What does this mean for policy-making, and for the future of our politics? First, don’t assume yesterday’s battles are familiar. For example, millions vote today, some swinging elections, who don’t have a reflexive understanding of the effects of the licence-permit raj. When economic policy is discussed, explain it to them some other way. Second, it’s a reminder that long-simmering problems need to be given time to heal, and that history can be rendered irrelevant quicker than we can imagine: this is something that whoever is making Kashmir policy in Delhi, for example, needs to understand.

... contd.