Is political apathy among India's Gen Z a genuine ideological choice or a product of structural depoliticisation? Discuss with reference to the neo-liberal economic order.

India hosts over 382 million people aged 10–24 [1], yet its Gen Z is often read as politically indifferent. This apathy is better understood not as a settled ideological choice but as largely manufactured by post-1991 structural depoliticisation, though elements of conscious rejection do exist.

The case for genuine choice

• Issue-based, not party-based: youth mobilise episodically around climate, jobs and identity through digital platforms rather than party cadres — the ECI itself pivoted to social media campaigns like Turning 18 precisely because conventional channels no longer reach them [2].
• Reasoned disillusionment: the Lyngdoh Committee documented money and muscle power in campus elections [3]; withdrawal from such politics is a judgment, not ignorance.
• Redefined participation: petitions, RTI use and online advocacy show engagement migrating, not vanishing.

The case for structural depoliticisation

• Neo-liberal individualism: liberalisation since 1991 recast the citizen as consumer, converting collective crises — unemployment, housing, precarious gig work — into narratives of personal failure, dissolving the shared identity on which mobilisation depends.
• Material pressure: youth unemployment stood at about 10.2% for ages 15–29 in 2023-24, with urban youth worse placed [4]; survival competition crowds out political time.
• Institutional vacuum: most institutions hold no elected students' councils. Lyngdoh norms carry Supreme Court endorsement but are implemented patchily [3], and their framing sought to insulate campuses from politics — removing the first site of democratic apprenticeship guaranteed in spirit by Article 19(1)(c).
• Administrative response is thin: SVEEP raises turnout awareness [2] but does not build sustained political agency.

The evidence tilts decisively towards structure: choice operates only within options the political economy has already narrowed. The way forward is institutional — regular, Lyngdoh-compliant students' council elections, civic education embedded in curricula, and credible employment pathways that restore collective bargaining confidence. A demographic dividend without democratic apprenticeship remains unrealised; empowering Gen Z's political voice is essential to India's constitutional promise of participatory self-governance.