Modern Social Life and Mental Health

Abstract

Indian society today is a society in transition. The age-old misconception that the Indian economy is predominantly rural is now eroding. It is true that one's village culture, community, caste, and familial ties still majorly impact the average Indian's way of life. However, due to both the ‘push' and ‘pull' forces of migration, the former, over time, have become more and more amalgamated with urbane and metropolitan influences stemming from, among others, the mass proliferation of white-collar jobs and the explosion of social media platforms. This hybridization of schemas often causes cognitive dissonance for a said individual in multiple facets of his/her personal and/or professional life. Since industry and service sector jobs are majorly concentrated in urban areas of the country, this individual now has an entirely new set of psycho-social adjustment problems to deal with. Another reason for why the work-life of India is drastically different from that of other countries is that organizations in India, at least the well-established ones, often have two to three generations working simultaneously, which combined with the rapidly growing average life-expectancy; thanks to cheap quality public health-care, which is estimated to increase to four to five generations shortly. The major problem to be expected by the future, and even to an extent, current HR managers is that multiple generations profess dramatically different superegos and/or value systems.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3873964