If you are an Indian in your 20's or 30's and reading this,have you ever wondered why our parents/grandparents never seem to be interested in getting the best clothes or dine at the best restaurant in the town or get the best smart phone?(assuming no monetary constraints). Why 'what society thinks' seems to guide their actions? How could they be in the same job for years and why would they still prefer us to have a government job which is respected in the society rather than one which pays more? Isn't that a generation gap or the age effect? Would we be same after 20 years from now?
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To make sense of that, we must first understand that their are two major cultures in the world: Western and Eastern. USA is representative of Western and Japan representative of Eastern culture. De facto, we Indians are a society which follows Eastern culture. While Japan is closer to India then USA, thanks to the Himalyas and the British Empire, for almost 2 centuries, India's Eastern culture came under heavy influence of Western culture. Japan suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of USA in World War II and thanks to US capitalism, there are more US firms than Japanese. All in all, this has exposed India(and the world) more to Western than Eastern culture and we have started considering the Western culture as the de-Facto standard. This only acclerated after Indian economy integrated with global economy during the 90s
While we Indians belong to Eastern culture, we are rapidly adopting Western culture which has widened the gap between generations. Each generation in India is more Western and less Eastern than the previous generation. I will let you read an excellent excerpt on Cultural Psychology which answers few of the questions raised above(click to enlarge):
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