21st century Malayalee – a unique transformation
YEAR 2025 starts the Beta Generation's birth year, pushing behind the Alpha Generation born during 2010-2024, a 15-year period.
Named after Alpha, the first letter in the Greek alphabet, Generation Alpha is the first to be born entirely in the 21st century and the third millennium and most members of the Alpha generation are children of Millennials, born between 1981 and 1996.
Starting with Millennial Malayalee, we experience major cultural shocks now in the Global Malayalee Community in Kerala, India and all over the world. The Kerala community always was for generations connected to the Indian Malayalee and maintained the same culture. Once the Millennial Malayalee started migrating to many countries around the world, communication systems advanced, emails, Facebook, etc. became more popular and a new global Malayalee culture started evolving.
Malayalees have now migrated to more than 100 countries in the world, and in some countries like the USA, Canada, Germany, Ireland, the UK, Australia and New Zealand in large numbers. Many of the families in Kerala have members working or migrated to foreign countries. I know many parents who once in six months go to their son in the USA and daughter in Ireland or daughter in Australia and son in Canada.
That was an amazing life for those people who were mostly people from rural Kerala, who were leading a simple village life, never wore western clothes and travelled on flights. They never expected to buy a car during their life, some have more than one car now. They never expected to live in luxury, nor do they go out to restaurants more often and go see places. Some families do not have their children abroad. Being a member of a family where their cousins or neighbors are abroad, they also have a different lifestyle now.
When a lot of Malayalee migrated to Gulf countries, nothing much changed in Kerala, except that a few new houses were built in villages and some people had a better life. Lifestyle is very different in Kerala now and therefore, culture also changed.
Kerala and Malayalee transformed into a new culture in the 21st century. Many of the grandchildren of these Malayalees migrated to foreign countries, whose children belong to the Millennial Malayalee group and the grandchildren belong to the Alpha generation and those going to be born in 2025 belong to the Beta generation. Imagine the cultural changes already created by the Millennials and how their influence is changing the Alpha and going to change the Beta generation.
Twenty-first century Malayalee is going through this unique transformation along with the rest of the people in the world. Since Malayalees live in more than a hundred countries in the world, this transformation impacts the Malayalees in Kerala and India. When we visit Kerala we see and experience this new culture. Malayalee has become a global community.
We should maintain that global connection by being in touch and connecting globally.
