Urban transformations, youth aspirations, and education in India

ABSTRACT

Rapid urbanisation and demographic transition have significant implications for India, making it one of the largest urban agglomerations and youngest nations in the world. Each of these involves complex and multilayered changes, specially with neo-liberal transformations leaving their impact on youth lives, aspirations, and culture. While the ‘urban’ remains the site for realising youth aspirations, neo-liberal transformations of this space are such that youth face many barriers in realising their dreams for a secure future. This includes enhanced social exclusions of youth from marginalised social castes and from rural areas. Also, there is the domination of a globalised middle- class in cities that now aspire to be aesthetic world-class spaces. The assertive middle class also brings in cultures of conspicuous consumption from which the youth from marginalised social backgrounds are somewhat disconnected. In the midst of these transformations, the central question this volume seeks to explore is about the life experiences, aspirations, trajectories of social mobility and agency of youth in India.

KEYWORDS:

• Global south
• southern urbanism
• urban transformations
• youth agency
• youth aspirations

Introduction: the conundrum of urban change and the youth

This volume seeks to bring together critical conversations about two of the most significant challenges that India faces today: rapid urbanisation and a demographic transition inclined towards an increased younger age population. Together, these make our country one of the largest urban agglomerations and the youngest nations in the world. More than half of India’s population (600 million) is currently under the age of 25 years and more than 65 percent of Indians are below the age of 35 years. These transformations are not simply a structural phenomenon, consisting either of spatial changes that describe ‘territorial locations’ of rising new human settlements, or of there being a ‘youth-bulge’ in the age composition of the country’s population, giving us a distinct economic advantage in terms of a ‘demographic dividend’. To begin with, each of the two changes is profoundly complex to define, measure, and describe even as nominal categories. To further analyse, they require an explicit use of multi-disciplinary lenses – borrowed from sociology, anthropology, human geography, political-economy, and development studies at the very least, and with an emphasis on the lived experiences of youth in the global South. Second, these transformations are multi-layered, coming as they do, in the backdrop of economic policy changes that have since 1991 enhanced India’s linkages with global markets. Relatedly, there has been a restructuring of social, cultural, and institutional spheres too, as ideas that are global in reach and outlook, have a significant impact. Also, noteworthy is the technology inspired transformation of the economy, workplace, education, and communications – all these have important implications for youth lives, aspirations, and culture.

At the centre of the volume lies a conundrum: while the ‘urban’ remains the centre for youth aspirations, in its ability to project itself as a project of modernity, and as the space where dreams for life and work can be realised, the precise nature of the neo-liberal transformations of this space are such that there are indeed many barriers to achieving these. Jeffrey et al. note this to be one of the most ‘unsettling paradoxes of contemporary globalization’ – at the precise moment that socially excluded groups have come to recognise the empowering possibilities of education, the opportunities seem to be disappearing.¹ Scholar Anirudha Krishna notes appropriately that while the youth in India may dream big, the realisation of social mobility remains critically dependant on access to specialised education and ‘globally scarce resources’ – resources that youth falling within the domain of the ‘rupee economy’ simply do not have.² The disproportionate benefits of the rapid economic growth since liberalisation have been reaped by a small number of those who belong to the domain of the ‘dollar economy’ – these are individuals or families earning salaries that are globally comparable, share the lifestyle and culture of a global elite, and have free mobility across countries. In a similar vein, Leela Fernandes affirms the rise of a new, powerful middle class in the wake of accelerated liberalisation since the 1990s – this class has been able to use individual strategies to acquire the social and cultural capital necessary to gain access to ‘new age jobs’.³ Similarly, in the cities of Bangalore and Hyderabad – both known for being a global ‘IT hub’ – Carol Upadhya finds that a new ‘transnational middle class’ has emerged, while it is different from an older middle class with secure jobs in the public sector, its social origins are similar – predominantly upper caste, educated, urban families.⁴ There are changes too, as there is an increasing intake of youth from smaller towns, and non-Brahmin ‘other backward castes’ in these jobs. Yet, even this latter group comes largely from well-off families. Both these groups – the urban, well to-do, upper castes, and the new entrants from smaller towns and other backward castes, have the requisite social and cultural capital to make it to the new age jobs. Historical inequalities of caste, religion and gender are accentuated in this process of finding a place in the ‘new economy’, which is in essence only an assemblage for global capitalism.

Also, the transition associated with the age and stage of youth – from education to work – is not a neat and tidy one, and is mediated by these transformations. Education does not by itself translate easily into jobs of a formal nature, leaving the youth largely with options to access the world of work in varieties of informalism, often associated with downgraded and insecure work conditions.⁵ Jeffrey et al. highlight the struggles faced by marginalised men to acquire work, political leverage, and respect.⁶ Even prolonged education does not guarantee jobs in the small towns and villages that the authors study. But their scholarship takes note of the uneasy transitions between a formal style of education and a world of work divided between private and secure jobs. In Sara Dickey’s conversations with educated youth in Madurai, it is apparent that they have studied a lot but are unable to get good jobs.⁷ Medical transcription – writing up of medical reports from recorded voice notes, often provided as an ‘offshore’ service for doctors abroad – is considered a well-paying job. They may also have to do two jobs to maintain a lifestyle associated with the middle class. The advent of the internet, online technologies, and artificial intelligence has restructured both – education and the workplace such that contractual work with no real need for degrees, makes for an ascendant culture of flexible work. Outside of fixed organisations, associated with formalism, this new type of work pattern and culture is referred to as the ‘gig economy’. Unshackled from corporate norms, this type of work is seen as offering the freedom to choose assignments, and develop the talent of the youth. Although seemingly a creative turn for expression of the youth, this type of work is associated with precarity of work conditions, and lacks the social respect and power that formal jobs bring. MacDonald and Giazitzoglu note that young adults encounter with the new ‘gig economy’ and other aspects of the contemporary labour market are typified by worsened conditions when compared with the jobs, opportunities, and careers enjoyed by an earlier generation.⁸

Studies done with the intent of understanding development in India – globalised and neo-liberal, with a ‘worms eye view’ to seeing the ground, point out the acute hardships faced by dalit youth while on educational campuses, and in finding decent jobs. In Jeffrey’s ethnographic study of Chaudhry Charan Singh University (CCSU), Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, enrolment of dalit students has increased since the 1990s – they are now equal in numbers to students from the dominant Jat community.⁹ But they live in only one of the three hostels on campus – the Ambedkar hostel, meant only for dalit students – affirming their exclusion. Notwithstanding similarities of (poor quality) higher education at the CCSU, it is the persistent inequalities of caste and class that shape the capacity of students to benefit from these opportunities – rich Jats were able to capitalise on their educational qualifications in a better way than poorer members of the same caste or dalits. Satendra Kumar’s ethnography in Meerut and Allahabad – both urban towns in India’s largest state of Uttar Pradesh, shows that poor youth belonging to the Valmiki (Scheduled Caste) community face every day caste discrimination while on campus.¹⁰ The lack of social and cultural capital is a formidable barrier in getting prestigious government jobs. Also, there is an informal ‘regulation’ on women while on the campus, and near absence in the workforce. Women are invisible in the available precarious work. Even the prolonged process of ‘waiting’ for work exhibits a marked masculinity – a phenomenon taken note of by Jeffrey.¹¹ With nearly 1.3 million young people reaching the working age every month, what India needs to create is jobs that are not just about wages and security – they should be able to meet the aspirations of upward mobility of the youth, notes Chapman.¹²

Experiencing globalization: changing urban sites and deepening social exclusion

So, while cities and urban areas remain the cynosure of youth aspirations, myriad structural transformations linked to globalisation make it difficult to realise their dreams for work and life. Also, the site of the ‘urban’ itself is undergoing dramatic changes that enhance inequalities and accentuate exclusion. For one, neo-liberal efforts at urban revitalisation emphasise on improving urban aesthetics, privatisation of utilities and services, redevelopment of land – all with an emphasis on attracting investors and tourists. In this process, scholars of urbanism in the global South note that there may be displacement or forced removal of the poor, and street children and youth may be considered to be ‘urban blight’ that need clearing out.¹³ Several scholars, including Gautam Bhan, Asher Ghertner, and Usha Ramanathan, take note of the displacements and slum demolitions that took place in the attempt to transform Delhi into a ‘world class city’ prior to hosting of the Commonwealth Games in 2012.¹⁴

For the new city of Gurgaon near Delhi – a world model for global capitalist development, Searle gives an ethnographic account of how sites for agricultural and industrial production have been rapidly transformed into an ‘international financial resource’, by turning them into malls, high-rise building and apartments for the rich.¹⁵ While this increase in ‘built environment’ is widely shared as stories of global growth and development, in reality they have enhanced the inaccessibility of the city by the poor. Increasing commercialisation of public spaces may very likely place ‘restrictive codes’ on access to spaces that were once free to use, and its securitisation and control can accentuate social exclusion. Further, this type of urban redevelopment reverses decades of affirmative action and social policy intended for social inclusion.¹⁶ An overall increase in a privatised sense about the city and spaces around it places real limits on what can be done for livelihoods, and accentuates urban inequalities. Krishnan notes that in this phase, access to urban ‘publics’ is regulated by middle-class notions of safety. These are gendered notions and also reinforce caste and communal boundaries in urban space. She finds that these notions regulate heavily the lives of young girls in a Chennai College hostel.¹⁷

Another important thread of social relations that is transforming urban spaces, is on account of the growing visibility and assertiveness of a ‘new middle class’ that owes its rise to neo-liberal economic development. While we have made a mention of this ‘new middle class’, specially the strong capacity of its youth to access new economy jobs, it is also important to note its assertions in reshaping urban space as exclusive, and segregated domains. Harriss provides a clear account of the urban middle class as a descriptive category – it has social and cultural capital on the basis of caste, community, and regional linkages; competencies such as educational, linguistic, or social skills; and has assets and employment.¹⁸ Fernandes notes that the middle classes have gained public ‘civic power’ through their use of resources of language and education.¹⁹ The socially segregated, exclusive spaces (for the urban rich) created by their assertions of power also underscore a conception of ‘urban civic order’ that sees the poor as a threat. A natural fall out of such differentiation and exclusion is the cultural marking out of youth as belonging to ‘this’ domain (of a ‘new middle class’) or the ‘other’ (of the urban poor, who very often reside in segregated spaces outside planned zones) – This marker is an imagined yet powerful barrier in transcending social mobility ladders. Ghertner notes that the project of ‘gentrifying’ and cleaning up the city is central to the ideas of this new middle class. Privileged property owners can now assert their power on the state demanding a ‘world class urban future’, accentuating displacement of the poor. Ghertner views this direct link between the power of the propertied classes and the state as an attempt at ‘re-spatializing’ the state on behalf of the rich, rendering tenuous and frail the relationships between the state and the urban poor.²⁰

Urban informality is an important organising logic central to these transformations – the more the Indian metro elites and large land developers lobby for gentrification, slum clearance, and comprehensive planning, poor people open up political spaces claiming public services, and hold on their de facto territorial claims through locally embedded bureaucracies. Solomon terms this latter phenomenon as ‘occupancy urbanism’, with the poor appropriating real estate surpluses and posing significant challenges for globalised economic development. Since all new urban development will likely be in the global South, Solomon argues that this concept (of occupancy urbanism) will advance the ‘south’ within urban thinking.²¹ This informalism is not a characteristic of a specific sector – such as work or housing, but pervades economic, social, spatial and political domains. Southern cities are characterised by such pervasive informalism that viewing them within binaries of ‘formal/informal’ masks the broader cross-cutting issues of political economy. Banks, Lombard, and Mitlin argue that there is a need to focus on informality itself as a ‘site of critical analysis’ so that we better understand how opportunities are opened or closed, and how the processes underpinning economic, political, and social inequality emerge and consolidate.²²

Seeing change: the lens of youth

So, the ‘great transformation’ of the urban in India is at once an economic, social and political phenomena. There are changing urban materialities – land, water, pipes, public spaces, alongside changing social relations with deepening social inequalities and exclusions. There is no ‘essential’ logic or a ‘universal law’ that explains how the urban will unfold, or how youth transitions play out in these complex situations. As for the young people in this process of neoliberal economic reforms and global movement of international capital, Cole and Durham note that the cumulative impact is one of the creating contradictions.²³ While the youth are targeted specially as consumers, they also experience socio-economic exclusions on account of these changes. Discussions on youth culture and agency therefore remain very nuanced and complex processes. In order to make some meaning of these changes, following Ong, we argue that there is a need ‘to look for situated ways in which urban aspirations play out in emerging sites’.²⁴ And the bustling youth amidst these urban transformations are for us, at once a lens to ‘see’ these changes, experience it in their everyday lives, and act as agents, especially as young ones begin to think of themselves as a ‘generation’ – an age cohort with shared socio-political experience that can see inherited historical circumstances from a certain distance, akin to a ‘fresh contact’ as sociologist Karl Mannheim put it.²⁵ Based on the situated experience of Tamatave, Madagascar, warns us appropriately that the ways in which youthful practice refigures gendered and generational practices, remains fragile and structured still by contingent circumstances of political-economy that play out in Madagascar.²⁶

Our understanding builds on situated experiences – from scholarship on youth in the global South, as well as from thinking about ‘Southern urbanism’. In the global South, youth are now seen as lead actors – their culture, and agency has been the subject of a lot of recent scholarly attention.²⁷ ‘Southern urbanism’ does not obfuscate differences between cities of the North, and those in the South, nor does it see urbanity as ‘all-pervasive’ – in effect ‘recentering’ the essence of urbanism. Schindler elaborates certain specific characteristics of ‘Southern urbanism’²⁸ that we find relevant: cities in the South are characterised by a disconnect between capital and labour. They are unable to absorb workers in a formal economy, and their governments remain focused on territorial aspects of rule rather than invest in their populations. Besides, there are severe constraints to ‘metabolic flows of the city’ in the South – such as inadequate or mediated access to electricity and water. Cities and urbanism in India very much share these characteristics, and these are in the nature of deprivations that mark city life.²⁹ The everyday lives of youth are an important lens with which this experience of southern urbanism can be viewed as ‘social spaces’.

An important example of this type of ‘situated analysis’ of the youth is the work of Ritty Lukose – studying consumption practices associated with globalisation, amongst youth in the state of Kerala, she finds no easy association between youth, globalisation, and consumption. There are no ‘global youth’ consuming practices – what she finds are ‘situated’ cultures of consumption within long-standing histories of post-colonialism.³⁰ Although she makes no explicit reference to urban theory or sites of urbanism, she does highlight the importance of sites, locations, meaning, and histories in understanding youth cultures. For this latter, there is no index of a ‘global youth’, she notes. One area that requires further scholarly analysis is how spatial segregation, urban informality and increasing inequality constitute the agency of youth.

Young and Jeffrey highlight another significant ‘missing’ element with respect to understanding this ‘urban turn’ from the lens of youth.³¹ There is a need to focus on the intersections between urban and rural India, to capture an ‘in-between-ness’ that has been missed so far, given the exclusive focus on mega-cities or on the urban poor and middle classes. Similar to the focus on interstitial spaces, youth is also an ‘in between’ category, between youth and adulthood. In the field sites of Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh that Young and Jeffrey study, many young men carve out meaningful livelihoods, respect and power, navigating rural-urban spaces. Much of the aspirations engendered by talks about a rising India, and the possibility of realising some of these by migrating to urban areas has failed to materialise. In reality, many young people have made meaningful livelihoods by their cultural and political ability to ‘bridge and blend these different spaces’.³²

Policy, politics, and enterprise: increasing visibility of the youth in india

We must make a mention here that in recent political discussions, and in policy statements, there has been an increasing reference to a class of ‘aspirational youth’ in India, specially by the Narendra Modi led BJP government that has come to power in 2014, and re-elected in 2019. Coming as it did, on the back of a youth led anti-corruption movement,³³ that was inspired by ideals of deepening participation and calling for reforms in political establishment by way of greater accountability and transparency, the focus on youth was politically appropriate. The anti-corruption movement was largely noted to be characterised by spontaneity, non-hierarchical in its leadership, and made extensive use of social media – new technologies that made use of the internet, and increased peer-to-peer information sharing.³⁴ The movement began in Delhi, but spread to other urban centres, and was seen as being ‘issue based’, and not ideological – to distinguish it from class-based understanding of protests led by left parties. So, there is a context of protest politics, with performative aspects that have an appeal to the youth, in the making of these present discussions.

Thereafter, in the 2014 elections, there has been an explicit reference to the category of ‘young voters’ – as if an age category could be the basis for partisan action, especially if the supply side of politics could couch in a relatively neutral language of ‘anti-corruption’, and ‘development’. Political speeches by Modi,³⁵ following his election as Prime Minister, make abundant references to the youth as an important national resource – of the need to invest in training their capacities in the hope that they will be drivers of the economy and of a ‘new India’ more generally. Besides, the youth are seen in his policy and political averments as bearers of creativity, energy and in possession of an inspiring culture of the young – a category of age necessarily bound by the thinking of an earlier generation. In government schemes such as Start-up India, and Stand-up India, and in skill development programs such as the Pradhan Mantri Kaushalya Vikas Yojana, the aim is to train a whole generation of youth to global best standards and promote a culture of enterprise. Yet, in most of these pronouncements, there is an unproblematic acceptance of the tenets of neo-liberalism and market-based development (indeed a promotion of it); and a conceptualisation of youth as an age-related stage of transition – in between childhood and mature adult life. A transition from education and training to a world of enterprise, characterised by productivity and market freedoms, aligned with global developments of a new economy. There is a portrayal here of ‘youth selfhood’ as an iteration of an enterprise culture and possessive individualism, promoted by neoliberalism. Gooptu’s scholarship brings out various facets of this ‘construction’ of the youth as an economic category of production and is associated with a specific culture of consumption.³⁶ Further unveiling the micro-politics of how intimate relationships of power and resistance are challenging or negotiating these constructs, will be an explicit intent of the volume we propose.

As we conclude, educational campuses across the country have been marked by youth protests against the state's attempts at amending the existing citizenship laws (The Citizenship Amendment Act 2019), and of building a national registry of citizens – both seen by critics as advancing exclusionary notions of citizenship. The protests have seen the participation of youth across campuses of public education – including elite institutions such as those of the Indian Institutes of Technology, and the Indian Institutes of Management. So, notwithstanding the symbolic deployment of the image of youth and its productive capacity in policy and political discourses of the state, there is abundant affirmation of the need to consider the youth’s own understanding of its being a ‘generation’, as a social and spatial construct. This understanding further contributes to the making of an ‘agency of the youth’ – their own action that can lend to collective action.

And finally, the unfolding of the policy ‘lockdown’ as a pre-emptive measure for containing the global pandemic of Covid 19, in the backdrop of urban marginalities and exclusions that we have already made a mention of, underscores once again, the need for scholarship to re-engage with the conventional domains of city spaces and urban centres; of the circularities of ‘urban and rural’ as the informal working class and labour exits urban centres; and invisible precarities and vulnerabilities of our urban centres, long time in the making, lie bare and exposed. Youth visions, from the margins, as they see these historical processes unfold, and their negotiations and engagements with it, are likely to be different, less embedded in entrenched networks of patronage and profit, and possibly be the vision of a generation – not an age.

Central questions

The central question that this volume seeks to explore is about the life experiences, aspirations, trajectories of social mobility and agency of youth in India: in the midst of these ‘great transformations’ – that are at once socio-economic and political, and for which the ‘urban’ is an arena of reference. What are the experiences of youth lives? Given that youth transitions – to adulthood and the world of work, appear less linear, more precarious, and fraught with risk and uncertainty, how do the young people respond? What are the forms of cultural and political expression? And in its imaginations for a future, is there greater ‘individuation’, or does the youth think of itself as a ‘generation’ that can exercise its collective capacity and act for social change – given that youth in the global South are responding to such changes? Our aim is to facilitate critical arguments and form ideas and experiences of the youth drawn from fine-grained social research, and from diverse sites of urban transformation in India. The exploration of this diversity, and of agency, will embed vulnerability, and precarity in more explicit ways than has been hitherto addressed. The approach will be what Jeffrey broadly refers to as a ‘culturally sensitive political economy approach.³⁷

While the work on youth per se has seen an upsurge – there is little on the urban youth specifically and more importantly on transformations the youth is undergoing. This volume considers a range of possibilities of the urban – metropolitan and non-metropolitan spaces. It also considers the youth in relation to the economy and politics, and in relation to mundane and extraordinary circumstances. This volume brings together anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists and demographers, among others, using a range of methods from the ethnographic to surveys. This address themes around understanding the characteristics and complexities of contemporary urban transformations in India, to mapping everyday lives and cultures of the youth in urban arenas; to issues of masculinity and aspirations; youth, political agency and protest; to the role of education, aspirations and opportunities; the loss of land and livelihood; and, understanding the experiences of social mobility through language, culture and the world of work.

In this volume, John Harriss asks the provocative question whether India’s rapid economic growth and enhanced access to education are enabling young people to realise their aspirations better. While these aspirations are enormously varied, and especially those in urban India can aspire to highly paid jobs, there is in general the hope that jobs in a ‘new India’ would lead to some form of social mobility, some improvement in social class status. Harriss finds that there are significant failures of the government in terms of producing enough jobs, and the economic growth being witnessed could even be argued to be a ‘jobloss’ growth, what is worrying is that there are significant barriers to social mobility. Harriss refers to these barriers, especially those obstructing relative social mobility as the ‘wall’ that youth from poorer social castes, and from rural areas are unable to scale up. Relative social mobility has been blocked on account of caste, hoarding of opportunities by the better off, and exclusion by others.

Radhika Kumar examines the dilemmas and aspirational asymmetries of rural youth in a village in Haryana, where a state-led policy of acquisition of village land to create peri-urban zones of industrial townships has led to a loss of land, associated livelihoods, and unintended consequences of loss of cultural anchorage. For the dominant castes, land acquisition has meant assured rents. But their youth face dilemmas with respect to their aspirations for the future. There are limits to their agentic action, and the jobs offered to them as compensation for land acquired fall far below their anticipated social status. Monetisation of assets in land has also led to a culture of conspicuous consumption and an identity crisis for the youth.

Ankur Dutta discusses the coming of age of displaced Kashmiri youth, living in temporary camps in the non-metropolitan city of Jammu, having escaped violence in their original homeland of Kashmir. There is a broader story of recovery of ordinary lives in the backdrop of a sense of loss, both tangible and intangible. In this background, young boys in exile are coming of age, and must contribute to rebuilding their family lives alongside making something of their own future. Their jawani (youth) should have been a life of freedom and following their own paths, but there are limits to agentive action in a context where there is a priority on simply recovering ordinary lives. The author underscores that there is a ‘dead-endedness’ to this project.

Mona Mehta examines how lower middle- class youth with limited education and social capital often bypass the state and private-sector to acquire the skills needed to cope with urban informality and precarity. Her paper evaluates the dominant policy- based assertions of skill development, and analyses why these fail to address the challenges ordinary and marginalised youth face in achieving social mobility in the context of urbanisation. She takes note of the important role that caste and community networks play in shaping youth aspirations for social mobility, and in the acquisition of innovative skills for new occupations. By interpreting youth occupational trajectories as community mediated skilling projects, Mehta notes that youth at the margins of social hierarchy produce innovative cultures of skilling and entrepreneurship that challenge the dominant market-driven assumptions about skills and neoliberal subjectivity. Through an ethnographic focus on the pastoralist community of rabaris in Gujarat, the paper shows that the consolidation of caste and community networks and the maintenance of rural-urban linkages are central to youth's ability to navigate urban precarity.

Manisha Priyam interrogates the everyday culture of public higher education in North India – the reputed public university, the Banaras Hindu University. This university inspires massive youth mobility from rural areas and small towns in North India, specially of youth from socially disadvantaged castes and gender. These young people are not lacking in a capacity to aspire, but lack the navigational skills to realise their aspirations, and overcome the barriers they face in their everyday lives on campus. Their migration for education is about escaping the routine and habits of the past, it is simultaneously a dream for a future with secure government jobs and urban living. However, persisting patriarchal constraints, bureaucratic academic cultures and rampant casteism mean that the everyday culture of the public university is replete with boundaries. The youth is thus constrained to readjust their aspirations. The relational resources among youth on campus are a collective resource that provides them with a navigational capacity to overcome bounded aspirations.

Diya Mehra examines the educational and livelihood trajectories of upper caste youth in the Kullu district of Himachal Pradesh. She does so against the backdrop of economic liberalisation and the rapid spread of urbanisation and higher education in India in the last two decades. Her paper shows that while higher education has limited attraction for youth in terms of work and livelihood, what is really transformational is the metamorphosis of the valley from a space dominated by horticulture and agriculture to a site with expanded tourist arrivals. Young people move away from farming as a sole and primary occupation, to this new ‘non-farm’ employment. Further, as young people and their families come to engage with tourism, the knowledge for such endeavours comes from numerous sources, with higher education being only one route to such learning. Tourism, and the spread of mediated encounters mean that ‘urbanised’ forms of life and living are increasingly visible as the valley is reconstructed as a hybrid global-local space. However, with these changes, there are widespread concerns about ecological futures, raised by youth and their families alike.

Dyotana Banerjee interrogates the connections between caste and gig economy and how these connections play out in the political actions by the youth in the erstwhile mill-neighbourhoods in western Indian city of Ahmedabad. She examines how gig-economy workers from the lower castes navigate the highly caste segregated urban spaces of Ahmedabad. Their own caste collectives serve as informal networks while looking for gig work in the city. While the recent emergence of the gig economy provides the young jobseekers from the lower castes an escape route from the caste-based occupations in rural areas, their caste identities are strategically masked and highlighted in informing them of their choices, political aspirations and economic anxieties while navigating the urban.

Divya Vaid explores the aspirations for and experiences of work among ambitions of young women in urban India through macro data analysis and in-depth interviews. Her paper aims to push the idea of aspirations further than they have been so far explored in the Indian context, especially as it ties into satisfaction with work, with life, and with ambition. The variations in satisfaction are along class lines – those in secure jobs expressed greater satisfaction, while those in manual and/or informal jobs carry greater regrets about the work they did and about their future. The in-depth interviews specially bring out the barriers women face in aspiring for jobs, and in their experience of work.

Shailendra Kharat and Anagha Tambe explore the cultural aspects of youth and urbanisation in the context of the city of Pune in Western India. They found that the city is a culturally divided entity on the lines of language, spatiality, class, and status. Specially, the languages such as English (with its status of being a modern language with global acceptance) and Marathi (a regional language) set the youth apart in an unequal relationship. Yet, youth experience both oppositional and hegemonic cultural resources in an everyday sense, negotiating with the various dynamics of social and cultural power, rather than putting up any structural resistance to it. Youth who have migrated recently to the city from rural areas, find in their cultural participation, avenues to reflect back on their rural lives, and deconstruct the urban – there is a certain in-betweenness in how they experience the city and its varied cultures. This is specially so, as there are footprints of a highly educated and globally connected youth in Pune.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Jeffrey et.al, Degrees Without Freedom?

2. Krishna, The Broken Ladder.

3. Fernandes, India’s New Middle Class.

4. Upadhya, ‘Software and the “new” middle class in the “New India”’.

5. Herod and Lambert highlight the increase in precarious employment in the global South, and cite specifically the International Labour Organization’s 2015 report World Employment and Social Outlook: The Changing Nature of Jobs (May 2015). As little as 20 percent of the workforce in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are in secure wage and salaried employment.

6. Jeffrey et al. Degrees Without Freedom?.

7. Dickey, ‘The pleasure and anxieties of being in the middle’.

8. MacDonald and Giazitzoglu, ‘Youth enterprise and precarity’.

9. Jeffrey, Timepass.

10. Kumar, ‘The Time of Youth’.

11. Jeffrey, Timepass.

12. Chapman, ‘Making jobs work for India’.

13. Aufseseer, ‘Challenging conceptions of young people as urban blight’.

14. Some commentaries on slum demolotions and displacement of the urban poor, to create a ‘world class’ city in Delhi include: Bhan, Ghertner, and Ramanathan.

15. Searle, Landscapes of Accumulation.

16. Atkinson, ‘Domestication by cappuccino or a revenge on urban space?’

17. Krishnan, ‘Clubbing in the afternoon’.

18. Harriss, ‘Middle class activism and the politics of the informal working class’. Here, the author notes that these are attributes that the urban poor – mostly the informal working class does not have. Further, these class characteristics, and the class-divide between the urban middle class and the informal working class, inhere even in the notions of ‘participation’ by way of civil society organisations. ‘participation’ is thus a middle-class activity, and excludes the urban informal working class.

19. Fernandes, India’s New Middle Class.

20. Ghertner, ‘Gentryfying the State, gentryfying participation’.

21. Solomon, ‘Occupancy Urbanism’.

22. Banks et al., ‘Urban informality as a site of critical analysis’

23. Cole and Durham, Generations and globalization.

24. Ong, ‘Worlding Cities, or the Art of Being Global’, 3.

25. Karl Mannheim ‘The Problem of Generations’.

26. Cole, ‘Fresh Contact in Tamatave, Madagascar’.

27. Cole and Durham, Generations and Globalization; Durham, ‘Youth and the Social Imagination in Africa’; Hansen et.al, Youth and the City in the Global South; Jeffrey et.al. Degrees Without Freedom?; Jeffrey, Timepass; Dyson ‘Fresh Contact’.

28. Schindler, ‘Towards a paradigm of Southern urbanism’.

29. See Brenner and Schmid (2015) for ideas on ‘planetary urbanism’ and Schindler (2017) for a critique as well as a few tenets of ‘Southern urbanism. Brenner and Schmid (2015) argue that fast paced contemporary organisation draw distant territories into their ambit, such that urban studies can no longer be city based. Further, they see these changes as ‘planetary’ in scale, a change that requires an epistemological shift from ‘researching cities’ to understanding the ‘the urban’ a process of uneven development that is ‘planetary in scope. Apart from concentrated urbanisation, there are also extended urban processes, oriented to support the everyday activities and socio-economic dynamics or urban life. Schindler (2017) is critical of their understanding of ‘planetary urbanisation’ as it obfuscates the difference between cities of the global North from those in the South, and remains at best an epistemology without geographical or conceptual limits.

30. Lukose, ‘Consuming globalisation’

31. Young and Jeffrey, ‘Making ends meet’.

32. Ibid., 49.

33. The anti-corruption movement was led by a group called the ‘India Against Corruption’, and was led by Arvind Kejriwal (now the Chief Minister of Delhi). The movement targeted the Congress party led coalition government in the centre for alleged corruption in allocation of spectrum for mobile telephony and coal blocks, and in the conduct of the Commonwealth Games. Largely spontaneous, the demand for establishment of an ombudsman was among its key. The movement gained momentum with Maharashtrian social reformer Anna Hazare sitting on fasts since 2011.

34. See Harriss ‘Youth and ‘Refo-lution’? for youth and contemporary protest politics in a global context.

35. Since 2015, it is mainly Narendra Modi who is heard making public speeches and policy pronouncements with abundant references to the youth in a ‘new India’, and ‘aspirational India’. That these ideas precede the Modi government can be seen in Gooptu Enterprise Culture in Neo-Liberal India. She notes that in the preceding Congress government too there were leaders considered ‘strong’, and in whose speeches these ideas were expressed and articulated.

36. Gooptu, Enterprise Culture in Neo-Liberal India.

37. Jeffrey, Timepass, 188.