Preparing in Libraries: Educational Change, Joblessness, and Youth Practice in North India
Drawing on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Meerut, western Uttar Pradesh, the thesis examines educated unemployed young people’s engagement with educational change in north India. Engaging with wider debates on educational privatisation and youth agency, the thesis argues that young people are responding to the crisis of unemployment through everyday preparation for recruitment in government jobs within emerging private, commodified study-spaces that they term libraries. In relation to educational privatisation, the thesis examines to what extent an expansive market of shadow educational services is exploiting the aspirations of educated unemployed young people and their hopes for government jobs in the district. Within such markets, the thesis points to the rise of idiosyncratic, commodified study-spaces that cater to young people’s non-formal educational needs such as a space for uninterrupted study and access to internet services. The educational entrepreneurs running such libraries not only position the effectiveness of their facilities in comparison to the decaying formal academic spaces but also use a language of aspiration and service to attract potential customers. While benefiting commercially from the needs of unemployed young people, such private institutional forms are reproducing neoliberal ethics of self-responsibilisation. In relation to youth agency, the thesis argues that libraries are giving way to varied forms of educational, social, and political action in contemporary Meerut. In this context, the thesis demonstrates how libraries influence the practices of a section of young people and interrogates how such spaces are re-envisioned in their pursuit of secure employment. A set of locally dominant, intermediate caste young men are engaging in sustained preparation within commercial libraries to highlight forms of educational distinction and generate value for themselves. Several young people from marginalised Dalit and Muslim backgrounds are re-imagining the spatial phenomenon of libraries to set up spaces where members of their community can engage in long-term preparation for upward mobility. Additionally, the thesis also makes a more specific empirical contribution to the understanding of educational privatisation and youth agency in Meerut. The thesis shows both continuity and difference between the early- and mid-2000s and contemporary Meerut. With the sustained decay of the provincial education system, the rise of libraries follows the template of ‘improvisation’ used by educational entrepreneurs in the region since the late 2000s. In the absence of well-paying jobs, educated unemployed young people in contemporary Meerut are also experiencing limbo. However, instead of engaging in particular cultural styles revolving around notions of timepass and a public display of masculine image in formal colleges or university spaces or busy road intersections, a significant section of unemployed young people with whom I worked spent considerable time within such private, commodified study-spaces. The practices of preparation within libraries are meant to actively counter young people’s sense of being in limbo. The thesis highlights a distinctive change in the geographies of educational privatisation, youth waiting, and agency in contemporary Meerut. Across these various areas, the thesis demonstrates the continued value of in-depth qualitative research for an understanding of young people’s lives in contemporary South Asia.
Youth, Unemployment, Educational Privatisation, Libraries, Agency, India
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