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All Dressed Up With Nowhere To Go 2
All Dressed Up With Nowhere To Go 2
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Sanjay graduated with a commerce degree from a large college in the town centre and was looking for employment in
Dehradun. He sat for an examination to get a government job
in the banking sector, but because of the sheer amount of graduates that sit for these examinations, they have become extremely competitive. Because Sanjay did not get the results
that he needed, he decided to try and find a comparable job in
the private sector.
Although the private sector has historically been frowned
upon by the middle classes in India, in recent years that status
has begun to change. Contemporaneously, employment within its upper echelons (particularly information technology)
has been redefined by the elite as desirable and virtuous. It
was such a job that Sanjay had in mind when he graduated in
2010. However, in the two years since, he had had three different jobs, as well as five months of unemployment. As he explains, finding stable employment is very hard:
Every day I am going to the internet caf, sending the emails, making
calls. I am always trying to update my CV. I send it off to all the places,
sometimes you hear back, sometimes not. I have been for many interviews also, I dress nice, and I think that this goes well. But there are
too many people going for the job, everyone is going. And I aim high, I
go for the big job, but you have to go for the job that you can get.
The employment that Sanjay was able to secure was unstable and poorly paid. Although a graduate of commerce, he has
recently finished work for an event management company. He
took the opportunity because he was promised a pay rise after
six months if he proved reliable. After working for six months,
he asked for the pay rise, but his employer told him that he was
unable to pay it. Sanjay said that he would not be able to continue
working on the wage that he was earning (Rs 4,500 per month)
because he would not be able to marry and become independent
of his own parents. While this partially negates his masculinity,
this negation is only partial precisely because of his relatively
young age. He said that if he is in the same position in his late
20s, then this would be very, very bad. In this sense, there
are limits to the amount of time that middle-class young men
are able to spend in jobs that are not seen as suitable for a career.
I interviewed Sanjay two weeks later and he told me that he
had left his job, after being unable to reach an agreement with
his employer: You see, for me, I cannot do this work, if I am
earning ten thousand, fifteen thousand then I can do it, but
four and a half thousand! These are the things, there are so
many people, I will go and a fresher will take my place. While
issues of economic capital and masculine status are intertwined, Sanjay had reconciled himself with the negative
effects that his job had on his masculinity. Yet, the wage that
he was able to secure was simply inadequate. His employer
insisted that he only employed college graduates, yet would
pay them a very small wage.
For graduates that have not had any experience, such offers
are seen as stepping stones to better-paying, more stable
jobs. Yet, they also feel that such jobs are highly dependent
upon familial connections and the capacity to pay bribes.
Lower-middle-class young men do not often have such
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connections, or the capacity to pay bribes. As such, opportunities do not always unfold over time, as had been hoped.
Many youth find themselves in jobs they are overqualified
for, or jobs that bear no relation to what they actually studied.
For example, Deepak had studied engineering at a private college. It was not one of the reputed colleges, but a smaller one
on the northern side of town. After failing to get a job in the
government sector, he sought employment in the private sector.
He currently works as an administrator at a newly-opened
coaching clinic, where he also occasionally teaches English. I
asked him how he ended up working in this job:
I finished my studies and I was looking for the job. Every day I am looking. I used to come here as a student to learn the skills, and now I can
speak nice English. Still it is hard to get a good job. The sir here offered
me this position because he said that I am one of his best students. I
took this opportunityI like the work here also, but I do this because I
have to you know? I cannot do this for a long time, I dont think.
The uncertainty associated with finding work was compounded by the fact that young people in Dehradun have increasing
aspirations. This paradox has been noted by other scholars
researching the Indian middle classes (Ganguly-Scrase and
Scrase 2009) and has precipitated new tensions in the lives of
those who participated in this study. Youth who aspire to middleclass positions within employment, but have not as yet,
secured them, often feel like they have failed:
I have been educated, this is important for me I think. Now I must get
a job, if I dont, then what is the point? There will be many things that I
cannot do in my life, and there are people that expect these things, and
I want these things also. I must do this for my family but still it is hard.
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Having not realised socially constructed ideals of middleclass masculinity, young men feel as though they have let
themselves and others down. Yet varying social groups respond to these feelings in different ways. Whereas lower-class
men, in the study by Rogers (2008), develop masculine cultures of violence to contend their marginalisation, for lowermiddle-class youth in Dehradun, participating in such violence
is seen as lowly. Although similar cultures exist and are articulated in and around college campuses, such as violent rioting between student political bodies, lower-middle-class youth
participate in ways that reinforce their status, such as writing
to local newspapers and debating their views through formal
means. Fighting would negatively affect their reputation, and
may hamper their future employment prospects.
On the one hand, social norms are such that lower-middleclass men acutely feel the burdens of unemployment because it
signifies a rupture in the familys social reproduction. Yet, at
the same time, these social norms also affect how youth
respond to their marginalisation. The difference between how
lower-class and lower-middle-class youth respond to their current circumstances demonstrates how the production of masculine cultures intersects with social class position.
Feelings of hopelessness and shame are one of the ways that
structural inequalities are embodied and individualised
amongst young people. Importantly, scholars have shown how
these feelings are fundamental for the maintenance of the
neo-liberal regime. For example, Gooptu (2009) argues that in
neo-liberal India, workplaces are playing a key role in crafting
workers and citizens by cultivating subjectivities that support
the needs of the market. As Gooptu (2009: 54) states,
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[Workers] seek personal solutions to structurally or systemically generated problems in the economyThey emphasise the responsibility,
autonomy and agency of the self-driven, enterprising individual, who
is prepared to work within the constraints of a competitive and unstable market economy.
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Although devoting considerable time and money to coaching clinics, and having a firm grasp on the skills that are considered as ones that broaden ones opportunities, this young
man has been unable to convert them into employment and,
thus, economic capital. For unemployed and underemployed
youth in these circumstances, there are growing anxieties
about realising and reproducing societal expectations. One
young man wryly described the feeling as being all dressed up
with nowhere to go.
Although young men in Dehradun have been far from content with their circumstances, this did not translate into overt
forms of political protest. One reason for this, as has been noted above, is that young men feel they themselves are to blame,
rather than structural inequalities, and so endeavour to work
harder. Furthermore, participating in violent masculine cultures on campus would threaten their middle-class status. Yet,
there were additional reasons for this, which resonates with
the findings of other scholars work.
Based on her ethnographic work in Mumbai, for example,
Fernandes (2006) argues that the production of middle-class
identity mediates political responses to neo-liberal transformation. From Fernandess (2006) perspective, current hardships and political opposition to them are eclipsed by the
promise of future benefits conveyed within images of middleclass success. While this argument does not fully appreciate
the subtle and informal ways that people engage in politics
(Jeffrey 2010, 2013), the broad thrust of Fernandess (2000)
argument holds true for unemployed youth in Dehradun who
feel that things will get better. This is also reinforced by the
findings of Ganguly-Scrase and Scrase (2009), who found that
the lower middle classes in Kolkata felt that a brighter future
lay ahead despite their rather acute marginalisation. In this
sense, current difficulties were perceived to be temporally
limited. In addition, however, young men in Dehradun conceive of their hardship as spatially limited, which in turn
encourages them to migrate in search of work.
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scholars have highlighted the ways that migration to major cities both within India and abroad is seen as a way of realising
visions of manliness, such as Osella and Osellas (2000) study
of youth in Kerala. Srivastava (1996: 404) argues that in India
the metropolis is bound up with historical discourses of (masculine) national identity:
[The Metropolis is] a settlement of the mind: an imagined configuration of desires and comforts, hopes and projections; a specific way of
viewing the unfolding of both every day human life and the more distant future in which these lives may find their destinies.
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Given the hardships and struggles that they face, the lives of
the lower middle classes resemble those of the lower classes
(Cross 2009; Jeffrey 2008, 2010) to a greater degree than the
elite upper fractions (Fuller and Narasimhan 2007). This suggests downward mobility and a temporal extension of youth at
the same time as neo-liberal ideologues circulate discourses
that celebrate their upward trajectories.
On a theoretical level, this article can also be read as a
modest attempt to attune theories of social reproduction to
contemporary dynamics of social change. In Dehradun, the
cultural capital that the lower middle classes have historically
deployed and embodied to hoard resources has been redefined by the upper fractions within that class as outdated and
redundant. Youth contest this by attempting to reorganise
their stocks of cultural capital through attending coaching
clinics to realign themselves with the dominant fractions.
Yet, as Bourdieu (1984, 1986) reminds us, social reproduction
and upward mobility depends upon the stocks of various
capitals that people have at their disposal. Therefore, unless
families have the economic and social capital necessary to
consolidate these skills, conversion strategies are problematised.
No longer able to draw upon their cultural distinction and
educational credentials to consolidate their social position,
the lower middle classes are marginalised. This point raises
important questions about theorising social change in the
neo-liberal era. Because the previous development model
enabled state-supported patterns of mobility for a broader
social base (particularly the middle classes), a Bourdieurian
framework was particularly suited to understanding the
variegated practices through which this class reproduced
itself. By demonstrating the multifaceted nature of educational advantage in particular, Bourdieu incorporated analyses of middle-class formation into a Marxist framework by
showing axes of exploitation and power between them and
the lower classes.
However, the dismantling of the welfare state is facilitating
polarisation between classes by undermining the position of
the middle classes (Ganguly-Scrase and Scrase 2009; Jeffrey
2010) and underscoring the supremacy of economic capital.
One of the main findings of this article, therefore, is that
the social conditions created by neo-liberal development
are such that a traditional Marxist framework is able to
produce similar results to a greater degree than in the
period preceding neo-liberalism about the politics of educated unemployment. With this in mind, the poor quality
of education and high level of unemployment is likely to
have particularly adverse effects for Indias future, and the
country may not be able to reap its demographic dividend
(Corbridge et al 2013).
This article, therefore, supports the view of those who conceive of neo-liberal development in India as an elite revolt
against political concessions won by various subaltern groups
(Corbridge and Harriss 2000: xix; Corbridge et al 2013). Given
the sheer size of this demographic cohort, more research that
engages with young people is needed if the trajectory of
neo-liberal development is to be meaningfully theorised.
APRIL 26, 2014
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