Children and Media in India

Children and Media in India
Is the bicycle, like the loudspeaker, a medium of communication in India?

Do Indian children need trade unions as much as they need schools? What
would you do with a mobile phone if all your friends were playing tag
in the rain or watching Indian Idol? Children and Media in India illumi-
nates the experiences, practices and contexts in which children and young
people in diverse locations across India encounter, make or make meaning
from media in the course of their everyday lives. From textbooks, television,
film and comics to mobile phones and digital games, this book examines
the media available to different socioeconomic groups of children in India
and their articulation with everyday cultures and routines. An authoritative
overview of theories and discussions about childhood, agency, social class,
caste and gender in India is followed by an analysis of films and televi-
sion representations of childhood informed by qualitative interview data
collected between 2005 and 2015 in urban, small-town and rural contexts
with children aged nine to 17. The analysis uncovers and challenges widely
held assumptions about the relationships among factors including socio-
cultural location, media content and technologies, and children’s labour and
agency. The analysis casts doubt on undifferentiated claims about how new
technologies ‘affect’, ‘endanger’ and/or ‘empower’, pointing instead to the
importance of social class – and caste – in mediating relationships among
children, young people and the poor. The analysis of children’s narratives
of daily work, education, caring and leisure supports the conclusion that,
although unrecognised and underrepresented, subaltern children’s agency
and resourceful conservation makes a significant contribution to economic,
interpretive and social reproduction in India.
Shakuntala Banaji is Associate Professor of Media and Communications

and Programme Director for the Master’s in Media, Communication and
Development at the London School of Economics, United Kingdom. She is
the winner of numerous awards for teaching excellence. Her books include
Reading Bollywood and The Civic Web.
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Narratives of Class, Agency and Social Change
Shakuntala Banaji
Children and Media in India
Narratives of Class, Agency and
Social Change
Shakuntala Banaji
First published 2017
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© 2017 Shakuntala Banaji
The right of Shakuntala Banaji to be identified as author of this work

has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The right of Javed Iqbal to be identified as creator of the credited photos

has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or

utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
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registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
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ISBN: 978-1-138-92947-0 (hbk)

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For Ammar, Sabrina and Zinedine
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Contents
List of figures and tables ix

Preface xi
Acknowledgements xix
1 Historical accounts of childhood: Subalterns between

structures and agency 1
2 Class, caste and children’s life in contemporary India 37
3 Methods and reflection 74
4 Mediating Indian childhoods: Texts and producers 88
5 ‘Media rich’ in India: Routine, self-construction, conflicted

conformism 123
6 ‘Media poor’ in India: Deprivation, responsibility, resourceful

conservation 151
7 Conclusion 187
References 205
Index 217
List of figures and tables
Figures
0.1 Children with insects on strings. xiii
1.1 Villagers travelling to mobile clinic. 28
1.2 Young mother. 28
2.1 Street-sleeping children. 49
2.2 What once was a home. 50
2.3 Home in a demolished slum. 50
2.4 Young brick maker. 51
2.5 Village school. 52
2.6 Village children and ruins. 52
4.1 Country of origin of children’s television programmes
(N = 163). Time period of analysis: programmes aired
during a week in June 2015. 93
4.2 Target age of viewers on children’s television in India
(N = 163). 93
4.3 General distribution across genres within sample (N = 163). 94
4.4 Distribution of children’s programme protagonists by gender. 97
4.5 Social class in children’s shows with human protagonists
(N = 46). 99
4.6 Surnames of lead protagonists from Indian-produced
children’s shows, by caste (N = 23). 100
4.7 Girl with father disabled in work accident. 104
4.8 Domestic caring: girl looks after baby sibling. 106
4.9 Plastic truck. 118
4.10 Child and doll with empty eyes. 118
4.11 Living with destruction. 120
6.1 Off to work in the fields. 159
6.2 Boys and their stick toys. 177
6.3 Creative assemblage – bottle car. 177
6.4 The affordances of containers. 178
7.1 Little girl and pet goat. 190
7.2 Little girls playing with used syringes. 190
7.3 Little girls playing in demolished home. 196
7.4 A tiny slum entrepreneur. 197
x List of figures and tables
Tables
3.1 In-depth child interviewees 75
3.2 Producer interview details 82
4.1
Of 163 shows analysed on 13 channels during one
week in June 2015, approximately 23 originate in India 96
4.2
Examples of religious associations of protagonist names
on children’s television 98
4.3
Exemplary surnames and caste inferences in
Indian-produced children’s TV shows 101
Preface
2016 is almost over, and life for some in India has never been so good. Real
estate prices in metropolises are booming. If one owns industry, property,
or significant amounts of land, if one has already achieved a top corporate
job (or imagines oneself as being in possession of these) some ‘red tape’ will
have been cut, some bureaucracy eased. Families have been reassured that
they can employ children under the age of 14 in ‘family businesses’. Some
transactions can be carried out online. In 2014, the Bharatiya Janata Party
and Narendra Modi’s campaign team used Instagram, Facebook, Pinter-
est, Twitter, holographic projections, online chat and other applications to
great effect. They constructed and deployed a potent narrative of strong
leadership, anti-corruption, lightning-speed development and (Hindu)
nationalist pride. ‘Bad news’ stories about incitement to hatred and party
members’ connections to recent pogroms were shrugged off with ‘What
about . . .?’. Hundreds of trained volunteers in dozens of cities both at home
and abroad tweeted, canvassed forums, commented on You Tube videos,
uploaded vlogs and blogs. Despite rumbles of discontent about fraud and
intimidation-as-usual, electronic voting machines were touted as a sign of
modernity. Modi came to power in an election campaign that relied on the
ability of new and emerging media technologies to spread propaganda to an
exceptional extent.
In 2015 and 2016, and the Indian prime minister’s Twitter feed has
updated anyone who is able to view it about his travels across the globe. We
see images of Modi hugging and shaking hands with key leaders. Television
commentators have revelled in his promotion of ‘Make in India’ to adoring
crowds. In conjunction, there has been increasing repression against people
who research, draw attention to, or speak out about the Gujarat pogroms,
corporate greed, poverty, structural injustice and violence in India. Young
people have been recruited as de facto storm-troopers of the Hindu right.
Some occupy middle caste positions that are of strategic use to the ruling
party; others are pitted against dissident young people, who have different
and more inclusive visions of democracy, or who do not conform to the
narrow version of Indianness and nationalism being enforced. Systematic
atrocities abound. They are usually targeted at religious minorities, lower
castes and women, as they have been under successive governments. They
xii Preface
cluster in greater numbers where the Indian government has historically
been used to suppressing critique or dissent – in Kashmir, the North East,
amongst tribal populations, feminist activists, and other critical or dissent-
ing groups and individuals. In many states, it is no longer legal to consume
beef or sell cows. Ground water levels in significant swathes of the country
are at an all-time low, yet stories of flooding also abound. Crops are failing:
farmer suicides are at an all-time high.
Meanwhile, under the banner of ‘Digital India’ plans to roll out encom-
passing digital infrastructure are being promoted and implemented, even in
rural areas. The smartphone is advertised as personal companion, banking-
aide, broker for jobs, conduit to civic participation, teacher and confidante.
Advertisements for Google glasses and Apple watches are eclipsed only by
policy rhetoric about the advantages that will flow from the spread of mobile
technologies around the country. In the Indian and international media, nar-
ratives of technological change intersect optimistic visions of globalisation
and economic development. The notion that via the internet ‘India’ has joined
the ‘global public sphere’ has taken hold. Social media commentary is now a
familiar part of middle class Indian life, though many of these comments and
debates are less interesting, less civil and more filled with abusive hate-speech
than desirable. Following Modi’s election, trained and independent support-
ers of the new regime have trolled liberal commentators in the English and
vernacular media, using social media liberally to celebrate a ‘new era’; jour-
nalists who ask even mildly critical questions about corporate wrong-doing
or government policy have been smeared or lost their jobs. Journalists and
academics with connections to the Hindu right have been promoted.
Yet, staggering numbers of children in India remain invisible to national
and international policy-makers, and to national and international adults.
They are not yet significant enough as a ‘market’ or an ‘audience’ to warrant
consideration by corporate media. And they are almost invisible too, to the
vast Indian middle classes. Photojournalist Javed Iqbal, whose photographs
illustrate this book, posted two original images on his Facebook page in
2012, depicting Adivasi (tribal) children in Jharkhand, in tattered clothing,
dangling twitching butterflies threaded onto thin strings.
While what is visible in the frame hints at the lack of almost everything
from infrastructure to tools, much not displayed including the entrenched,
state-fuelled violence against this population. Some of the comments under
these photographs are reminders of the extent of adult, middle class and
upper caste insensitivity, prejudice and hubris especially in urban areas: the
children and their mother in these images are labelled cruel to animals. One
commenter writes: ‘Sweet Little Sadists’; another opines: ‘No! This is cruelty.
These kids are deprived of toys & the joys of childhood, but that doesn’t
mean that they shouldn’t learn to be compassionate towards all life forms,
especially those weaker than themselves. I hope you pointed that out to
them, kindly & compassionately?’ The photographer explains the context,
to bring some reflexivity into a discussion of the lives he is portraying. But
Preface xiii
Figure 0.1 Children with insects on strings.
to no avail. The family depicted in the picture is decried for its primitivism.
The mother is berated for her inability to live in tune with nature and the
environment. Lack of education is blamed for the cruelties they are said
to have inflicted on helpless creatures. The tone of some of the comments
is patronising, that of others is hostile, aggressive or contemptuous. A tussle
ensues between those who equate the lives of poor young humans with
those of insects, and those who do not. Phrases like ‘lack of empathy’ are
applied to the butterfly toys and to their creator, the children’s mother: ‘this
is just so traumatic i‘m not sure i want to delve any deeper into their messed
up lives’. Despite evidence of the hundreds of millions with too little food,
no healthcare across India, and no access to justice, albeit some ingenious
toys made from insects or discarded syringes, life in India is often depicted
the pinnacle of successful development because people are able to communi-
cate on social media.
It is within this bleak and prejudice-ridden context of media portrayals and
actual lives that my book sets out to examine and contextualise the neglected
area of children’s everyday life, media use and representation in India. It also
proposes a framework for interrogating and conceptualising the varieties
of agency deployed by different groups of children in India in response to
the circumstances, environments, tools and media in their everyday lives. I
examine their agency, media use, identity and childhoods through a range of
original qualitative material. These data were collected and generated over
xiv Preface
the past decade and includes: participant and non-participant observations
of children’s lives; content analysis of children’s television content; analysis
of extended interviews with children from urban and rural backgrounds; and
interviews with adults who have worked on children’s rights, and in chil-
dren’s media production in India. Throughout the book, I consider my evi-
dence of media experience and use in light of the findings of scholarly studies
of family life, childhood, gender, caste, class, labour, and schooling.
I conducted the research for this book over the course of a decade, during
which unprecedented changes in communication technologies took hold in
most urban and small town areas of India. When I began this research, I did
not have in mind that I would write a book, or that this book would be
mainly about children. I had completed my research on the role of Hindi
film discourses about gender, politics and religion in young people’s lives,
and wanted to pursue questions about children’s agency, and to examine
further media forms. I was, however, determined that whatever I was doing
should extend over time and not be a brief glimpse. I gleaned insights from
discussions with young people about issues of participation in political
processes, and their uses of new media, in European and Turkish contexts
(Banaji, 2008; Banaji & Buckingham, 2013), which led to a further sense
of the need to de-centre media and technologies in studies of children and
young people’s socio-political participation. My ideas never seemed to be in
sync with those of the time.
When colleagues were writing diatribes about the retrograde ideologies
in Hindi films or paeans to films’ joie de vivre, I was interested in the ways
in which these ideologies played out in young people’s everyday feelings,
prejudices, desires and actions. When some educationists were discovering
‘digital natives’ (Prensky, 2010) and clamouring about the changes social
networking would bring to learning, I was disconcerted by the fragility and
naiveté of new media literacy, particularly amongst internet users, and by
the persistent assumption that experiences online would be so different from
experiences of life in every other context. When commentators in India were
opining that the younger generation was voting for authoritarian politics,
I could see little evidence that rural working class youth or a majority of
the urban poor were supporting such politics, either online or at the ballot
box. The term ‘younger generation’ seemed misused. What I did and still
do see, are a lot of generally middle class folk – practitioners, charity advo-
cates, journalists, technologists and academics who use technologies all the
time, and perhaps feel a sense of excitement and pride in their possibilities
for networking, connection and creativity. Many commentators also evi-
dently have some form of investment in asserting and assigning a particular
role to new media technologies – making assertions and assumptions about
how smart phones, tablets, and internet-connected computers substantively
change the lives of children everywhere.
Many Western-based studies of childhood, youth and media (Berson &
Berson, 2010; boyd, 2014; Gardner & Davis, 2014; Ito et al., 2010; Livingstone,
Preface xv
2009) and the rarer global south-based studies (Arora, 2008; Barnett, 2004;
de Block & Buckingham, 2007; Lemish, 2008; Mitra et al., 2005; Pecora,
Osei-Hwere & Carlsson, 2008; Prinsloo, 1999) explore key aspects of social
change and of children’s learning, and creativity in relation to media as
an agent of learning, meaning-making and change. While many of these
studies yield insights about the role of media in children’s identities and rela-
tionships, only one or two connect such discussions to questions about the
relationships between the media tools or texts and the surrounding social
structures which constrain children’s lives as part of their communities
(cf. de Block & Buckingham; Prinsloo, 1999). In this context, my central aim
in this book is to provide a descriptive and conceptual analysis of the com-
plex life circumstances, media encounters, meaning-making and agency in
the nine- to 17-year-old age group in India without centring media from the
outset. A wider objective of this study is to illuminate the ways in which dis-
courses about the contemporary world interconnect with discourses about
children and definitions of childhood, and are socially shaped. ‘Agency’
and ‘risk’ have played an interesting role in orienting scholars towards a
universalised or differentiated notion of childhood and in flattening out or
highlighting the peculiarities which adhere to different class locations. The
empirical chapters are based mainly on participant observation and inter-
view data collected with 76 children (41 girls and 35 boys aged nine to 17
who were interviewed on research visits between 2008 and 2015). I took
great care during these interviews to allow children’s own experiences and
perspectives to guide my thinking about labour, everyday life, learning and
media, and to give their felt theories (Million, 2009) space to emerge.
Further brief interview data were collected on numerous occasions
through peer interviews and focus groups. All the children I encountered,
or who were present during interviews, did not necessarily fall within the
nine to 17 age range. Nor are all the children and young people in this study
representative of the multitudes of different regional and classed childhoods
India contains. Representativeness of the kind sought after in large multi-
variate surveys is not my aim here. Inevitably, children often disagree about
the significance of events and processes in their own lives and those of other
children. While some have different perspectives from most adults, many
children’s narratives and values have more in common with those of adults
they live amongst than with those of children from vastly different regions,
classes, or castes. However, what came as a surprise to me, and might come
as a surprise to some readers, is the consistency of certain narrations by the
children and young people interviewed for this book.
Map of the book

This book is concerned with a number of research questions. First: in what
ways do the historical debates which frame childhood in relation to develop-
ment, media and communications, and risk, represent children’s diverse and
xvi Preface
changing realities, feelings and capacities? Second: how do academic and
practitioner conceptualisations of childhood, social class, agency, and sub-
alternity inflect attitudes and behaviours towards, and scholarship about,
children? And third: what can we learn about media and communications,
childhood, agency and social class from an analysis of the ways in which
children from diverse social classes in India encounter, experience, use and
communicate with available tools and technologies? Chapters often address
more than one question at the same time as well as branching into further
sub-questions, and are unashamedly long. Apart from chapter three, which
is relatively brief, earlier chapters catalogue and analyse conceptual and his-
torical literatures as well as extant empirical studies, and later ones present
and analyse my original empirical data. This format suited the topics I was
working on by allowing me to connect them to each other in ways that
felt intuitive. If it does not suit you, then by all means, pick and choose
the sections that you are most interested in, and avoid ones that you feel
familiar with.
Chapter 1 aims to outline and problematise, several of the potentially
ethnocentric, class-centric and/or media-centric conceptualisations of child-
hood, risk and agency which dominate this field. The chapter falls broadly
into two parts: part one examines historical accounts and conceptualisa-
tions of childhood, including connections to discourses of international
development and risk. Children, as we now recognise them, or think that we
recognise them, feature in every society, although they are relatively seldom
seen in certain social milieus (such as seats of government, boardrooms and
universities) where knowledge receives official seals of approval. Part two
focuses on the questions: in what ways are children subalterns? Do they
have agency and how is this recognised and manifested?
Chapter 2 focuses on the connections between social class and everyday
life in India. The assumption that caste is a largely religious (or even largely
Hindu) practice is discussed. Since caste cuts across religion and region,
and is a widely used means for maintaining the distinction and domination
of certain groups over political power, rituals, land and other resources,
it inflects and overlaps with class. Taking the relationship between social
class and childhood in India as the nexus of religion, region and caste, then,
class is central to understanding how children’s agency is suppressed or
supported. This chapter concludes by examining the implications of studies
about the leisure/media, pedagogic and labouring contexts Indian children
inhabit for the exhibition and embodiment of children’s agency.
Chapter 3 presents the ethical considerations and methodology which
guided the research. It reflects on the challenges of ethnographic and qualita-
tive research with children from impoverished and vulnerable backgrounds,
and on the critical value of applying structural conceptual frames to data
collected in more phenomenological ways. The conceptual location of this
work on children and media is within a class- and geography-based rather
than a generation-specific frame. This gives rise to epistemic questions about
Preface xvii
whether, and in which ways, work practices and media cultures arising out
of a limited number of contexts in India can shed light on children and
young people’s social positioning and agency in other countries across the
globe. Recollect that were the research in this study situated in Europe or
North America, the title of the book would most likely be not British children
and media but, merely, Children and Media.
Chapters 4 through 6 are the book’s core data chapters. Chapter 4 details
mass media texts and representations produced for and about children,
which are accessed by a significant minority of children in India, and situates
them against discourses about digital media and the younger generation.
A content analysis of Hindi films and children’s television is included. In
the second part of the chapter, I draw on original interviews with 12 adult
experts who are producers and stakeholders in children’s electronic and
print media, and child-related non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
Chapters 5 and 6 draw on extensive field notes and interview transcripts
to interrogate children’s own narratives about their social relationships and
routines of leisure, learning, labour and media use. Chapter 5 concentrates
on accounts arising from children in middle class households, and Chapter 6
focuses on working class children. The findings and analysis provide a fresh
perspective on the relationship between situated and universal theories about
childhood, labour, learning, media and agency in the fields of social geog-
raphy media and communications, development studies and Information
and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D). The a nalysis
interrogates and decentres technology, media content and ‘middle-class
consciousness’ which are present in many discussions of childhood, class and
media. This is achieved by re-examining conceptualisations of children’s
agency in relation to the use, meaning and value of technologies in their
lives, including media and communications, and the social structures within
which these operate.
Chapter 7, the conclusion, discusses the way in which my analysis offers
a challenge to media-centric analysis via concepts of ephemeral agency,
contaminated agency and resourceful conservation. This challenge emerges
from the juxtaposition of insights into children’s social identities, their rou-
tines and everyday media practices, the work they engage in, the spaces and
boundaries of their education and their access to technology in communities
across social classes.
Acknowledgements
I have carried the subject of this book around with me since I was a child.
The faces, voices and experiences of my young peers in the incredible Indian
working class lodged like splinters, and years of hunger – not even the
devastating kind, but just the tiring, frustrating kind – do not go away.
Readings of history, narratives of Indian modernity, political economy,
global capital, technology and communication over the years have eddied
and swirled around such splinters, sinking on invisible rocks. Where are
these Indian working class children now? How do most children’s lives fit into
such erudite tomes? Jairus Banaji, Rohini Hensman and Ammu Abraham’s
work with trade unions and women’s groups from the 1970s onwards, and
Rohini’s research on working conditions for women workers, started a life-
long interest in the intersections of gender oppression and class struggle
(and a lifelong horror of balance sheets). I was fascinated by the absence of
children’s perspectives, or of any affective rendering of wider struggles within
the minutiae of children’s lives, in the fascinating bulletins and pamphlets
brought out. Encountering Franz Fanon, Eduardo Galleano, bell hooks and
Toni Morrison, I began to conceive of people’s narrative constructions of
and reflections on the pleasures and exigencies of their everyday lives as
a way of situating and reconceptualising personhood, history and theory.
They asked: how does a person come to understand and know themself
as human when narratives are written by colonisers? Through which tools
does history and fiction play a role in changing the balance of psychic and
material power between peoples? Theirs seemed a method that might allow
children’s subjectivities and experiences space. Since none of my research
with children in India has been funded, and I have no research councils or
charitable foundations to remember, I thank these four magnificent thinkers
for their continuing inspiration and ‘thinking-feeling’ commitment to peo-
ple’s struggles.
A number of people assisted me in researching and writing this book.
Neeta Shah, my childhood friend, provided companionship, gossip and access
to communities of children I would not otherwise have met; her daughter,
Drashti, proved herself a reliable peer-interviewer. Aarthi Gunnupuri in
2015, and Chetasi Kane in 2013, were both wonderful research assistants;
their independent findings, data and accounts of research corroborated and
xx Acknowledgements
nuanced mine. In the face of scepticism from some established media scholars
for whom emerging communication technologies remain salient and, dare
I say it, fetishized social forces, my young colleagues gave me confidence
that the themes and patterns I was seeing in relation to childhood, media
use and social class in the global south were accessible to others who chose
to look. Seeing such things can be a matter of ideological perspective.
Robin Mansell, David Buckingham and Linje Manyozo have been exem-
plary colleagues, friends and mentors. Robin’s sustained critical commen-
taries on my writing deserve more gratitude than I can express briefly here.
Arvind Rajagopal, Liesbet van Zoonen, Terhi Rantanen, Martin Barker and
Radhika Gajjala provided practical support and advice when it was sorely
needed: the best I can offer in return is to do for other colleagues what
they have done for me. In addition to friendship, humour and intellectual
companionship, Britta Ohm, Bingchun Meng and Diane Carr have been gen-
erous interlocutors at different stages. Mike Cushman, Rafal Zaborowski,
Wendy Willems, Pollyanna Ruiz, Caroline Bradley, Myria Georgiou, Francine
Warren, Lucy Yeatman, Abi Trundle – long may our lunches and teas, and
demonstrations with our children continue.
Other colleagues have generously engaged with the topics of my research
and invited me to present this work along the way. In particular, I want to
extend warm thanks to research students, visiting fellows and colleagues
in the media and communications department at the London School of
Economics and Political Science for their discussion of my findings during
our research dialogue series in 2015. I am greatly indebted to the Digital
Media in Education research group at the University of Bremen for invit-
ing me to speak on this subject at their 2012 international conference
on Children and Interaction Design; also to Sahana Udupa, Uday Chandra
and their colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious
and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen, during fall semester 2014, for patient and
thoughtful discussion of my work. Likewise, Adrian Athique, Vibodh
Parthasarthy and colleagues at the Indian Media Economy conference at Jamia
Millia University in Delhi in spring 2015; David Hesmondhalgh and col-
leagues at Leeds during the Capitalism, Culture and the Media conference
in fall 2015; Eva Bognar and colleagues at Central European University’s
Centre for Date and Society in Budapest, in 2015; and Carolina Matos and
colleagues at City University’s Future perspectives in International Commu-
nications conference in 2016.
I would like to acknowledge the incredible friendship of my Master’s
and Doctoral students over the years and their intellectual engagement
with so many of the themes of this book. I owe many of you for unstinting
loyalty, affection, perspicacity and for taking seriously my injunction that
the real work of education and liberation continues outside the classroom,
where we are faced with choices that pit other people’s freedom and dignity
in the balance against our own careers or convenience. Esteban Roberto
Bertarelli-Valcarcel, Husseina Ahmed, Anulekha Nandi, Sadaf Khan, Christian
Acknowledgements xxi
Ledwell, Shamil Shams, Ramnath Bhat, Yanning Huang, Ziyan Wang,
Christine Famsholt Jensen and Benjamin De-La-Pava-Velez: our discussions
on- and offline have refined my arguments.
Thank you to my beloved family, Rohini and Jairus, Ammar, Zinedine
and Sabrina. In addition to all the fun we have together, Zinedine let me
read him passages from books about childhood and children’s lives, and
kept me up-to-date with Instagram gossip. Sabrina spent days sifting the
muddy waters of statistics about class, poverty and childhood in India with
me. Ammar has read and commented insightfully on bits of the book, and
steered me away from obfuscation.
A huge thank you to Javed Iqbal, for giving me licence to use the photo-
graphs of children’s lives which illustrate this study. I owe my editor Felisa
Salvago-Keyes for the enormous positivity and immediate interest in this
project and Christina Kowalski for her careful work on the manuscript.
I must also acknowledge with gratitude the time and insights of all the adult
experts interviewed for chapter four; and the many parents who allowed me
into their lives and homes to discuss media and life with their children. Last
and most important, unfailing gratitude to all of the children who talked
with me over the years. You graciously and generously provided time and
company, incredible personal stories and quirky humour so that your perspec-
tives could fill out the arguments of this book. I have tremendous affection
and respect for most of you, and I hope you have felt this. For all of you,
I wish that you may become who you desire to be. ‘Ruksana’, I hope you
will get to lead a children’s NGO as you have wished! ‘Ashok’, I hope
you will have the means for enough food, and a bicycle, as a prelude to your
imagined future.
1 Historical accounts of childhood
Subalterns between structures and agency
This chapter is concerned with two of the book’s central questions: In what
ways do the historical debates which frame children and childhood in rela-
tion to international development, communications and risk, represent chil-
dren’s diverse and changing realities, feelings and capacities? And: How
might different intersecting theorisations of agency and subalternity inflect
understandings of attitudes and behaviours towards children in different
academic fields, geographic locations and social classes in India but also
more widely? The second question in particular motivates several enquiries:
Given children’s generally subordinate status within adult-run technologies
of power (Amaya, 2012), might agency for children just as for some subor-
dinate and oppressed adult groups, appear in ways which normative defini-
tions of agency do not recognise? And second, if we accept that agency can
also be expressed and embodied through actions which have an instrumen-
tal, but no necessary normative value – i.e., they can be expressed through
bullying or consumerism, or through self-harm – then which concepts can be
used to move the discussion beyond a celebration of agency in and of itself?
Discussions of universal rights for children, particularly of the United
Nations (UN) convention on the rights of the child, emphasise the need
to reduce generalised risks and harms to all children whether they reside
in Mombasa, Mangalore or Manchester. These discussions also categorise
proper treatment, rights, risks and harms, and presume that all children, in all
circumstances, should be equal. Pragmatic policy-makers and employers in
impoverished countries, however, continue to act on the basis that economic
imperatives for survival or profit trump children’s human rights. Definitions
and discourses of risk and development, subalterns and agency, thus become
clear points of divergence between different ideological schools of thought on
children, media and the global south. Discussions of these concepts and their
attendant narratives, myths and disputes animate this chapter, and this book.
1.1 Historicising the rhetorics of childhood

Children have not always been defined as being less competent than
adults. Nor have they always been considered equally worthy of adult
care and protection. The claim that there is such a period or phase of
childhood, and therefore that a concept of childhood is philosophically
and practically applicable has been made across at least the past three
centuries, and in different geographical locations. It can be found inter-
mittently in literary, historical and archaeological sources dating back
up to 4,000 years and has always been associated with leisure objects
and media of various sorts. As some historians of childhood have pointed
out, objects which are assumed to be toys and some which appear to be
tools made for smaller humans, appear to provide evidence of children’s
cultures of leisure, although the ages of these smaller humans or if and
when they were expected to transition to adult behaviours and values,
remain obscure. Radical changes in the ways in which children were and
are conceptualised can be unsettling for contemporary adults. During a
discussion of ‘media/childhood’ with a group of media educators in 2010,
a colleague suggested that if clothing, footballs and bags – everyday items
in Western daily life – were being stitched by children in the global south,
it might be worthwhile asking the children’s opinion about child labour
bans. The responses were immediate and uniform: such work deprives
children of their access to childhood; it deprives them of adult protec-
tion, literacy and schooling. Whether children choose to do such work or
not was regarded as a question that arises from a ‘profoundly dangerous
place which ignores children’s right to a childhood’ and to ‘convert an
exploitative imperative into a choice’. One participant, a teacher from
Sheffield argued: ‘societies which do that to children … are stuck in the
middle-ages. Development is meant to change that.’ This statement gener-
ated some support and a critique, and is probably a worthwhile starting
point for the discussion which follows.
1.1.1 Defining childhood, fashioning children

Ariès claims, in Centuries of Childhood, that ‘in medieval society the idea
of childhood did not exist’ (1962: 125). Cunningham (1995: 7) reminds us
that ‘ideas about childhood radically affect experiences of childhood’. He
notes that the word ‘idea’ is translated from the original French word ‘sen-
timent’. Ariès’s claim can be read not as an assertion of the non-existence
of any conception of childhood prior to modernity, but as a refutation of
the notion that the ideological cluster of emotions, sentiments, values and
attitudes implicated by the word ‘childhood’ in relation to the late twentieth
century, Western nuclear family are ahistorical and fixed.
Adults’ proximity to a given discourse of childhood makes it difficult to
identify the discourse as bearing ideological weight. The ideological con-
struction of children as innocent, fun-loving, and vulnerable and in need
of instruction and protection appears in the 21st century in vocabularies
linked to media and digital technologies. ‘Geeks’, ‘nerds’, ‘gamers’, ‘flamers’,
‘trolls’, ‘hangouts’, ‘pinging’ and ‘poking’ apply to adults; but observations
that childhood is ‘digital’ or that children are ‘digital natives’ have infiltrated
Historical accounts of childhood 3
the discourses used in many educational establishments to such an extent
that they seem to connote natural and universal truths. How might we distin-
guish between what adults in different eras and places say that they believe
about younger humans from what their treatment of younger humans tells
us about their beliefs, and from how young humans come to understand
themselves and their position in society?
1.1.2 Definitive breaks or a continuity of sentiment

It would be presumptuous to argue that prior to the seventeenth century
societies in every part of the world treated all children over the age of six
in exactly the same way as they treated all adults (since, of course, adults
could be slaves or serfs, criminals or gladiators, kings or peasants). In fact,
most contemporary histories of childhood acknowledge the dialectical ten-
sions between the concepts of childhood and adulthood. Key interventions
which map the development of what has been termed a ‘middle class ideol-
ogy of childhood’ include: De Mause’s 1974 edited collection The History
of Childhood, Edward Shorter’s The Making of the Modern Family, pub-
lished in 1976, Lawrence Stone’s The Family, Sex and Marriage in England
1500–1800, and Linda Pollock’s Forgotten children: Parent-child relations
from 1500 to 1900, published in 1983. Most of these scholars suggest that
the narrative of childhood follows a linear and progressive pathway towards
gradual reform and security for children.
De Mause’s work, like much of the scholarship in this area, ignores the
world outside Europe and concentrates on parent-child interaction. He
contends that ‘the further back in history one goes, the lower the level of
childcare’ and ‘the more likely children are to be killed, abandoned, beaten,
terrorised and sexually abused’ (1974: 1–2). Shorter, argues for an analysis
of the intersection between maternal sentiments and the advent of industrial
capitalism, suggesting that the profits of capitalism, in allowing middle class
mothers the time to be mothers in very particular ways, also contributed
to the creation of a new version of childhood, and a new set of sentiments
towards children. Cunningham (2005: 10) suggests that, like Shorter, Stone
is also interested in the development of new ‘sentiments’ of childhood rather
than in changes in social structures or markets. In contrast to Shorter, how-
ever, Stone ‘dismissed the idea that [these changes] had anything to do with
industrial capitalism, finding the explanation in the rise of individualism,
linked to the decline of aristocratic society and the “growth of a large, inde-
pendent and self-confident middle class” (1977: 665–666)’. Whichever of
their explanations one finds more plausible, it appears that there is some
emergent relationship between technological change, social class identities,
and orientations towards children.
In sharp contrast to Ariès, Shorter and Stone, Linda Pollock questions the
assertion of a fundamental transformation in structures of familial feeling in
Europe and North America over the past five centuries. Based on a variety of
written sources from the 1500s to 1900, including diaries, autobiographies
and notes on childrearing in the United States and Britain, Pollock sees no
evidence of exceptional or paradigmatic changes in attitudes and behaviours
towards children in these places, at least among literate populations. Rather,
she finds in the diaries and self-narrations of parents a history indicating
a general sense of affection, humanity, care and protectiveness towards
children, with examples ranging from parental grieving for lost infants to
concern for children’s health. Tensions between Pollock and authors from
the 1960s and 70s – whose research delineated a far harsher and less nur-
turing environment for most (Western) children prior to the 19th century –
suggests that Pollock injected a necessary corrective to the idea of a radical
break between alternative discursive views of childhood. She did so by
locating in pre-industrial contexts examples of the type of sentiments, val-
ues and behaviours now commonly associated with middle class maternal
and parental love. Yet, Pollock’s conclusions are curiously unreflexive with
regard to method. Though she gestures to the idea that diaries and autobi-
ographies are ‘constructions’ which recount an ideal (literate, leisured) self
and its logics of childrearing rather than the actual behaviours and relation-
ships of the time, her conclusions do not utilise contrary evidence. She might
have called on sources such as religious tracts, educational pamphlets, the
diaries of children themselves, or of early schoolteachers, missionaries and
doctors, which document harsher and less benevolent regimes, to nuance
her conclusions. Had she done so, it would have become clear that different
discourses of childhood and orientations towards children coexist in every
era and that, while one or the other might be dominant, they coexist even in
pre-industrial Europe.
In a rare example of scholarship examining pre-20th century construc-
tions of childhood in India at length, Satadru Sen’s 2005 study Colonial
childhoods examines Indian native childhoods as peripheral to colonial
adulthoods and marginal to coloniser childhoods. He sees pre-colonial child-
hoods as yoked to class, race and culture. In fact, he suggests, the ways in
which modern nationalist discourses have recuperated Indian childhood,
and the ways in which colonial discourses constructed native children are
equally divorced from the historical experiences of Indian children under
colonial rule. Both aim at recuperating, recognising or subverting the notion
of the ‘the colony’.
Reformatories and borstals operationalised the transformation of Indian
children into British subjects: the intension was for the working classes in
India to labour on behalf of the colonisers, and the middle classes to act
as henchmen. Prefiguring many contemporary metropolitan educators and
NGO volunteers in rural India, Sen elaborates the role of legal and edu-
cational ‘experts’ who examined and catalogued the behaviours or native
children as natural ‘specimens’ which could reveal aspects of their culture’s
‘otherness’, and who mediated between colonial state and native families.
Amidst moral critiques of native degeneracy, and the pursuit of a native
elite deracinated and reconfigured through colonial education practices, the
spaces for a historiography of multitudes of Indian children in the colonial
era dwindle. It becomes clear that by the late nineteenth century, at least in
British-ruled colonies, the more accurately a ‘native’ family could get their
children to ‘mimic’ an upper middleclass English child’s identity, the more
likely that child was to grow up into an adult who escaped the penal reform
system created for native adults. Failure to show potential to transform into
such an adult was marked by an absence of guarantees that delineate child-
hood from adulthood in the eyes of the British colonisers. Just as with Brit-
ish working class children during the Industrial era, so with Indian children
in colonial times: both were subjected to material and moral disciplinary
regimes whose success entailed a transformation into a viciously raced, gen-
dered and classed adult subject.
The story and experience of childhood, arguably, was never monolithic.
Sen’s and Pollock’s work is a reminder that contrasting and contradictory
discourses about childhood and childrearing have co-existed in most peri-
ods. Existing discourses are also frequently in ideological tension with one
another, as they are with pragmatic actions or circumstantial events. Par-
ticular discursive formations around childhood and family come to the
fore amongst particular social or religious groups, or in particular regions.
Others are suppressed over the course of relatively short spaces of time.
Relative wealth or poverty, the spread of disease, the rigours of war or reli-
gious practice and the increasing spread of literacy and numeracy wrought
changes in relationships between adults and children in Europe and in India,
and continue to do so in the present day. In subsequent chapters, these pro-
cesses, ideological formations and contradictions will be discussed based
on my analysis of discussions with children, NGO workers and media pro-
ducers. The following sections examine resilient and normative orientations
towards children and childhood, which continue to influence popular and
scholarly debates, as well as representations in India.
1.1.3 T
owards a sociological discussion: religious, biological
and sociocultural constructions
The work of authors who launched the ‘new sociology’ of childhood is cen-
tral in mapping changing rhetorics of childhood, the role of discourse in
these debates, and the socioeconomic and material implications of concep-
tualisations of childhood for children from different classes and locations.
Best known amongst these authors, James, Jenks and Prout ([1999] 2012)
deftly explore pre-sociological conceptualisations of childhood. They start
with the notion of the ‘evil child’ (pp. 10–13). This is an idea emerging from
European puritanical sects and Christian ideas of original sin, but I encoun-
tered it in discussions with many parents in India when they commented
on ‘other community’s children’ and street children. James et al. argue that
the ‘evil child’ idea allowed for the legitimation and institutionalisation of
children’s natural state as savage and the notion that children need to be
broken. This view entails the deployment of violent and authoritarian meth-
ods of control which play a role in some childrearing practices worldwide
in the contemporary period. The ‘evil’ child becomes a successful adult via
a process of psychic and bodily learning which happens through repeated
pain and suffering. Foucault’s evocative critiques of asylums and prisons
in Madness and Civilization and Discipline and Punish, and the way he
evokes bodily punishment are suggestive of the disciplinarian regimes to
which children are subjected.
When children were not conceptualised as being born evil, they were
constructed as intrinsically innocent. James et al.’s analysis considers con-
temporary concerns with nurturing, protecting and educating children in
relation to Jean Jacques Rousseau’s ‘innocent child’ (2012: 13–15). John
Locke’s suggestion that the child’s mind is a tabula rasa subject to imma-
nent learning (2012: 15–17) can be traced to pamphlets and brochures for
parents and educators in the 19th century as well as to contemporary stories
and television shows.
The most significant pre-sociological understanding of childhood
explored in James et al.’s work has significant purchase amongst e ducators,
psychologists and the general public in many countries, and in India, in
particular: this is the ‘naturally developing child’. The work of Piaget, a
key proponent of this approach, was in favour when I trained as a teacher
in London at the beginning of the 1990s. The courses I took were famed
for their early adoption of Vygotsky’s (1978) social constructivist work on
children’s learning through scaffolding, learning which is guided by more
experienced learners and which leads to emotional, cognitive and social
development. In this context, we also encountered Paolo Freire’s ideas about
the necessity of supporting communities of learners towards understandings
of culturally relevant social justice. Nevertheless, many fellow students, edu-
cationists and policy-makers retained implicit faith in Piaget’s theorising of
learning as a largely individual rather than social process. His overemphasis
on the idea that children learn in isolation, and in specifically delineated
stages, and that their abilities and thought processes change in an essen-
tial way at different ages rather than merely deepening or becoming more
sophisticated, was still prevalent. As James et al. phrase it, Piaget’s work on
genetic epistemology ‘extended biology, quite successfully, into the vocabu-
lary of the taken-for-granted and produced the most absolute, if materially
reductive, image of children that we are likely to encounter’ (1999: 17).
Piaget’s work on children and childhood has been used to categorise and
define children’s ‘successful’ growth in a linear and largely individual man-
ner. Childhood is seen as progressing inevitably through a range of stages,
each of which takes children closer to becoming rational, action-oriented,
informed adults. Although a close reading of Piaget’s ideas reveals that he
considers that children at each stage do display elements of agency in their
responses to social stimuli, the legacy of his work in education sciences has
tended towards individualism and biological determinism. Some school-
boards use Paigetian ideas to set up particular tasks and tests at particular
ages and to refute the need for process-centred learning. Similarly, some
schools reject methods which bring younger children and abstract concepts
into contact, even playfully; and many parents do not think it is possible –
even if it were desirable – to teach children under a certain age to think
critically about religion, politics and morality. For decades, ‘childhood’ has
been regarded as a straightforward descriptor of a biological and intel-
lectual stage. This notion of childhood permeates the worldview of many
professionals, from physicians to educators.
All accounts of childhood are encoded with ideological values. These have
profoundly significant material implications for children. It is tempting to
read the move towards social constructivist accounts of childhood as an
attempt to liberate children from the worst excesses of religious, biological
and psychological determinism. If one expresses constructions of childhood
in the well-known epigram ‘Nature versus Nurture’, with the exception of
references to Vygotsky and Friere, the previous paragraphs encapsulate posi-
tions that fall firmly into the ‘nature’ camp. Discussions which follow might
be characterised as supporting a ‘nurture’ position. Unfortunately, in taking
up this position, some social constructivists actually subscribed, or appeared
to subscribe, to a form of social determinism. However, let us take a step back
to understand whether, and the extent to which, we – as children or as human
beings – are biologically determined or social constructed actually matters.
1.1.3i Socially constructed beings: essence or veneer?

In the mid-twentieth century, children – and adults for that matter – began
to be described as being strongly influenced by their social environment.
Thomas Riise (2009: 145) defines social constructionism as ‘a social ontol-
ogy which insists that human agents do not exist independently from their
social environment and its collectively shared systems of meanings (culture
in a broad sense).’ He goes on to contrast this to
the methodological individualism of rational choice according to which

‘[t]he elementary unit of social life is the individual human action’ (Elster
1989: 13). The fundamental insight of the structure-agency debate,
which lies at the heart of many social constructivist works, is not only
that social structures and agents are mutually codetermined. The cru-
cial point is that constructivists insist on the mutual constitutiveness of
(social) structures and agents. (Adler 1997: 324–5; Wendt 1999: ch. 4)
(Ibid., 145)
In the 20th century, learning started to be seen as a process of recognition

of and conformity to social norms, constraints and regulations. Harder and
softer versions of this view were epitomised in the work of Talcott Parsons
(1949) and G. H. Mead (1934) and the Chicago school. The pendulum
swung between a notion of successful (child) socialisation as an integration
of societal norms into behavioural and attitude frameworks, and the idea of
the negotiation of these norms between individual children and the groups
to which they belong. The significance of these ideas in contemporary soci-
ety is illustrated by the positions taken in an excerpt from a discussion about
a school uniform, (during my observation at a large secondary school in the
United Kingdom).
Headteacher: (Removing his tie and then re-tying it slowly in front

of an assembled group of approximately 120 fourteen year olds):
So. Today’s assembly is all about the tie. Why do you think I just
did that?
Pupil A: To show us how to do it sir?
Pupil B: To show us that we’re doing it wrong?
Pupil C: (sotto voce) Your wife did it up too tight in the morning session.
Headteacher: That’s right [Pupil B]. By now I would have expected
all of you to have learnt successfully how to do up a tie. One of
the things that will determine how far you go in your future life.
The impression you make on others, the way in which you are
treated and respected. But no, I see some of you are still unable
to grasp this rudimentary and significant aspect of growing up –
how we look makes a major impression on others. We show our
attitudes and values through our clothing and how we do up the
knot communicates an impression.
Pupil C: But sir, shouldn’t we be learning to be individuals? [some
laughter in hall]
Headteacher: There are other ways of being individuals. You will
learn those as you grow older, if and when you get to university or
get a job. But if you don’t learn to do up your tie properly, perhaps
you won’t be going to university? [loud laughter across hall].
Technologies (such as the tie) and forms (of dress) are associated with adults’
attempts to instil social norms. The adult speaker’s rhetorical positioning of
a tie done up in a particular way as being a key to the job market is in ten-
sion with the tie as a fetish object which can be used creatively to display
both conformity and individuality.
Both hard and soft versions of children’s social construction can stress
a plurality of pathways to adulthood. However, some (cf. Qvortrup and
Corsaro, later) deal more clearly with the implications of structural and cul-
turally sanctioned imbalances in power. The attempts at negotiation of dress
norms in this school were varied and were countered by ever more punitive
material regimes of physical subjugation (tie snatched away, pupil pushed),
punishment (fining, detention, sending home, letters to parents), and verbal
harassment or humiliation.
When children describe themselves as ‘naturally lazy’, ‘stupid’, ‘too mis-
chievous’ or ‘very tech-savvy’, they are often adept at reflecting normative
adult views of their ‘deficiencies’, and ‘potentials’ as learners and citizens.
The failure of most pre-social constructivist conceptions of childhood to
theorise the meaning of social power relations around, for, and on children
has implications in relation to the accounts children give of their everyday
environments. While there have been several paradigm shifts amongst schol-
ars of childhood and practitioners working with children, in practice con-
ceptualisations of childhood and behaviours towards children are recursive
and messy rather than linear. NGO staff discussions of the practices they
wish to combat, and Indian media producers’ accounts of their child-related
beliefs and philosophies, provide a poignant counter to the notion that bio-
logical and social determinist accounts of childhood are now obsolete and
have been superseded by the more persuasive and reflexive conceptualisa-
tions discussed next.
1.1.3ii Dialectics of social structuration: conformity, resistance,

negotiation
Some scholarship in childhood studies has begun to consider the ways in
which children might be a social group, and whether, as such they could be
considered to have group interests, and to form meanings as a group and
in conjunction with other groups. Nuancing a soft constructivist position,
critical sociologists such as Jens Qvortrup (1991, 2009), William C orsaro
(2011) and Michael Wyness (2012), who have mapped childhood and child
cultures in multiple locations across the globe, have moved to reject both
overtly normative and social determinist versions of constructionism. They
opt instead for a greater emphasis on the implications of structural fac-
tors embedded in micro-cultural contexts (the ones with which children
have immediate contact). These authors emphasise the possibilities for
children’s scaffolded and negotiated appropriations and modifications of
existing knowledge. Their work explores childhood as a collective social
phenomenon rather than a biological stage or an individualised acquisition
of skills and capabilities. This has required some engagement with notions
of inequality and social change. Noting that large numbers of children are
articulated with existing social inequalities in ways which make them partic-
ularly prone to exploitation and silencing, they have examined the possibil-
ity that childhood or generation might stand alongside factors such as class
and race as an axis of inequality.
Qvortrup has been a longstanding champion of the notion that child-
hood itself is a structural form. In his view, children are integrated with
society; they experience structures such as class, race and gender in parallel
with other age groups, and are comparable to similar age groups in other
eras. His scholarship on educational, child care and child work contexts is
significant for its sensitive detailing of the ways in which children’s lives are
changing in tandem with socio-historical processes, such as industrialisation
and de-industrialisation, which affect gender roles, employment, the econ-
omy and family structures. Some of the changes he catalogues necessitate
analysis and critique: for instance, the increasing surveillance of children’s
lives, and ‘institutionalisation’ of children’s leisure activities is identified as
a site of current and potential conflict and even oppression for millions of
children globally. Crucially, Qvortrup demonstrates that children are not
passive bystanders in processes of change. Children contribute significantly
to all spheres, notwithstanding their increasing privatisation and isolation
within Western-style middle class families. They are not simply the objects
of normative behaviours or constructed by adult structures and processes.
Commenting on this aspect of Qvortrup’s analysis, Corsaro is quick to
emphasise that long before they ‘become’ adults in age, children ‘co-operate
with adults’ in enforcing norms and values. They, in fact, co-construct norms.
Based on a comprehensive reading of literatures on socialisation and play,
and on extensive ethnographic work with children in Italian pre-schools,
Corsaro (2011: 20–21) offers the notion of ‘interpretive reproduction’.
According to him, this ‘captures the innovative and creative aspects of chil-
dren’s participation in society … [as well as] the idea that children are not
simply internalizing society and culture but are actively contributing to
cultural production and change [and at the same time] constrained by the
existing social structure and by societal reproduction’. The concept of ‘inter-
pretive reproduction’ does not directly confront the power-relations involved
in such reproduction or in the creative re-inscription of meaning by groups
of children.
Less anthropological accounts than Corsaro’s are more explicit about
the links between children’s participatory socialisation and a wider politics
of power. They use Marxist terminology such as needs and interests. Exam-
ining the history of children’s participation in, and constraint by, social
structures in Europe, Wyness writes that the notion of agency serves to dis-
tinguish ideas which posit children as capable of having group ‘interests’
from ones which posit children merely as the possessors of ‘needs’. He notes
that, ‘unlike a politics based around children’s “needs” where children are
ironically absent, “interests” suggests that children are viewed as active and
involved, a group or body in a position to make claims on the state at var-
ious levels’ (2012: 47). To Wyness (Ibid.), the idea of children’s interests is
‘thus fundamentally political, defining the aims of a specific minority group
in society’. In fact, Wyness is convinced that theories that accurately locate
childhood at the intersection of social structures such as class or gender,
and see children as bearers of the ills of those within their economic class or
gender group, are still missing significant aspects of children’s social trans-
actions and everyday identities. He suggests that these theories ‘fall into the
trap of treating children as transitional beings’, ignoring the experiences they
encounter ‘as a generation’ – for instance, their subjugation to adult super-
vision and control, to state interference and to political non-representation.
Concepts of interpretive reproduction, of childhood as a social structure
and of group interests emerge as central to analysis of children’s everyday
lives. So, even if children are not making or able to make claims on the state,
I suggest, it is worth holding onto the notion of children’s interests as they
may be able to make claims on other groups of adults, including employers
and educational bodies. But, are these sufficient grounds for considering
children generationally as an oppressed social group?
1.1.4 Children and power

The previous discussion asked whether the ways in which children are
treated and constructed by adults are grounds for considering children a
social group and childhood a social structure. Some scholars have asked
whether children are an oppressed social group on par, for instance, with
women or colonised peoples. Canella and Viruru (2001 and 2004) would
answer this in the affirmative. They espouse a view which parallels processes
of colonization with the ways in which all children are defined and treated.
They offer an account of the parallels between discourses on ‘orientals’ and
discourses on ‘children’. They note that both sets of discourses gain traction
through biopower and the control of knowledge: thus ‘orientals’ and ‘chil-
dren’ are associated with emotion, exoticism and a need for care; are unable
to manage their own affairs or control their own sexuality. They form
the ‘other’ of rational, scientific and morally enlightened Western adults.
Canella and Viruru refer not only to marginalised children in global south
contexts but to all children, suggesting that even in contemporary Western
cosmopolitan contexts ‘the labels, forms of representation, and positions
imposed on those who are younger can be categorized as oppressive, con-
trolling, and even colonizing’ (2004: 83). They examine the ways in which
research, particularly in psychology and education, but also in anthropol-
ogy, has p articipated in constructing colonial binaries.
There is some purchase in this account, particularly when it comes to
understanding the regimes of physical punishment, surveillance and psy-
chic damage deployed against colonized peoples and many children. It is
possible to see parallels when it comes to recognition of the ways in which
postcolonial populations and children are constituted through interna-
tional development discourses as objects of moral theorising and care, and
through capitalist market discourses as potentially avid consumers. Canella
and Viruru’s argument is weakened, however, by its homogenizing tendency.
Although they pay attention to gender, they don’t describe and theorise the
varied ways in which children from different classes, castes or sub-castes,
races and sexualities are treated, distinguished from, and pitted against each
other. They do not engage with the meaning of (and differences between)
‘agency’ for (post)colonized adults and for children.
Studies such as Canella and Viruru’s contribute meaningfully to insights
about inequalities between children and adults as some bourgeois feminist
research did in relation to women. Yet, there have also been studies which view
children as independent groups of social actors with subjectivity and agency
to co-construct the conditions of their existence. Some anthropologists who
examine childhood work and survival, for instance, have evinced a commit-
ment to taking children’s own accounts of their interactions and actions in
the social world seriously. Such accounts (Kovats-Bernat, 2006; Nieuwen-
huys, 1994) pay attention to differences between children and adults, and
between geographically disparate children’s accounts of themselves. Marxist
feminist accounts of childhood also point to the radical structural inequal-
ities affecting children across historical eras and geographic boundaries
(Balagopalan, 2014; Katz, 2004). In such studies, children are viewed neither
as pathological in contrast to adults nor as incomplete. Instead, geography,
race and class provide lenses that enable an exploration of the different posi-
tioning of children in relation to resources and social relations. Some studies
(Furlong & Cartmel, 1997; Lareau, 2011) suggest that individual children
are defined by and within social relations, which are shaped entirely by his-
tories to which children’s contribution is not estimated. Others (Sarup, 2013;
Sen, 2014; Wells, 2014) articulate a dialectic of childhood, subjectivity and
society, which I have found it fruitful to retain in my research.
1.1.5 The international development child

So much has been written about international development that giving even
an abbreviated history of the ideas relevant for debates on children and
media in India is the equivalent of trying to pour an ocean into a teapot.
However, there is no question that situating children within a broader debate
about the definitions, discourses and effects, if not the causes and best meth-
ods of socioeconomic and political development, is an equally important
task. While others (Bourdillon, 2004; Jones, 2005) have written extensively
on development and rights discourses following the UN declaration on the
rights of the child, this discussion focuses primarily on the ways in which
Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and development as
intersecting discourses are relevant for studies of children and media.
Development is not a monolithic project, ideology or sequence of events.
Richard Chambers (2005), Ilan Kapoor (2008) and Daniel Lerner (1958),
for instance, take diametrically opposing views on what development
means, how it should be carried out, and who benefits or suffers from mod-
ernizing projects. Lewis, Rodgers and Woolcock take it for granted that
‘[d]evelopment is one of the dominant organising ideas of our time… an
increasingly wide-ranging system of ideas and institutions…’ (2014: 3). It
is a zone and site of material and discursive conflict. As Manyozo (2012: 3)
expresses it, ‘[i]t is a conflict over resources and of course, over power’ as
well as over ‘representation, and even over the instruments and discourses
of that representation’. Representations of development are also representa-
tions of the world imagined from the perspective of people with particular
and often normative frameworks in relation to areas of life which directly
affect and include children. These frameworks include standards in relation
to working hours; the ideal methods for farming or schooling; safety and
hazard in relation to mining or pesticides or roads building, street lighting
and travel infrastructure; or indeed the reach and offer of both media and
medical infrastructure and provision. Lewis, Rodgers and Woolcock’s point
is that visual and other representations of development and of the idea of
development (and therefore of the societies and communities on which some
normative notion of development is meant to act and in which it is said to
occur) are also implicated in shaping that world and the contexts described
and represented. These ideas owe much, of course, to the work of scholars
such as Edward Said (1978) and Arthuro Escobar (1991).
One of the most fundamental arguments in the traditionalist or institu-
tional development literature is, of course, the idea that nations in the global
north or the West are already developed and have developed in the only
acceptable manner. These accounts (Lerner, 1958; Rogers, 1962; Schramm,
1964) frequently though not exclusively reference a certain level of economic
growth and standard of living as indicative of being developed. A major
focus is on raising levels of education – whether this be primary or secondary
schooling – and a concomitant proscription on children under the age of 16
doing paid labour or dying of malnutrition. It is common in the mainstream
international development and social policy literature on poverty to suggest
that it is necessary for younger generations to adopt new technologies and
diffuse them through their ‘traditional’ communities, thus modernising them.
This sense of necessity has been attached to narratives about ICTs in the
global south, and in particular to ICTs, children and empowerment (Chiong
& Schuler, 2010; Garai & Shadrach, 2006; Mitra et al., 2001). In visual com-
mentaries, the cleanliness, speed, scale, reach, precision and affordances of
computers and mobile phones are implicitly contrasted in somewhat orien-
talist fashion with a variety of other communicative media and technological
tools from chalkboards and megaphones to pickaxes, hammers and drills.
Following this modernisation discourse, and despite discussions of
‘socially relevant computing’ (Buckley, Nordlinger and Subramaniam,
2008), development literature repeatedly frames ICTs as challenging and
levelling economic, educational or socio-political barriers for poor women
and children (Devi et al., 2012; Friedman, 2006; Gigler, 2004). More than
a decade ago, Thompson cautioned that the ‘increasingly perceived impor-
tance of ICT as components – even drivers – of development has resulted in
unprecedented levels of investment in ICT by major developmental donors,
often at the expense of alternative forms of initiative …[and] in affecting
what funds are available to spend elsewhere and even how they are spent
(i.e. often to complement or “leverage” existing ICT investments), it is not
just ICT being shaped by developmental requirements – increasingly, the
inverse is also true: developmental policy options are becoming linked to the
shape of technological evolution’ (2004: 105. My emphasis).
A burgeoning field of literature has now moved into the domain of apps
and development, with anecdotal tales of 12-year-old Indians developing
apps and turning themselves and their communities into profit-making
entrepreneurs1. While an individual child gaining economic independence
based on their inventiveness within the framework of our current capitalist
economy is clearly an achievement, a side effect of such sustained linkage
of children-in-development with emerging ICTs is that it tends to valorise
the generic notion of all children and young people as ‘digital natives’ and
this diverts financial (investment, research, infrastructure) and discursive
(scholarship, problem-solving) resources from other aspects of global south
children’s lives. Malnutrition, pollution, defecation, health, child mortality,
industrial and agricultural labour and accidents, as well as bereavement,
religious and caste-linked discrimination, and sexual or physical abuse are
then seen as taking place in a separate sphere from ICT-related learning and
social change.
For children in low-income contexts, the material sphere of deprivation
is generally assumed to be devoid of pleasure, leisure, creativity and agency.
The assumed educational, economic and developmental risks of not access-
ing computers or, conversely, of being contacted by adult predators online
are sometimes imported wholesale, regardless of what most children and
parents in the global south experience, want, fight for or need. We can trans-
pose Aradhana Sharma’s critique of development discourse in the context
of Dalit and Adivasi claims to citizenship into this realm of children and
Information and Communication Technologies for Development to realise
that some ‘digital development talk’ now functions ‘as a key axis around
which moral personhood, rights, citizenship, and communal belonging [are]
defined’ (2011: 976). Even where experts who work in the field give accounts
of the variable success of ICT-related projects, or are ambivalent about
ICT-related development programmes’ claims to deliver long-term economic
and social change in marginalised communities (as is the case in the 2015
European parliament report on ICTs in the developing world), recommen-
dations often suggest increased emphasis on ICTs and ICT-linked skills in
marginalised communities as a precursor to other beneficial changes. Again,
while acknowledging that equal ICT access, competence and literacy should
be the prerogative of all marginalised communities, the ways in which ICTs
are emphasised in some international development fora can suggest that
agency necessary for social change resides in ICTs themselves and that many
social and economic problems will wither away upon their arrival.
1.2 Childhood, subalterns and agency

1.2.1 Defining agency
The concept of agency is integral to most discussions of media use and
production. Buckingham and Sefton-Green reference it directly in the title
of their 2003 piece on Pokémon – ‘Gotta catch ‘em all: Structure, agency
and pedagogy in children’s media culture’. Elsewhere the term is used inter-
changeably with ‘empowerment’, ‘activeness’, ‘subjectivity’ or as a stand-in
for ‘free will’. Sometimes it is formulated as ‘a capacity’ or ‘a capacity to
make a difference’. José van Dijck writes that:
User agency is cast by cultural theorists as participatory engagement,

in contrast to the passive recipients of earlier stages of media culture.
Economists and business managers phrase user agency in the rhetoric
of production rather than consumption. And in terms of labour rela-
tions, users are appraised in their new roles as amateurs and volun-
teers vis-á-vis those in the professional leagues. (2009: 42)
Van Dijck’s conclusion argues for ‘the articulation of user agency as a com-
plex concept involving not only his cultural role as a facilitator of civic
engagement and participation, but also his economic meaning as a producer,
consumer and data provider, as well as the user’s volatile position in the
labour market’ (2009: 55). Here we have agency formulated with regard
to actions and processes which involve media products in relation to the
political, civic, economic and social spheres. The point about the necessity
of interconnecting these domains is well made. Despite being a singularly
significant term in media and communications literature, many discussions
of agency in new media contexts acknowledge Giddens’ (1984) discus-
sion of tensions between structuration and agency2, but retain a relatively
instrumental engagement with the concept of agency. Having illustrated this
engagement which frequently gets characterised in a binary of active and
passive (persons) or closed and open (texts), Andrew Tudor suggests that
the task of media scholars is to grapple with the ‘mechanisms through which
agency and structure interact in the process of structuration’ (1995: 103).
In their paper summarising several strands of discussion on the concept
of agency, Mustafa Emirbayer and Ann Mische (1998) draw upon a ‘variety
of pragmatist and phenomenological thinkers’ to lay out their theory about
the ‘intersubjective’ and ‘temporal’ nature of agency. They begin by outlining
tensions between instrumental and normative approaches to agency. Instru-
mental approaches rely on the notion that humans act only through rational
choices based on self-interest or group-interest. Normative approaches rely
on the notion that humans act via a tacit or acknowledged awareness of
norm-based moral values. There are merits in both positions. Many schol-
ars have tried to overcome the dichotomy, notably Parsons, Coleman and
Alexander, albeit in different ways. Coleman’s solution is to suggest that
action – and hence agency – is always to some extent normative and to
some extent rational, a ‘complex social interactive phenomenon’. Emirbayer
and Mische are sceptical that it would be possible for any human actor to
judge in advance of all actions what the outcome would be, and hence to
be able to estimate whether taking the action is rational or not. Deciding
to cross a road at a crossing when the light is green for pedestrians seems
like a rational choice. However, in places where cars routinely ignore traffic
signals this choice might seem less straightforward; and one who chooses in
such a manner, without regard to tacit knowledge of contextual differences,
might get knocked down.
To address this problematic, Emirbayer and Mische draw initially on
Herbert Mead’s insights in the Philosophy of the Present. They suggest,
as Mead does, that ‘the concept of time [is] constituted through emergent
events, which require a constant refusing of past and future’, and that
‘the concept of human consciousness [is] constituted through sociality,
the capacity to be both temporally and relationally in a variety of systems
at once’ (1998: 968). These theorisations of the concepts – time, context,
sociality, human consciousness – which can be understood as contributing
de facto to the concept of agency, lead Emirbayer and Mische to propose
their own definition of agency. To them, then, agency is ‘the temporally con-
structed engagement by actors of different structural environments – the
temporal-relational contexts of action – which through the interplay of
habit, imagination, and judgment, both reproduces and transforms those
structures in interactive response to the problems posed by changing histor-
ical situations’ (1998: 970).
Despite its rhetorical insistence on inter-subjectivity, even when an actor
is in absolute isolation and can commune only with their own mind3, or with
aspects of him or herself – this definition is useful in that it presents agency,
and its definitions, as ‘historically variable’, ‘habitual, repetitive and taken
for granted’, as well as ‘purposive, goal-seeking and deliberative’ (962–963).
Social actors including children can, thus, be understood to operate by ori-
enting themselves towards ‘different temporalities’, as well as divergent rou-
tines (of home and school or of school and labour sites), past, present and
future, and within different social communities, with sometimes contradic-
tory norms and values. This definition is very helpful and I will use it in later
chapters to elucidate the narratives of children about media, labour and
schooling. Nevertheless, normative definitions which place agency outside
history and apart from social context still abound. Here I will engage only
with the most useful and nuanced of the normative definitions.
The concept of ‘interpretive reproduction’ discussed in section 1.1.3
is also, of course, linked inextricably, though obscurely, to the notion of
agency in the sense that interpretative reproduction is evidence of agency.
A key question with which this chapter engages is raised by the foregoing
discussion: Although children’s agency may no longer be in question, what
constitutes or provides evidence of children’s agency in different historical
and geographic circumstances?
My work on children and childhood in India is guided by a sense of the
multiple ways in which children’s agency in contemporary India is masked
or undervalued because of pre-existing beliefs about childhood and agency.
In dozens of pre-20th century contexts, children under the age of 18, and
more particularly between the ages of nine and 14, did things which evi-
denced both reason and agency. But they were usually not given credit
for either reason or agency. The possibility of children having reason and
agency was, in fact, studiously denied in extended tracts, but without neces-
sarily inviting the sort of care and concern for these apparently lesser beings
that might have happened in a contemporary context. The psychological,
psychoanalytic, religious and developmental literature of up to thirty years
ago also often did not to recognise, note or account for children’s agency.
Alternatively, authors performed a schizophrenic dance between institut-
ing control measures which suggested that children’s agentic behaviour was
something adults should be wary of and suggesting that children’s inaction
in the face of other people’s ‘bad behaviour’ was equally to be discouraged.
A counter-narrative on children’s reason and agency emerged in the late
19th and early 20th centuries. Its proponents included, amongst others,
British novelists Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and Charlotte Brontë, and the
educationists Friedrich Froebel4 and Lev Vygotsky. Their work addressed
the idea of children as fully agentic social beings in direct and indirect ways:
through descriptions of children doing things in particular historical and
social contexts, and through indirect associations of children with a range of
emotions and goals previously attributed primarily to adults: the pursuit of
justice; grief and nostalgia; logical thinking; self-directed labour and aware-
ness of their subaltern status within an irrational hierarchy.
Meanwhile between the 19th and 20th centuries, the juridical literature
played out contradictory versions of children and youth. In this, they were
depicted as rational, self-seeking and agentic enough to commit crimes, and
to be transported overseas, imprisoned or punished in other violent and
cruel ways; but they were not thought to be either rational or independent
enough to vote, to represent themselves in social contexts or elections or
to receive equal payment for work. In this early literature on childhood,
at least, then, children were treated de facto as subalterns, condemned by
nature, by religion, by law and by common sense to be less than, and at the
mercy of, adults. But are all children subalterns? The answer depends in part
on how we define subalternity. Before moving to do that, however, I feel it
is imperative to examine the ways in which theories of risk have shaped
discussions of agency by emphasising the egalitarian nature of risk, and the
apparently joint responsibility borne by all for creating and avoiding risks.
1.2.2 Risk, the great equaliser?

Ulrich Beck’s writing on risk and modernity has had profound appeal and
influence across the Euro-American social sciences. This is especially so in
studies of new technologies and young people. In Risk Society (1992: 12)
Beck argues that ‘[t]he gain in power from techno-economic “progress” is
being increasingly overshadowed by the production of risks’ and that ‘‘glo-
balisation … brings into being supra-national and non-class specific global
hazards’. The notion of a Janus-faced modernity, which breaks down old
class boundaries while at the same time individualizing and producing the
hazards, which hold the seeds of potential social disaster, has had huge
impact on scholarship in the social sciences, and particularly that relat-
ing to childhood and media. However, because risks are oriented towards
the future, risk is double-edged. Through the conceptualisation of risk as
grounded in prior experience or scientific extrapolation, risks are experi-
enced in the present and are held to be of current significance. As things that
have not happened yet risks also have the potential for successful redress.
A focus on them is generally able to generate optimism among, and funding
for, those who aim to address them.
Most significantly for the purposes of this study, Beck’s work also draws
attention to the notion that all discussions of risk and harm, however scien-
tific, are reliant on ‘social and thus prescribed expectations and values’, that
they all have a ‘normative’, culturally specific component (Beck, 1992: 29). This
normative and culturally specific component suggests that we should be
cautious in generalising risks such as ‘unsuitable sexual content’, ‘meeting
strangers’ or ‘cyber-bullying’ from all children who go online to all global
south children. Some of these may indeed be risks for the minority of
children with ubiquitous new media access – and may be exacerbated by
wilfully ignorant parents who upload private information – but for many
these might not even be particularly risky in comparison with the myriad
other experiences entailed in an average day.
So, as Scott Lash and Brian Wynne (1992: 4, 6) argue, current risk studies
are weakened by the fact that ‘the critical force of all this fervent intellectual
activity is radically and systematically constrained by its cultural heritage
and unreflective idiom (not to mention its forms of patronage and institu-
tional orientations)’ and nested in ‘complacent ethnocentrism’. Further, dis-
cussing risk knowledge, in her sharply argued Risk (1999), Deborah L upton
notes that ‘[r]isk meanings and strategies are attempts to tame uncer-
tainty, but often have the paradoxical effect of increasing anxiety about
risk through the intensity of their focus and concern’ (Ibid., 13). Following
Mary Douglas, Lupton discusses the manner in which imagined risks can be
used as mechanisms for policing the boundaries of groups, for positioning
those outside a particular risk community as ‘other’: they do not share our
concern with […] insert sexual health, morality, tobacco, global warming,
etc. – hence they are not part of the community. For Lupton, Douglas’ argu-
mentation on environmental risks pays little attention to power and fails to
distinguish between the risk rhetoric of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic
groups.
Imagined risks have the ironic consequence of diminishing far more press-
ing current harms and dangers happening to other groups – p articularly
those with less power or holding counter-hegemonic positions in relation
to the dominant capitalist system – and of ‘othering’ and alienating those
within the self-delineated community who suffer those harms. This is evident
in the British tabloid’s scramble to identify illegal immigrants as drains on
British resources, and to disavow migrants per se, and it erodes the security
and living conditions of the British poor or Indian Muslims. These groups,
by virtue of their general poverty and the apparent number of children they
have, are depicted as a menace to ‘the economy’ and as a drain on the state.
This tension between actual and imagined risks – and in fact the dangers of
constructing some things as risky while ignoring certain harms – can be seen
clearly in the literature on conceptualisations of childhood.
Using risk interchangeably with ‘hazard’ (1992b: 46), Beck acknowledges
that ‘[a]s the risk society develops, so does the antagonism between those
afflicted by risks and those who profit from them’ as also between those who
‘produce risk definitions and those who consume them’. Mass media and
academia can both, in this sense, be said to ‘produce’ risk definitions in
hegemonic, normative and complacently ethnocentric ways under the aegis
of global capitalism. In this sense, both are prime sites of political and social
definition and struggle. Equally, these two institutions produce understand-
ings of what ‘childhood’ and ‘agency’ look like in different contexts and
valorise some forms, while erasing or stigmatising others. The types of
childhood and of agency which are erased, and the subjects for whom risk
are homogenised, have at various points been called ‘subalterns’, those far
from economic and social power structures, who are largely absent from
the sphere of knowledge production, and who may need others to repre-
sent their interests. Are all children equally subaltern with respect to adult
power?
1.2.3 Who is a subaltern?

The term ‘subaltern’ connotes lowness within a hierarchy, a lack of politi-
cal and economic autonomy and control, overt experiences of oppression,
and a lack of capacity to represent individual and group needs, positions,
identities or demands. Subaltern groups, in this formulation, are those
furthest from economic, political and geographical power and authority:
the downtrodden peasants, oppressed women, subjugated tribes, despised
castes or religions (Gramsci, 1971). While not entirely abject, repulsive
and despised in the sense that subalterns still play a necessary and major
role in ensuring that hierarchy persists, subalterns are not quite subjects or
citizens either.
Discussions of subalterns, hegemony and consent, and poststructuralist
accounts of power and resistance which are typical of the work of scholars
of labour, media and social change, are oddly rare in the literature about
children and childhood. Accounts of children from acknowledged subal-
tern populations such as the plantation slaves and their descendants in the
southern states of the United States, the urban and rural poor in Europe,
and the aboriginal peoples in Australia, New Zealand and Canada (Hawes &
Hiner, 1985; King, 2011; Van Krieken, 1999) have, however, proliferated
since the 1970s. These studies have told powerful and necessary stories
about the oppression of children in oppressed groups and their struggles.
The more their work leans towards Marxist and feminist analyses of social
relationships, the stronger the sense that children’s oppression is a feature
of and contingent on the oppression of adult members of these groups. In
contrast, many studies of street children, child labourers or those in the
juvenile justice system use language suggesting that these children might be
considered as constituting subaltern populations in their own right rather
than as subsections of adult subaltern groups. Here, there is a tension
even within the literature on oppression, exploitation and discrimination
against children: that between a notion of children as members of subal-
tern groups or a subset of children as themselves constituting a subaltern
group.
1.2.4 Children as subalterns

Like Canella and Viruru, some writers – for instance, Dunne et al. (2008:
275); Fahlander (2011) – also consider all children as subalterns because
of their lack of socio-political voice and self-representative agency. Should
subalternity be defined principally in relation to lack of voice and agency?
What are the implications for children as a group and for subsets of children
if such a definition is chosen? Answers to these questions will be important
when I consider the everyday media and labour narratives of children in
Chapters 4 to 6. I first consider theoretical debates about adult subalterns.
In this context, by far the most exciting discussions of agency and resis-
tance, and their relevance to notions of subaltern identity can be found
at the intersection of Marxism, postcolonial studies and feminism. Exam-
ining ‘agency’ in the work of Antonio Gramsci, Franz Fanon and Achille
Mbembe, Gayatri Spivak and Chandra Talpade Mohanty, James Scott and
Saba Mahmoud, this section attempts to distil insights about the relation-
ship between subaltern identities, oppression, conformity, resistance and
agency because this proves fruitful in elucidating children’s experiences of
childhood in India.
Discussing the multiple references to this concept in Antonio Gramsci’s
work, Green (2011) makes a persuasive argument that ‘[Gramsci] … devel-
oped the concept of “subaltern social groups” to identify and analyse the
politics and activity of marginalized social groups in Italian history’. He
continues:
In analyses of specific historical contexts, Gramsci refers to slaves, peas-

ants, religious groups, women, different races, the popolani (common
people) and popolo (people) of the medieval communes, the proletariat,
and the bourgeoisie prior to the Risorgimento as subaltern groups.…
Ultimately, for Gramsci, subalternity is not merely limited to class
relations; subalternity is constituted through exclusion, domination,
and marginality in their various forms, and given his praxis-oriented
understanding of subalternity, the critical understanding of such con-
ditions is vital to their transformation. (2011: 388. Italics added.)
Green sums up my own position in the discussion of Gramsci’s reference to
identity and exclusion in Notebook 25, §4:
Gramsci writes: ‘Often the subaltern groups are originally of other

races (other cultures and other religions) of the dominant groups and
often they are a concoction of various races, like in the case of the
slaves.’ In this sense, Gramsci recognized that subalternity was not
merely defined by class relations but rather an intersection of class,
race, culture, and religion that functioned in different modalities in
specific historical contexts. The focus on identity and otherness also
concerns the issue of constructing categories of identity that provide
the basis to exclude particular groups from participating in dominant
political organizations and the practical difficulty associated with
developing subaltern political organizations. This also suggests that
Gramsci recognized that constructed categories of identity provided
the basis for relations of inequality and exclusion and in turn pro-
duced the subaltern as the marginalized ‘Other’. Immediately after the
points on race, culture, and religion, Gramsci then mentions the posi-
tion of women in Roman history.
(Green, 2011: 395–396)
Notably, here subalternity is relational and historical, a product and effect

of unequal structural relations, rather than an essential, natural and timeless
characteristic. The absence of children from Gramsci’s list signals that chil-
dren did not spring immediately to his mind in connection with a capacity to
organise and represent themselves politically as an autonomous group. His
experience of children was limited: his older son, after all, was only two and
half when Gramsci was arrested, and his youngest not yet born5. Neverthe-
less, reading the notebooks carefully there are multiple occasions on which
the definition of the conditions of subaltern groups, and their responses
to these conditions, seem very aptly to describe the conditions in which
large groups of children exist. A variety of definitions of children clearly has
played a crucial rhetorical role in adult politics. Children also experience
exclusion from democratic representation, from legitimate voice, and from
voicing complaints about their treatment or the curtailment of autonomy.
Fanon’s delineation of identity formation for people of colour in colonial
and postcolonial contexts of violent suppression is heavily resonant for my
work on childhood in India. The structures of authority and otherness to
whose ‘call’ children of all classes learn to ‘respond’ are particularly relevant
for those from oppressed castes, ‘scheduled’ and ‘backward’ tribes, and des-
titute or landless labouring communities. In his critical foreword to Fanon’s
acclaimed Wretched of the Earth, Sartre writes:
‘What does the black man want?’ Fanon insists, and in privileging
the psychic dimension he changes not only what we understand by a
political demand but transforms the very meaning by which we recog-
nise and identify its human agency. … In articulating the problem of
colonial cultural alienation in the psychoanalytic language of demand
and desire, Fanon radically questions the formation of both individual
and social authority as they come to be developed in the discourse of
Social Sovereignty.’ (1952: xii–xiii)
The anecdotes of deeply ingrained, sustained, active, systemic and personal

racism which punctuate and structure Fanon’s writing are everywhere in
evidence during observations of children’s lives in India. They are impos-
sible to miss when watching the lives of children or talking to those from
religious minority communities, or lower-caste or Dalit majorities with no
capital, no land and little education. But most of all, the combination of
physical and epistemic violence with which colonised people are controlled
chimes with the treatment of many children in many parts of the world:
there is an assumption that hegemony is not necessary, and that force will
continue to rule. Replace colonizer with adult in the following passage and
an interesting pattern emerges:
The colonized world is a world divided in two. The dividing line,

the border, is represented by the barracks and the police stations.
In the colonies, the official, legitimate agent, the spokes-person for
the colonizer and the regime of oppression, is the police officer or the
soldier. In capitalist societies, education, whether secular or religious,
the teaching of moral reflexes handed down from father to son, the
exemplary integrity of workers decorated after fifty years of loyal and
faithful service, the fostering of love for harmony and wisdom, those
aesthetic forms of respect for the status quo, instil in the exploited a
mood of submission and inhibition which considerably eases the task
of the agents of law and order. In capitalist countries a multitude of
sermonizers, counselors, and “confusion-mongers” intervene between
the exploited and the authorities. In colonial regions, however, the
proximity and frequent, direct intervention by the police and the mili-
tary ensure the colonized are kept under close scrutiny, and contained
by rifle butts and napalm.
(Fanon, 1961: 3–4)
In many societies even today – and especially in educational establishments –

force is used to subdue children who do not conform. In many parts of the
world, the police are deployed against the young. Many parents do not
consider it unjust to slap or beat children who misbehave, while a child
who hits an adult is quickly stigmatised. The media (confusion-mongers) in
the adult world, are perhaps less use as an instrument of control amongst
children, and so ‘frequent and direct’ intervention by adults are put in
place to ensure the legitimacy and supremacy of adult rules and values. To
those embedded in contemporary egalitarian child-rearing practices, this
description seems extreme and outdated. Yet, such social relations have
been observed and described multiple times, in India and in other places,
with added ferocity against working class children. The production of mid-
dle and upper class children as arbiters of standards and values somewhat
parallels the construction of a ‘native’ bourgeoisie to serve the interests of
the colonisers.
So, following Fanon, and with contemporary writers such as bell hooks,
I find myself asking ‘What do poor children in India want?’ ‘How do pov-
erty and discrimination structure poor children’s intentions, wants and
desires?’ And ‘how are the structural conditions of servitude politically
compatible with the extremely heterogeneous circumstances they inhabit,
and the development of their own wants and desires in these circum-
stances?’ In examining how millions of children display agency or become
citizens within contexts of violent subjugation, denial and repression (see
Chapter 2), the most urgent questions seem connected to fundamental facets
of everyday life such as how they learn to conceptualise self, community
and other, rather than to children’s use of media tools and texts. Without
an interest in children’s lives and identities beyond media, research on chil-
dren’s media-enabled agency seems contaminated by layers of privilege,
and of limited use for conscientisation, or for an agenda that aims at social
equity.
Some commentators have insisted that Gayatri Spivak’s work (1988)
argues that agency is by definition denied to subaltern subjects because their
voice is misrecognised. If that were so, then to have voice, to be heard and
recognised, is incompatible with being subaltern, and this seems a super-
ficial definition. I interpret Spivak differently. In her work on subalterns,
I suggest, she takes issue not with the definition of what makes a subaltern
and whether or not complete lack of agency (and voice) are defining fea-
tures. Rather, she is concerned with the problematics of intertwining schol-
arly interpretation and activism, the charitable or revolutionary attempts
by non-subalterns, to ‘interpret’ subaltern voice and recuperate subaltern
agency as recognisably resistant. Spivak’s contention is that the very regis-
ters of such agency may be so far removed from what (elite) scholars have
encountered or come to define as agency, that they will miss the nuances of
the subaltern meaning. Her discussions both of silence and self-immolation,
and of ‘enabling violence’ (1996: 19) stretch the possibilities of recognition
for subaltern voice. Since neither actions nor words are transparent, such
scholars and elite activists are unlikely to recognise the complex meanings of
designated acts, and might end up denying that agency exists or find them-
selves speaking over, or on behalf of, those whom they neither understand
or condone.
In the introduction to her book, Cyberculture and the Subaltern, Radhika
Gajjala looks at the ways in which privilege and exclusion from political
and economic spheres travel across the invisible borders between the off and
online, profit and non-profit enterprises, and the global south and global
north. At one point, she asks whether ‘the mere act of claiming/naming of
erasure and the noting of invisibility and absence in itself produce[s] the
possibility of a subaltern subject position’ (2012: 3). Given Spivak’s recent
insistence6 that ‘if you use the word subaltern’, you are probably ‘not sub-
altern’, one might surmise that the answer to this question remains unclear.
Following Spivak, Gajjala also asks ‘what layers of cultural and material
capital allow this naming and what layers of disadvantage permit it to be
framed/disciplined so the subaltern voice is not heard but reinterpreted in
an elsewhere that the subaltern has no claim to’ (2012: 3–4), the space of
the university, and of development agencies or of policy-making. The ‘subal-
tern other’, then, can be understood as not one necessarily without opinions
about their own circumstances, without voice, or without agency per se. But
the wish of powerful, knowledge producing others to interpret their agency
and voice is always a messy and dangerous business, however ‘good’ their
motives. Representing subalterns, in this view, is a problematic project, and
potentially involves adaptation, reframing, misrecognition and suppression
of what subalterns actually do, or would say and do. This misrecognition
is exemplified by the opening discussion of the Facebook wall posts about
the photograph of the Adivasi children with toys made of insects on strings.
What needs to be added is that persistent misrecognition, misinterpretation
and misrepresentation of subalterns and of subaltern agency and relational-
ity by the middle and elite classes is profoundly political, and has political
and material repercussions.
Theories of intersectionality have helped contemporary feminists to rethink
identification and subaltern identity politics in relation to media consumption
(Banaji, 2006; Davis, 2008; McCall, 2005). Media interpretation and use is
never undertaken from a single identity position – that of a woman, a child
or an immigrant. Rather, different aspects of identity collide, and come to the
fore at different times in interacting with and interpreting media texts or mak-
ing media on media platforms. This can cause contradictions, as well as con-
flicts for all of us. It would seem, then, that anyone within a subaltern group is
intersectionally subaltern. One can experience multiple overlapping forms of
oppression, complicity and critique as well as resistance. Circumstances bring
to the fore contingent aspects of identities at different times and are met with
conflicted, conformist or resistant agency. Because subordination in the face of
capitalist economic relations and capitalist-inflected social relations functions
differently for different groups (such as wealthy women and poor boys, or
Dalit girls and Muslim men, for instance), and because identities are overlap-
ping rather than exclusive, one can be temporarily subaltern in certain circum-
stances or situations; or subaltern in some circumstances and also oppressor
towards other subalterns with different intersecting identities; also subaltern
and unaware of, complicit in, or resistant to your own and others’ oppres-
sion, and so on and so forth. This is the position that informs my analysis in
the latter half of this book.
To exemplify the complexity of subalternity, voice and intersectionality,
consider the frequent cases of sexual assault and gang rape against minor
Dalit girls7 in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and other Indian states (Thukral, Ali &
Bild, 2008). The girls are members of Dalit groups against whom atrocities
have historically and continue to be committed (Teltumbde, 2010). They
are also members of groups with histories of solidarity and struggle against
oppressor caste aggression. Through gender (both inside their sub-caste
community and outside it in a geographical location within India) they may
be subject to stringent patriarchal surveillance and have their sexuality and
romantic endeavours aggressively policed (Kapadia 1995). They live in a
nation with sharp urban-rural income divides and strong socioeconomic
biases against Adivasis, Dalits and Muslims (Deshpande, 2012; Thorat &
Newman, 2012; Vishwanath, 2014). These are grim dynamics. But none of
this explains why some scholars and activists, and not others, frequently
examine girls’ and women’s lives as if they are only ‘victims’ without extend-
ing their analysis to their complex personal histories, solidarities with men
and boys, and women, and intersectional experiences of labour, class, caste
and gender. The notion of a single homogenous category of subalterns or
even of parallel, similar and homogenous subaltern experiences is deeply
problematic. By paying attention to the ways in which children recount the
fine grained details of their experiences in work, school or family alongside
observed contradictions and complexities in their routines and behaviours,
later chapters in this book attempt to push back against such a framing.
Monhanty points out how ‘third world women’ are usually described as:
[v]ictims of male violence (Fran Hosken); victims of the colonial pro-

cess (Maria Cutrufelli); victims of the Arab familial system (Juliette
Minces); victims of the economic development process (Beverley Lind-
say and the [liberal] WID School); and finally, victims of the Islamic
code (Patricia Jeffery). This mode of defining women primarily in
terms of their object status (the way in which they are affected or not
affected by certain institutions and systems) is what characterizes this
particular form of the use of “women” as a category of analysis.
(Mohanty, 1991: 57)
She is at pains to delineate the political and material implications of the

discursive and methodological strategies used to universalise the position of
‘third world women’. Such universalism encourages a singular third world
woman to be imagined as the (non-agentic) object of scrutiny and interven-
tion. Mohanty suggests that through the use of ahistorical and fixed catego-
ries in relation to women from the global south (which contrast starkly with
the nuanced and historical categorisations of Western self), a hegemonic
binary is perpetuated. This, she argues, is often done even by middle class
feminists in the global south, and Western middle class feminists who are
ostensibly sympathetic to and supportive of their ‘subaltern’ sisters. What
ought to be solidarity, however, risks becoming pity and patronage. She
notes a tendency, on the part of feminists in the West, to represent them-
selves and their lives and desires as ‘the norm’ and as subjectively different
from passive, victimised and homogenous ‘others’.
Writing in the context of childhood studies, Ennew and her colleagues
offer a similar harsh conclusion: ‘essentialist notions of ‘the child’ and ‘the
girl child’ tidy up the messy world’ (Beazley et al., 2009: 368); in fact:
The women’s movement has at various times claimed girls to fall

entirely within its remit, occasionally undifferentiated from ‘chil-
dren’ including boys. In both cases, the failure to disaggregate specific
groups of girl children whose rights are particularly violated has led to
confusion of aims and policies. Meanwhile the notion of ‘the girl child’
has been reified, as if there is something essential about all female
children regardless of wealth or ethnicity, something that makes them
more vulnerable than boys in general. This focuses on vulnerability
to sexual violation, early marriage, unplanned teenage pregnancy and
is a new manifestation of the old control over women’s sexuality and
fertility. It masquerades as concern for their vulnerability but actually
implies that females cannot control their own sexuality, which should
consequently be under male control.
(Ennew 1994, paraphrased in Beazley et al., 2009: 368)
While agreeing that the seemingly tidy essentialism of girls’ victimhood

neglects and ignores distinctions between and amongst girls, these writers
also hold that concern for so-called ‘feminine vulnerability’ is implicated in
ushering in a regime of surveillance and control that can curtail the rights
girls and women should be accorded in relationships, or in public spaces.
Where Mohanty calls attention to the danger of orientalising the female
subaltern victim, Ennew directs us to the ways in which highlighting the vul-
nerability of young female subalterns to sexual exploitation can abet their
reinsertion into patriarchal modes of governance and ‘biopower’.
Likewise, a homogenised and simplified notion of Indianness and of
Indian subalternity is, in fact, particularly deleterious for representing inter-
sectional identities, interests and narratives. The ‘victim’ narrative, while
it does call attention to situations of inequality and injustice that need
addressing, has weaknesses. Middle- and upper-caste Hindu males (and
equivalent upper castes in other communities) are often the perpetrators of
atrocities, violent rapes and murders against Dalit, Muslim, Christian, Sikh,
Buddhist and Hindu lower caste girls and boys in India. Sometimes with
the collusion of older women, boys, men, girls and women in lower caste
communities are also regularly subjected to atrocities, rape and murder by
men and boys, including army personnel and policemen, from their own and
other subaltern groups. Girls, women, boys and young men from all reli-
gious communities are also subjected to surveillance, harassment and even
violent murder by relatives, including older female relatives, who consider
themselves to have been slighted or dishonoured8. The ‘girls as victims’ nar-
rative can ignore and sometimes devalue the common experiences and sol-
idarities of impoverished boys, or lower caste, Dalit and Adivasi men with
women and girls in the face of casteist water deprivation and/or capitalist
land acquisition practices (which are sanctioned and carried out by inter-
national corporations, with the support of the national or regional state). It
can neglect shared experiences of sexuality or romance and love, or sexual
repression and caste aggression.
How do these observations play out in the media landscape? An ontolog-
ical assumption of a monolithic subaltern female child subject in the rural
global south can be seen as shaping campaigns such as the Nike Founda-
tion’s ‘Girl Effect’9, as well as Plan International’s ‘Because I am a girl’ and
Australia’s ‘No FGM’10 (Calkin, 2015; Switzer 2013). Such campaigns use
what have been characterised as ‘post-feminist’ discursive strategies which
promise that enlightened campaigners will ‘empower’ and ‘educate’ global
south girls so they can protect themselves and their communities from the
vicious ‘traditions’ from which they suffer. Capitalist economic develop-
ment is posited as a route to liberation. Albeit for pragmatic reasons, the
campaigns ignore intersectional oppression, and do little to combat the
frequent atrocities that are committed as a political means of terrorising
entire communities, including young women, into submission to a dominant
group supremacy. Much campaigning is on single issues, without adequate
acknowledgement of the girls’ and women’s varied castes, religious and spir-
itual beliefs, social statuses, physical abilities, ages, economic positions, of
their communities’ participation in global capitalist processes, geopolitics
and subjugation to neoliberal economic agendas. Nor is much attention paid
to the tensions between global south adults11 who campaign on such issues,
and who come into conflict with regional religious, economic and political
elites. As such, the campaigns are further and even more disturbing illustra-
tions of the tendencies Mohanty, Beazley et al. and Ennew have critiqued.
Against this backdrop, agency is of central interest, though it is often
replaced by a proxy: empowerment. In describing the forms of agency pos-
sible for the subalterns imagined by these campaigns, agency is defined pri-
marily in democratic and resistance terms. In most cases, normative agency
is discursively evoked as residing in the hands and wallets of warm-hearted
Western populations. It is also sometimes incidentally attributed, however, to
individual subaltern girls who can ‘take action’ to ‘pull themselves out of pov-
erty’ by becoming individual ‘entrepreneurs’ or by ‘getting educated’. More
frequently, the agency of the subaltern population is not considered at all, but
is replaced by the notion of ‘empowerment’ which is related to that which
donors do for (and to) poor communities in the global south. In a number
Figure 1.1 Villagers travelling to mobile clinic.
Figure 1.2 Young mother.

of charity campaigns, notions of intersectional subalternity and of structural
inequality arising from the global north or from development-linked and cor-
porate capitalist practices are ignored or elided. At such times, considerations
of subaltern violence, creativity, ingenuity, and solidarity are also excluded
because they are deemed to be too complicated. This usually occurs in an
effort to represent ‘good’ subalterns (young global south girls with potential)
and ‘bad’ subalterns (their patriarchal families and communities, who forfeit
the right to be considered subaltern) as separable from each other.
While the universalising and simplifying tendencies discussed here can be
identified as dangerous, Mohanty is not against generalisation about power
relations in the social world per se. She is, as all scholars should be, in favour
of ‘careful historically specific generalisations responsive to complex reali-
ties’ (1991: 69). The work of James Scott, like that of Mohanty and of Saba
Mahmoud, offers an example of historically specific, culturally nuanced
discussion of subaltern agency. Given the interest of media and commu-
nications scholars in the role of communications in hegemonic structures
and agentic resistance (Cammaerts et al. 2015; Castells, 2000; Tudor, 1995),
Scott and Mahmoud provide useful alternative models of the complex rela-
tionships between identities, communicative acts, and social structures.
1.2.5 Agency as performance, as resistance and as conformity

Relations of domination are, at the same time, relations of resistance.
Once established, domination does not persist of its own momentum.
Inasmuch as it involves the use of power to extract work, produc-
tion, services, taxes against the will of the dominated, it generates
considerable friction and can be sustained only by continuous efforts
at reinforcement, maintenance, and adjustment. A good part of the
maintenance work consists of the symbolization of domination by
demonstrations and enactments of power. Every visible, outward use
of power-each command, each act of deference, each list and ranking,
each ceremonial order, each public punishment, each use of an honor-
ific or a term of derogation-is a symbolic gesture of domination that
serves to manifest and reinforce a hierarchical order.
(Scott, 1990: 45)
Working in a Malay village, amongst the poor, James Scott became aware of
the ways in which discourse changes depending on how powerful or wealthy
the interlocutors happen to be. He observed that the poor tended to speak in
one way when amongst themselves and in very different ways – some con-
sistent and coherent, some contradictory and apparently subservient – when
in the presence of the wealthy. He noticed also that those from the upper
classes spoke differently when in groups with other wealthy individuals or
when the poor were present, and that he himself altered his discourse if in
the presence of a person with significant power over him.
Scott’s observations first appeared in what he regarded as a rather limited
but historically specific study, Weapons of the Weak (1987). He extended
his analysis in Domination and the Art of Resistance to multiple contexts of
power, domination, hegemony and subordination, observing that ‘the most
severe conditions of powerlessness and dependency would be diagnostic’
(1990: x). Drawing on evidence from studies of slavery, serfdom, and caste
subordination in India, as well as patriarchal domination, colonialism, rac-
ism, and institutions such as jails and prisoner of war camps, he investi-
gated the premise that ‘the relationship of discourse to power would be most
sharply etched where the divergence between … the public transcript and
the hidden transcripts was greatest’ (1990: x). In his analysis Scott resisted
the claim that slaves, serfs, landless labourers and lower caste communities
share immutable and essential characteristics. He argues instead that
to the degree [that] structures of domination can be demonstrated to

operate in comparable ways, they will, other things being equal, elicit
reactions and patterns of resistance that are also broadly compara-
ble […] Thus, slaves and serfs ordinarily dare not contest the terms
of their subordination openly. Behind the scenes, though, they are
likely to create and defend a social space in which offstage dissent to
the official transcript of power relations may be voiced. The specific
forms (for example, linguistic disguises, ritual codes, taverns, fairs, the
“hush-arbors” of slave religion) this social space takes or the specific
content of its dissent (for example, hopes of a returning prophet, ritual
aggression via witchcraft, celebration of bandit heroes and resistance
martyrs) are as unique as the particular culture and history of the
actors in question require. (1990: xi)
Scott delineates the multiple contexts of humiliation, insult, denigration

and brutality in which the subaltern subjects of his work are enmeshed. In
sketching these conditions, he privileges concepts of dignity and autonomy
rather than those pertaining to immediate physical and material exploita-
tion. He elaborates a schematic analysis of communication between subor-
dinate groups and the wealthy village power-holders highlighting tensions
between overt and covert resistance. The Malaysian state, however, is mys-
teriously absent, leaving readers with a somewhat two dimensional view of
village life. In Scott’s schematic, subalterns resist the inhumane, misshaping
pressures of unequal village power relations. They materialise their desire to
regain autonomy by contesting local indignity in myriad covert ways (while
leaving overt structures of exploitation and domination intact):
Every subordinate group creates, out of its ordeal, a “hidden tran-

script” that represents a critique of power spoken behind the back of
the dominant. The powerful, for their part, also develop a hidden tran-
script representing the practices and claims of their rule that cannot
be openly avowed. A comparison of the hidden transcript of the weak
with that of the powerful and of both hidden transcripts to the public
transcript of power relations offers a substantially new way of under-
standing resistance to domination. (1990: xii)
Scott’s contrasting insight into public transcripts of power with hidden tran-
scripts of power and resistance is reminiscent of Achille Mbembe’s, and of
Judith Butler’s work. Rather than viewing the local system of power rela-
tions as being seamless in its shaping of subaltern consciousness to the will
of the dominant as many followers of Gramsci have tended to do, Scott sees
power relations as presenting multiple spaces for slippage, for misrecog-
nition and dissembling. He portrays an acting out of roles of power and
powerlessness, and performance of gratitude, respect, awe and fear as being
central to the relationship between governed and elites, between subordi-
nates and oppressors. In a later chapter (1990: 45) Scott mentions the ‘dra-
maturgy’ which accompanies or even embodies public transcripts of power.
As noted in the preface in relation to the Indian elections and the political
career of Narendra Modi, mass media play a major role in broadcasting and
elaborating public transcripts of power.
Butler’s notion of ‘performance’ and performativity’ resonates strongly
with the notion of a public transcript. She elaborates these ideas both in
Gender Trouble (1990) and in Excitable Speech (1997). While Butler dif-
ferentiates between subversive and hegemonic gendered performance,
Scott appears to view all performance by subaltern groups as necessarily
double-edged, communicating at different levels. But what about the differ-
ent varieties of performance required and enacted when subaltern groups
are faced with different levels of power such as the state, or local bureau-
cracies, or religious leaders, or one’s in-laws? In Butler’s work, as in Scott’s,
those in positions of power are rarely viewed in the context of others who
are more powerful than them. Given the ways in which children are raised
in many societies by adults with power over them, and that their activities
and time are governed via the institutions of family or in schools, we might
surmise that they are generally more vulnerable to having their hidden tran-
scripts recognised and punished (or misrecognised and punished) as stub-
bornness, sarcasm, insolence or rebellion.
There is much to be gained from considering children from this per-
spective. Mbembe and Scott can both be characterised as viewing the
productive tension in hidden, symbolic communicative dissent – the joke,
the unvoiced contempt for authority, the subservient gestures which mask
disgust – as being about dissimulation in the face of power with the aim of
psychic resistance, rather than as being about capitulation to hegemony
or overt resistance. Scott’s work also resonates with Mbembe’s discus-
sion of how ‘the implicit and the explicit are interlinked’ (2001: 133) in
people’s dealings with the brutality and obscenity of political power in
postcolonial states.
A similar conceptualisation of power and resistance is also to be found in
Gramsci’s (1971) notion of the ‘war of position’. So, like Gramsci, Mbembe
and Scott try to understand a popular form of social and political agency
which is neither directly resistant to, nor entirely co-opted by and aligned
with elite power. In contrast to Butler, these theorists emphasise the collec-
tive nature of overt and tacit resistance or complicity. This elucidation of
agency, I argue, speaks directly to the lives and experiences of children, and
particularly to the lives of those in impoverished or conflict-ridden milieu.
Without a welfare state to support their interests, and almost always depen-
dent emotionally and/or physically on adults who might punish, control
or curtail them, many children must perform acquiescence and naiveté or
be co-opted to survive with or without fun and leisure. Where I find Butler
really useful is in helping us to think about how these performances become
more than just external to the body (of children), they are embodied, and in
this sense integrated with identities.
In ‘The aesthetics of vulgarity’, for me his most poignant chapter in On
the Postcolony (2001: 102), Mbembe identifies the ‘postcolony’ as ‘spe-
cifically a given historical trajectory, that of societies recently emerging
from the experience of colonisation and the violence which the colonial
relationship involves’. The postcolony is ‘chaotically pluralistic’ with an
internal coherence, characterised by ‘a distinctive style of political impro-
visation’, ‘a tendency to excess and lack of proportion’ as well as a series
of bureaucratic institutions, both corporate and political, that constitute
‘distinct regimes of violence’ (2001: Ibid.). Power which flows across
‘postcolonial regimes of domination’, is experienced both as ‘grotesque’
and ‘obscene’. It is wielded through ‘commandment’, which on the sur-
face is futile to refuse. Mbembe is suspicious of what he sees as reduc-
tive economic analysis in relation to group identity formation (namely an
orthodox Marxist account of class formation). What interests him is the
oblique, carnivalesque and vulgar ‘conviviality’ which he depicts as the
most common means for the populace to survive their everyday lives. In
response to the postcolonial elites’ (read: adult, teacher, employer)’s need
to be ritually worshipped, to dominate all public discourse – the vulgar
joke, the doggerel about the emperor, the undercurrent of scatological sat-
ire referencing bodily fluids, erect organs and defecation – form a ‘whole
area of social discourse which elude[s] commandment’. Mbembe claims
that this type of discourse gives rise to neither collusion nor resistance. It
can, however, in Corsaro’s formulation, be seen as an illustration of ‘inter-
pretive reproduction’.
Uncouth jokes, hissed imprecations, and fawning or grimaced retorts are
said to signify a certain alienation from power, a failure of hegemony. But
they do not yield a revolution, or even a protest. It would have been inter-
esting to see Scott and Mbembe dealing with the differences between those
amongst the postcolonial poor who resort to hidden transcripts for their
entire lives leaving commandment in de facto control of all it encounters,
and those who, openly and at a high risk and cost to themselves, speak truth
to power and organise against its excesses.
Children are also always at risk because of the tenderness and love they
feel for significant adults, and their substantively dependent relationships
with certain adults. This makes children’s postcolonial negotiations of power
and communicative practice less easy to interpret even than that of adult
subalterns in the presence of oppressors or rulers. The exact nature of the
discourses used by those who sense their own lack of power but need the
approval and even the distinction brought by overt commitment to the norms
of the powerful are not of interest in this book. The strategic embodiment
and subversion of norms shaped by the powerful through parodied, hol-
lowed out or comedic routines used by children in the global north and the
global south can be seen as an example of one particular form of agency.
This agency, which I characterise here and elsewhere in the book as ‘ephem-
eral agency’, ‘conformist agency’ and ‘contaminated agency’, is poignantly
illustrated by Annie McCarthy (2015: 410) in her work on poor Indian chil-
dren’s ironic and empty recapitulations of the ‘healthy handwashing’ narra-
tives of an NGO operating in their community. It is also e xemplified – more
uncomfortably for me as a secular feminist – in Atreyee Sen’s (2012: 75–94)
analysis of the hate-filled beliefs and anti-Muslim actions of women cadres in
Maharashtra’s far right Hindu chauvinist Shiv Sena, and in Saba M ahmoud’s
theorising of Egyptian Muslim women’s independent and disconcerting
expressions of piety and religious adherence. It is with M ahmoud’s work
that this chapter concludes.
After surveying the decimation of the secular left by Western-backed dic-
tatorships, and the mysterious but phenomenal rise of political Islam from
Pakistan to the Levant, Mahmoud (2005) reflects on two key questions in
Politics of Piety: what is it about Islamist politics that holds an appeal for
many millions of men and women across the Middle East and North Africa?
And, what is it about this politics which leads them to feel that it empowers
them within their specific public and private contexts, even when this per-
ception of empowerment is evidently leading them to act in ways which may
be antithetical to women’s collective interests as understood by secular and
liberal feminists?
Mahmoud situates her ethnography of the women’s mosque movement
in Cairo amongst Islamic women’s reading groups, tracing the forms of
piety and its individual rationales, and the ways in which piety acts as a bar-
rier to what they frame as Westernisation and modernity. She argues that the
evident empowerment and satisfaction apparently experienced by women
participating in the often illiberal piety of the mosque movement is incom-
prehensible if understood as a form of agency tied to secular-liberal ideals of
feminine liberation from material oppression, and freedom from familial or
religious dictates. As she puts it, any ‘positing of women’s agency as consub-
stantial with resistance to relations of domination, and the concomitant nat-
uralization of freedom as a social ideal, are not simply analytical oversights
on the part of feminist authors’. Rather, Mahmoud suggests, such ‘assump-
tions reflect a deeper tension within feminism attributable to its dual charac-
ter as both an analytical and a politically prescriptive project’ (2005: 10). In
Chapter 5, it will become apparent that several of the middle class children
spend a considerable amount of energy constructing their technology use as
beneficial to the family, friendship group and community through a variety
of methods which include conformity to surveillance norms and parental
values as well as intermittent, brief or sustained efforts to escape and to
carve out positions of responsibility for themselves through technological
knowledge. Disentangling the retrograde, chauvinist or consumerist uses of
social media from the confidence-building, individuating and agentic ones
in order to identify pure ‘resistance’ becomes problematic. However, some
children’s conformist agency is more visible when contrasted with their
peers’ or their own older selves’ more dissident agencies evidenced in the
micro-political contexts of romance and sexuality.
Notwithstanding some unresolved tensions within Mahmoud’s articu-
lation of feminism – most notably a potentially essentialist disavowal (or
neglect) of global south women’s dissidence in the face of political Islamic
and neoliberal capitalist agendas, as if these are somehow tainted by pre-
scriptive Western feminist ideals of resistance to patriarchy – Mahmoud’s
analysis maps a fruitful context-specific schema for analysing micro-
political agency. Resonating with Emirbayer and Mische’s (1998) depiction
of historically and contextually specific forms of agency, Mahmoud argues
that ‘if the ability to effect change in the world and in oneself is historically
and culturally specific (both in terms of what constitutes “change” and the
means by which it is effected), then the meaning and sense of agency cannot
be fixed in advance, but must emerge through an analysis of the particular
concepts that enable specific modes of being, responsibility, and effectivity’
(2005: 14, emphasis added). This aspect of Mahmoud’s work will be useful
in illuminating moments and spaces of agency in Indian children’s narratives
about learning, work, family life and media in coming chapters.
1.3 Conclusion
The discussion in this chapter raised questions about the ways in which
studies of childhood can navigate between the notion that there are uni-
versal aspects of childhood and rights for children, and situated, materially
distinct aspects that change and inflect subjectivities and needs. Crucially,
while many accounts imply a particular linear chronology, with rhetorics
succeeding each other from generation to generation and era to era, I have
been at pains to stress that linearity is not, in fact, the case in relation to rhet-
orics of childhood. Behaviourism, and determinist theories of psychosocial
development, still hang like a fog around the history of childhood, and over
the work of childhood practitioners in many fields today. These need to be
challenged repeatedly. The most sophisticated studies of the constructions
of childhood take account of power relations between adults and children
whether mediated via laws and policies of played out materially in social
contexts such as factories, families, school and media. Significantly, they also
hold on to questions about the different forms and meanings of childhood
agency in different contexts. Material and emotional practices towards
smaller framed and younger aged beings have been shown to exist in dia-
lectical relationship with rhetorics and discourses about childhood. While
the biological being and capacities of those defined as children remain fairly
constant in each era and milieu, even capacities differ across time and place.
The generalising and fixing of these capacities in relation to external factors
such as physical labour, abstract thought or digital media has tended to have
classed, colonial and adultist features.
As discussions of the everyday lives of children in India will elaborate in
coming chapters, each one of the philosophical orientations towards child-
hood and children outlined in this discussion can be identified in discourses
and practices across the class and geographic spectrum, amongst lay-people
as well as social scientists, in India as in Europe and North America. Some
of these ideas about children, childhood and childrearing are more in favour
than others, and directed more pointedly at specific groups of children, by
particular groups of adults. (For instance in academic and policy debates
around digital risks, in teacher evaluations of rural migrant children’s capac-
ities to think, reason and learn; in programme-makers’ attempts at attract-
ing an ‘average’ child audience; or in urban employers’ evaluations of child
workers’ need for leisure or propensity for theft). However, many of these
ideas are apparently directed at all children indiscriminately by some prac-
titioners in INGOs and NGOs, by some teachers or school leaders, and by
some parents. For these reasons, significant portions of Chapters 4, 5 and
6 are devoted to examining the ways in which these discourses stand up to
scrutiny against accounts of children’s everyday lives in India, and in media
made about, directed at or accessed by these Indian children.
The chapter also explored understandings of childhood and agency in
relation to subalternity, resistance and risk. Given the ways in which ortho-
dox theories of class formation have tended to ignore children and child-
hood when characterising agency, the treatment of agency as existing on a
spectrum from defiant alienation, through complex negotiated and ephem-
eral acts of implicit subversion, to apparent conformity or co-option, proves
richly productive. For our purposes here, it is most useful in approaching
and comprehending the meanings and forms of agency displayed by and
available to lower middle class and working class children in India. Rela-
tionships with employers, parents and familial elders, and erstwhile teachers
(as discussed in Chapters 5 and 6), are all fraught with necessary dissim-
ulation, apparent or real trembling in the face of power, and a myriad of
alternative, contradictory, subversive and tangential gestures melded with
apparent cooperation. While it is possible to trace the role of media, and
even new media, in some of these interactions, an examination of media’s
and technologies’ place in children’s lives in India and in children’s agency,
these roles are complicated by the mesh of contexts, materials, relationships
and experiences that the children in this study presented as being central
to their lives. Chapter 2 considers the intersection of social class and social
change over the past three decades in India. It draws on statistical evidence
from published reports, and an analysis of sociological and anthropological
accounts of class, caste and childhood.
Notes
1. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/indias-youngest-app-
developers-shravan-sanjay-kumaran-shows-us-how-to-hustle/articleshow/
50668608.cms. Accessed 29 August 2016.
2. ‘[I]n social theory, the notions of action and structure presuppose one another;
but that recognition of this dependence, which is a dialectical relation, necessi-
tates a reworking both of a series of concepts linked to each of these terms, and
of the terms themselves’. (Giddens, 1984: 374)
3. This is highly relevant in the case of those who are left for extended periods in iso-
lation, or in conditions of extreme physical or mental repression and surveillance –
slaves, prisoners in isolation, outcasts, hostages – and those who have to conceal
their identities and subjectivities for fear of torture or p unishment – those with
dissident sexualities or politics. Emirbayer & Mische’s definition suggests that
agency for such subjects is as much a matter of internal communication and
relationship to the many aspects of the self as it is to others; and this is a form
of intersubjectivity, in the absence of likeminded others. I would argue that some
children and adolescents too might fall into this category.
4. http://www.communityplaythings.co.uk/learning-library/articles/friedrich-froebel.
5. Gramsci was given a 20-year prison sentence for ‘undermining the Italian
state’ and subsequently died in prison without being reunited with his wife and
children.
6. http://khurpi.com/spivak-if-you-can-use-the-word-subaltern-you-are-not-a-
subaltern/.
7. http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/india-gang-rape-dalit-girls-raped-lynched-may-have-
been-victims-honour-killing-1451851; http://idsn.org/uploads/media/Violence_
against_Dalit_Woment.pdf.
8. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/meerut/Muslim-woman-weds-Hindu-
man-both-killed/articleshow/45321279.cms; http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/05/
world/asia/hindu-mob-kills-another-indian-muslim-accused-of-harming-cows.
html?_r=0.
9. http://www.girleffect.org/.
10. http://www.plan-uk.org/because-i-am-a-girl; http://www.nofgmoz.com/.
11. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/03/malawi-fearsome-chief-
terminator-child-marriages-160316081809603.html.
2 Class, caste and children’s life
in contemporary India
The word class can be dated, in its most important modern sense, from about
1740. Before this, the ordinary use of class, in English, was to refer to a
division or group in schools or colleges…It is only at the end of the end of
the eighteenth century that the modern structure of class, in its social sense,
begins to be built up. First comes lower classes, to join lower orders, which
appears earlier in the eighteenth century. Then in the 1790s we get higher
classes; middle classes and middling classes follow at once; working classes
in about 1815; upper classes in the 1820s. Class prejudice, class legislation,
class consciousness, class conflict, and class war follow in the course of the
nineteenth century. The upper middle classes are first heard of in the 1890s;
the lower middle classes in the [twentieth] century. It is obvious of course
that this spectacular history of the new use of class does not indicate the
beginning of social divisions…. But it indicates, quite clearly, a change in
the character of these divisions, and it records, equally clearly, a change in
attitudes towards them.
—(Williams, 1977: 14–15)
In the excerpt, Raymond Williams reminds us that the terminology describ-

ing socioeconomic groupings and pertaining to social class is itself subject to
historical formation, revision, differentiation and change. My central aim in
this chapter is to give a historicised account of key differences between and
amongst geographically specific, caste-based, socioeconomic communities
in India. While far from being a detailed account of the minutiae of class
structures and different class groups in India, this will allow me to illus-
trate the position of broader class communities – and in particular of chil-
dren within these communities – in relation to various assertions about the
intersection of socio-economic and technological change in India since the
1990s. This discussion will inform my interpretation of differences between
and within groups of children in Chapters 5 and 6. The studies discussed
in coming sections refer only tangentially to children and childhood. After
devoting the first sections of this chapter to a discussion of the contested
meanings and categorisations of class and caste in contemporary India, later
sections will pay particular attention to a series of fascinating ethnographic
studies of childhood.
38 Class, caste and children’s life in contemporary India
Most studies of media use and interpretation in India in the media and
communications field, area studies and youth studies, concentrate over-
whelmingly on middle class youth and adults in urban areas (Lukose,
2009; Nakassis, 2016; Platz-Robinson 2014; Rai, 2009). The findings of
these studies generally are framed within a scholarly tradition which exam-
ines media discourses and young people’s behaviour in relation to gender,
modernity, identity and civic participation. Aspiration, in-betweenness, and
contestation emerge as significant observations about young urban Indians
who negotiate complex spaces between imaginaries of globalised moder-
nity and the often harsh realities of work, relationships and corruption in
everyday metropolitan India.
This chapter considers how analysis of the lives of working class rural
and urban children in a country such as India can be helpful in theorising
childhood, media representations, digital technologies and agency differ-
ently. In view of the discussion in Chapter 1, it is crucial to theorise social
and historical change with regard to children in the global south without
essentialising or homogenising the children who live in highly mediatised
and media-poor contexts. This is important as a means of nuancing, sup-
porting or undermining findings concerning children in the global south
when it has been based on data gathered in the global north. My aim is
to develop insights that will be relevant for policy in in the global south
and global north arenas including child rights, media literacy, regulation
and content production, to relationships, sex and health education. Before
proceeding, a further series of distinctions and discussions in relation to
class and caste is needed. Two excerpts from my field notes and interviews
give a sense of why an analysis of the structural role of class in relation to
childhood and media use in India is necessary.
Excerpt 1: Ravi. Age 14. Alishaan Society. February 2009

Ravi is the son of a middle manager in an Indian company and a
housewife, both from Karnataka, with a younger brother at school
and an older brother in college. He walks with a limp because when
he was 10 a bus ran over his leg as he played cricket in the street. In
shock, he was taken to a local hospital, where he subsequently had
numerous operations. In the days after the accident, he tells me that his
mother used to cry, curse the bus-driver and the doctors for charging
so much. Although they have a new television and cable connection
thanks to an uncle from Dubai, the family had to give up their televi-
sion and connection for several years, and to sell every item that they
could do without.
Ravi: … People say children should be happy, they should be free from
worries.
Int: Who says that? And you disagree?
Class, caste and children’s life in contemporary India 39
Ravi: Everyone. Tayi [mother] is the best; she does so much to make
me happy. After the bus cut my leg I cried so much from the pain.
I listened to my parents begging with doctors, “just one more
operation, don’t cut his leg, what will we do? He will never be
able to work or walk alone or get married well”. Then I wanted to
die. When it started to heal, my mother had puja. I was all day at
home studying – no tuitions, no money. Appa sold his scooter, for
my medicals… I was so bored. I was even hoping to go to Khanna
sir’s classes, he is strict. But my friends came: we played Chess,
Ludo, cards, Carom. I heard school gossip. I kept studying. It was
hard to sleep. But here I am. I can walk everywhere. I love to play
cricket and some video games – for a few minutes – and to go to
school again. I watch movies on festival days with my mother and
brothers. But father is working.
Excerpt 2: Dhanish. Age 15. F and R’s flat. Shalimar Society.

August 2009
When I visit Dhanish at F and R’s flat today as that is one of the only
means of access to him, F is having a tantrum, hitting at Dhanish with
his walking stick. I run up the stairs and can hear the shouting and feel
anxiety. The landing is dark but their door is open and there are slip-
pers everywhere. R is in the kitchen (ignoring the shouting). I hope my
presence alone will stop the tantrum. Dhanish won’t make eye contact
with me and F hates my guts since we argued about the [Bharatiya
Janata Party] BJP and Shiv Sena, when he tried to tell me that all
Parsees are really Brahmins and should be loyal to BJP (sic). So I go
into the kitchen and hug R. She is super-pleased to see me as always.
I raise my eyebrows at her in relation to her husband’s behaviour, and
she goes out of the kitchen and says something to him in Tamil in a
calming voice. I watch from the door as he slumps down on the sofa
and Dhanish squats back at his feet and begins rubbing them as he
was evidently doing before I arrived. R says to me placatingly: ‘He’s in
so much pain’ and I reply: ‘He has no right to be violent with anyone,
you or Dhanish’. R’s shoulders slump. She is past seventy and already
has a humped back. I don’t want to guilt-trip her, but her husband
is vicious1, always has been. After something like an hour, R goes to
watch television with F, and sends Dhanish to work with me and we
close the kitchen door. R has told F that I am teaching Dhanish new
recipes. I show him the photographs that he took with my camera: the
cat, the plant, his own face in the mirror. He’s happy to have copies.
He asks again if he can come and work for my family and I again say
no, ‘We do our own housework’. He doesn’t believe me, but is too
polite to argue. We sit in silence for a while. As we begin another inter-
view, he slices onions, garlic and other vegetables for the evening meal.
These are two boys of roughly the same age, who lived in the same suburb
of Bombay in the year 2009. Both their days are very full – one with the
cares of parents, with the aftermath of a mishap, with studies, friendship,
sport, games and television; the other with exacting labour, creativity that
is currently poured into cooking, employer violence, patience, yearning for
change. I introduce these accounts as a way of breathing life in the coming
sections.
The sociological and ethnographic literature on change and class-based
identities in (primarily urban) India over the past 30 years (Brosius, 2010;
Ganguly-Scrace & Scrace, 2009; Lukose, 2009; Platz Robinson, 2014;
Srinivas 2010) highlights peculiarities, specificities and conceptual patterns
that characterise contemporary scholarship about social class and caste in
urban India. Notable amongst these is a focus on the positions and iden-
tities within the Indian middle classes, and the ways in which social cap-
ital, ritual and tradition are conserved or reinvented to suit the interests
of specific groups. My understanding of children’s identities and positions
within classes, also owes much to recent exceptional scholarship on caste
(Deshpande, 2011; Gorringe, 2005; Guha, 2015; Teltumbde, 2010; Viswa-
nath, 2014). Emerging from the disciplines of history or sociology, many of
these studies link caste to struggles over labour, social position and political
power, both colonial and modern. As a body, it contests the assumption that
caste is practiced only amongst Hindus, and is a primarily ritual and reli-
gious phenomenon. Work on new media in India (Jeffrey & Doron, 2013;
Mazarella, 2010; Uduppa, 2015) is also useful in unpicking the ways in
which class functions at the intersection of caste and geography to structure
and enable social relationships, work and leisure.
My discussion of these literatures serves two further functions. The first is
to give a flavour of the vastness and complexity of intersectional identities of
children in India, and of the communities in which they reside. The second
is to highlight the superficiality of the ‘global-south-girl-as-victim’ versus
‘Indian-child-as-ICT-empowered-brand-conscious-entrepreneur’ rhetoric of
many development campaigns, technology companies, television shows and
some digital media research. My aim is to alert readers to the types of rep-
resentations, frames and discourses circulating about children, childhood,
mainstream and new media in India.
2.1 Social class in contemporary India

For academics schooled in neoclassical economic imaginaries for whom the
realm of experience is irrelevant, or even for those educated in a Webe-
rian sociological tradition, the affective dimensions of social class in post-
liberalisation India are difficult to grasp: in effect, a drive to categorise class
positions in relation to aspects of life such as wages and cultural knowledge,
or education and jobs, does not provide a means of examining the class-
based experiences of protagonists. The convoluted interconnection of class
with castes and sub-castes, with rural and urban under castes, scheduled
castes and tribes with no position on the caste ladder is far more complex
than models of socio-economic stratification allow for and the same is true
of studies relying on indicators of gross domestic product as an index of
class mobility. When reported accurately, these aggregate indicators clearly
serve a purpose in current systems of policy and distribution or redistribu-
tion. Examinations which drill down further can be useful in nuancing how
such aggregate data are interpreted and used.
In journalistic and development reports, there is usually reference to
classes in India as if they map neatly onto classes in Western Europe – with
a rather homogenous middle, lower middle and working class making up
a majority of society (with a welfare state picking up the indigent minority
who do not fall into these groups). Of course, there is almost no welfare state
to speak of in India. Sociologists with an interest in class generally recognise
that this nomenclature is an over-simplification of structures, cultures, and
identities in modern Europe and the US, as well as in Southern Africa, Latin
America or the Middle East. Many authors provide more nuanced accounts
of class in Europe and North America (Bourdieu, 1984; Joyce, 1995; S avage,
2014; Thompson, 1980; Wright, 1985, 2015). Nevertheless, simple catego-
ries tend to travel in evaluations of ‘development’ in Indian society. This is
particularly so in the marketing and business literature, where words like
‘aspirers’ are common tools2. Accurate or at least semi-accurate discussion
of class in India is all the more important in the face of attempts to proclaim
the dominance of a new middle class which are popularised by many jour-
nalists, researchers, corporations, politicians and academics (Donner 2011).
Social class in India overlaps with other categories in multiple ways –
religion, caste, gender, language, migration and region are all messily impli-
cated in class status. Sub-classes within the middle and working classes
(lower middle, middle-middle and upper middle; blue collar, urban dispos-
sessed; rural smallholder, rural landless, Dalits and Adivasis) are character-
ised by stringent sets of customs, rituals and markers of caste distinction
and/or oppression (Beteille, 1971; Gorringe, 2005; Jaffrelot, 2003, 2010;
Kapadia, 1995; Srinivas, 1996). Rare exceptions may be made for the small
minority who move upwards, through whatever means, despite their back-
ward or scheduled caste status. Caste-based groupings, associated forms of
labour, marriage-related rituals and exclusions extend even to those who are
not or who are no longer Hindu (Guha, 2015; Teltumbde, 2010) and are
practiced in the Muslim, Christian or Buddhist communities. Whether and
in what manner overlaps between class, caste and religion produce or inflect
intersectional identities is a perplexing issue (see sections 2.1.3 and 2.1.4).
The nature of these intersectional identities will prove very useful in teasing
out relationships between media and adults and children of different classes,
and adults of one class/caste with children of another class/caste.
Comparing and contrasting the nomenclature of classes in India with
those in other global south contexts and in North American and European
contexts is important for the study of childhood and media which usually
does not explicitly discuss social class except in relation to purchasing power
or media access. The ‘debate’ about the size of the middle classes in India,
referred to by many scholars, is largely fuelled by an over-estimation of the
size of the middle classes, arguably, by those with vested interests in making
India out to be an economic miracle, that is, in selling India as the world’s
second largest market, and in encouraging consumer confidence3. The next
section elaborates on the composition, historical formation and aspirational
character of the extremely diverse Indian middle classes.
2.1.1 The Indian middle classes

The middle-middle classes, both the older one (with a family history of
professional jobs, educational achievement and cultural capital) and the
nouveau riche (who have ‘made money’ through business deals in the last
half century), are of considerable interest to sociologists and ethnographers
(Brossius, 2010; Dwyer, 2000; Ganguly-Scrace and Scrace 2009; Tenhunen
and Karttuen, 2014; Varma, 2008). The quality and character of the new
middle-middle class groups is substantially different in the northern and
southern states of India, in different religious groups, and in different state
capital cities with divergent linguistic and political traditions. The quality
and character of the old middle-middle classes is more homogenous across
the country. Children and youth from both old and new middle-middle class
groups are most often examined in studies of media in urban India because
they are implicated in multiple changing forms of citizenship through pol-
itics and consumption (Curtin & Kumar, 2002; Fernandes, 2000 & 2004;
Lukose, 2009).
In the 1960s and 1970s, most commentators regarded the ruling classes
of India as quite distinct – on the one hand, an urban industrial bourgeoi-
sie and, on the other, the large rural landowners. Rudra (1989) makes the
case for including yet another group ‘the intelligentsia’ as part of the ruling
classes in India. A few of these belong to today’s super-rich – top industrial-
ists and media moguls, film stars and land-owning politicians who comprise
only 0.02 percent of the population and do not figure in my analysis. The
rest of the upper middle classes are disproportionately represented in stud-
ies of Indian consumption and citizenship (Brosius, 2010). Taken together,
the Indian upper-middle classes comprise between 3 and 4 percent of the
population according to sources such as Derné (2014), Dasgupta (2014)
and Sridharan (2016). They generally know some English but are not fluent
speakers; they have strong connections inside the Indian political or indus-
trial elites and are oriented towards a global economy. Their children mainly
attend private schools where English is the medium of instruction, and
aspire to Western universities or business schools: many are at home within
a transnational cosmopolitan class. Census data indicate that households
in the upper middle classes have significant disposable income, own land,
vehicles, property, and tools such as cameras, smart phones, PCs and tablets
and employ several domestic workers, often in a live-in capacity.
The rural and small town upper- and middle-middle class members
either have ancestral land or have profited from rural development schemes,
building successful agri-businesses based on a continuing devaluation of the
labour of share-cropping farmers, tenants and the landless poor, including
the free labour of most rural children over the age of five. In fact, contrary
to assertions about the phenomenal growth of the middle classes in India,
it has been argued that the trend in rural areas is towards the extreme pau-
perization and dispossession of large groups (Lerche, 2013; Wilson, 1999).
Economically, this enables the entrenchment of large farmers and agribusi-
nesses, whose families inter-marry, control local bureaucracies, and chan-
nels to governance, cutting off avenues of social mobility for the rural poor,
and avenues for survival other than rural-to-urban or seasonal interstate
migration.
According to the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank, since
2012 the lower-middle, middle-middle and upper-middle classes together
account for between 19 and 26 percent of the Indian population. While this
is an enormous number of people in absolute terms given India’s population
of 1.32 billion4, this is a relatively low proportion of the country’s popula-
tion as a whole. Albeit imprecise, these sources suggest a fluid middle-middle
class of between 5 and 9 percent, with those in the insecure economic strands
merging with the lower middle class with a tiny minority moving through
education into the upper-middle class.
Within the middle-middle classes, there are numerous distinctions based
on when wealth is acquired, whether property, education, social connec-
tions, caste or a mixture of these are the basis of status, and so on. In her
study of public and film culture in Bombay, Rachel Dwyer suggests that
‘Bourdieu’s concepts of cultural capital and cultural legitimacy allow us
to define more clearly divisions within Bombay’s middle classes … the old
middle classes, the new middle classes and the emerging petite bourgeoisie’
(2000: 90). Based on income levels, the manner in which money was made –
for instance, through professional work or commerce – level of education,
political affiliation and control of access to state resources, Dwyer argues
that no single group constitutes a class per se. Instead, she suggests they
constitute overlapping classes, a significant proportion of members residing
in non-metropolitan areas in the 200 plus second and third tier cities. It is,
however, possible to trace some historical patterns in the formation of var-
ious sub-classes within the Indian middle classes, and these have a bearing
on these groups’ conceptualisations of and relationships to childhood and
children, education, and media as discussed in Chapter 5.
In their study of domesticity and class in modern India, Cultures of Ser-
vitude (2009), Raka Ray and Seemin Qayum insist that the Indian middle
classes are not in any way shape or form actually in the middle of the eco-
nomic class spectrum in India. They connect the formation of the middle
classes to particular phases of national development that are more or less
connected to the postcolonial state’s failure to redistribute land and wealth,
and to its recent championing of neoliberal market ideologies:
What is now called the ‘old middle class’ in India was in essence the
nationalist vanguard, which William Mazarella aptly described as a
‘Nehruvian civil-service oriented salariat, short on money but long
on institutional perks’. The Nehruvian developmentalist state relied
on planning and incremental reforms rather than on attempting to
reform property relations to move towards a socialist-inflected capi-
talist economy. In this regime the state and the middle-class managers
of the state played a vital role. The dominant faction of the middle
classes readily took on the managerial direction of the state, as it had
already occupied the colonial civil service. Moreover, its leadership in
the nationalist movement secured the legitimacy to continue to ‘repre-
sent’ the nation. In contrast to this nationalist middle class, the ‘new’
middle class in the post 1991-liberalisation period is the class about
whose members Gurcharan Das says admiringly that they know what
they want and how to get it. This is a newly aspirational middle class
about which much has been written and around whom election cam-
paigns are crafted. … [it] derives its power not from the state but from
the market. Yet debate rages about the size and composition of the
middle class - 50 million or 250 million. (2009: 14)
Descriptions like this abound in texts on the middle classes in India, always
maintaining distinctions between old and new, salaried and business middle
classes, but differing in estimates of size and political significance. Ray and
Qayum’s study is, however, interesting because of its meticulous documen-
tation of the cultural and domestic power relationships between classes, and
their underlying intermeshing of caste and gender. It is helpful to consider
some of the ways in which the more affluent segments of the middle class
have been linked to consumption and to new forms of citizenship in the
literature. Brosius, for instance, argues that
[c]onsumption, distinction and class are closely connected: it is not so

much a question of what is consumed but a question of knowing how
to consume it that is at the heart of the matter when we explore images
and strategies of the new middle classes in India… [i]n the age of neo-
liberalism, class has become the key focus and platform of cultural
production and consumption, and in particular, the affluent segment
of the new middle classes… the “new rich”. (2010: 16)
This study goes on to focus on the consumption practices of the new middle
classes in metropolitan India, examining public and private space, media,
religious rituals, family structures, code-switching, marriage, gender and the
body. She examines the implication of media technologies in the construction
and communication of far right movements linked to religion (Hindutva)
and the construction of politico-religious identitarian movements amongst
the urban Hindu middle classes (2010: 144–173). Her study discusses ‘the
shaping of modern [Indian, Hindu] selves as moral selves through particular
aesthetic means, spatiality and ritualization’ in new religious movements
(Ibid., 144), and offers an analysis of the ‘spectacularisation’ of modernity
in India via extravagant weddings and tourism. There are some disjunctures
in the text that raise deeper problematics by calling attention to the quasi-
orientalist lens so often used to analyse both class and modernity in India.
One such moment occurs in passing:
Both in India and Europe we can witness the desire of colonial and
other elites to be in control by disciplining public and private space
and everyday life conducts. They engaged in what Kaviraj described as
a civilizing process of relentless surveillance, policing, restricting and
imposing (1997: 85). The idea that the public is in fact accessible to
all alike is primarily a European notion, highly idealised and conflict-
ing in colonies and other non-western domains. (2010: 111, emphasis
added.)
This ahistorical generalisation about the idea of public space is likely to be

jarring for readers familiar research on indigenous peoples’ conceptions of
land, public and private space, the sacred, and the human. In many cultures
where people do not own land or natural phenomena or the artefacts they
have laboured to build on the land, but are themselves understood to be part
of or owned by the land or the earth, space is not privatised as it is in west-
ern regimes both pre- and post-enlightenment. While egalitarianism was
verifiably not the case in pre-colonial caste-ridden India, Brosius’ mistaken
depiction of certain traditions and modernities (Anderson, 2010; Escobar,
2011; Mignolo, 2009; Todd, 2016), undermines some of the binaries she
identifies in this study.
Accounting for between 10 and 14 percent of the population, the lower
middle classes in India are the single largest middle class group. They are
diverse in terms of caste, religion, language and cultural practice. In some
ways, they are not unique in comparison to their counterparts in other
global south countries such as China and Brazil but, with their fragile eco-
nomic and educational circumstances, frequently patriarchal imaginar-
ies, and multiple caste-oriented customs, neither do they map easily onto
contemporary Latin American or Chinese conceptualisations of ‘middle
class-ness’. This complexity becomes relevant in relation to the ways in
which different histories of colonisation and development are implicated
in the shaping of social class in these large global south countries. Indian
city-dwellers who live six-to-a-room in cramped bedsits or 10-to-a-room in
shanty-towns and chawls, would likely be regarded as part of the working
poor in Europe, China and Latin America. They qualify as lower middle
class in an Indian setting, especially if at least one member of the extended
family works in a professional job or has a government pension. Village
and small-town dwellers with larger residential spaces, and sometimes even
small plots of land, but whose incomes are entirely dependent on seasonal
family labour in the fields, dairies and stables, cottage industries, or similar
occupations might also qualify – and would describe themselves – as [lower]
middle class; particularly if a son attends college and aspires to a service
job (Chakraborty, 2010; Jeffrey, 2008 & 2010). For a variety of reasons,
families with daughters with similar educational or job prospects would be
less likely to claim aspirational class status (Caplan, 1985; Kapadia, 1995),
and might hide some of their assets in an attempt to downplay the amount
of dowry they might be able to pay.
2.1.2 The Indian working classes

The urban Indian working classes, often ‘the poor’5, are also sharply divided
along lines of secure and insecure employment, regional development and
governance, rural to urban migration, educational opportunity, reservation
policies and caste practices.
At one end of the spectrum is an established, formalised, and somewhat
socially organised urban working class. They have a history of skilled jobs
in mills, factories, power plants, crafts or services such as transport, or
working in government buildings and offices. This group is also generally
protected by labour laws (Bremen, 2004; Fernandes, 1997; Heller, 1996;
Hensman, 2011a) which they have fought to obtain through affiliated and
independent labour unions. Households in this group also typically have
mobile phone connections for parents and older siblings, watch television
regularly, listen to the radio, and go to the cinema, either in family groups
or in all-male and all-female cohorts. In her study of Hindi action cin-
ema (2008), and to underpin her claims about the changing content and
context of cinematic consumption, Valentina Vitali examined the move
from an older industrial working class largely employed in mills to a
more modern one employed in suburban multinationals, and in her study,
mainly processing chemicals. Small plants were replaced by larger facil-
ities with more modern machinery, whose operation needed to be done
by increasingly skilled workers. The leisure time and incomes of these
city work forces rose far above those of their unskilled and unorganised
fellow workers in small-town manufacturing, and incomparably in rela-
tion to small farmers or landless labourers. As de-industrialisation and
sub-contracting changed patterns of skill, belonging and organisation, it
has become increasingly difficult to obtain an accurate picture of the size
and extent of the organised urban working class. It has been suggested,
however, that they make up roughly 7 percent of India’s disparate working
classes.
Although there is constant movement between formal and informal sec-
tors, particularly in urban areas, by far the largest sector of the Indian work-
ing class is informal or semi-formal. This includes occupational sectors from
mining and piece work, fisheries and small-scale industry, to salt works,
agriculture, seasonal harvesting, animal husbandry, domestic labour, clean-
ing, crafts and stitching, childcare, road works, construction, and so on.
S. Kumaraswamy (2004) based on data from the Second National Labour
Commission published in June 2002 writes that:
At 360 million, workers in the unorganised sector account for about

92 percent of the Indian work force, and this figure is still growing
under the impact of the economic policies of globalisation. Agrarian
labour – the rural proletariat and semi-proletariat – forms the back-
bone, while other rural workers like power loom and hand loom
workers and beedi (an Indian variety of cigar) workers also run into
millions. Moreover, agrarian workers do not find agricultural work on
the fields for a large part of the year and then have to take up other
jobs, often in far-off places. One such huge section is brick kiln work-
ers. They work with families in semi-bondage conditions. Others take
up construction work. […]. This huge working population is denied
social security such as unemployment, sickness, maternity, death or
old-age benefits or emergency expenses.6
(Electronic source, NP)
These groups do not have spare income to participate in the new

consumer-oriented cultural and high-tech economy of India. According
to Asian Development Bank Key Indicators Asia (2015: 207)7, in 2011,
59.2 percent of Indians lived on less than 2 dollars per day with 23.6 percent
living on less than 1.25 dollars a day (ADB, 2015: 120). Based on a total
population of 1.21 billion in 2011 (census data), this indicates that approx-
imately 716 million Indians were very poor, i.e., were living on less than
2 dollars a day and, of these 286 million were living on less than 1.25 dollars
a day. According to Human Development Report 2015, Table 8, p. 236, the
estimated population for 2014 is 1.267 billion. The absolute numbers of
the very poor are likely to have increased since then8. On household level
income, the Socioeconomic and Caste Census in 2011 indicated that in 74.5
percent of rural households (in absolute numbers: 133.9 million households)
the highest earning household member earns less than 5000 Rupees a month
(around 2 dollars per day). According to this report, rural households make
up 73.4 percent of all 244.6 million Indian households as of 2011, data on
urban households had not been published at the SECC (2011). If one con-
trols for population growth between 2011 and 2016, and includes children,
the elderly and unemployed people as in all the previous class groups, some-
thing in the realm of 250 million urban or small-town, and 600 million rural
persons appear to make up the bulk of the Indian working class population.
(This is larger number, of course, than the workforce.) These are the bulk of
India’s poor and of the population.
Their lives are a complex mesh of wage labour, unwaged work, sur-
vival strategies, religious and cultural rituals, occasional attempts at class
mobility – through education, or marriage or both – as well as struggle – for
housing, for inheritance, and for the basic amenities in local areas, against
disease, alcoholism and more. Fernandes (1997) recounts how, for many
of the workers in the Muslim minority, even within the organised working
class, although, on the surface discourses of brotherhood may be the norm,
and festivals tend to be celebrated together, there is a simmering threat of
chauvinism, discrimination and sometimes outright violence. While dis-
crimination in the workplace and in housing based on membership of a
‘minority’ religion in India is commonplace, the frequency of and tolerance
towards violence and atrocity has been charted over the past three decades.
Mander (2015: 164–165) discusses how, in the aftermath of the massacre
of more than a thousand Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 by organised far right
Hindu mobs allegedly in vengeance for a train fire which killed several
dozen Hindu activists9, the atmosphere amongst middle class Hindus was
‘claustrophobically fractured and bigoted’. Persistent invisible dread and
innumerable acts of bureaucratic and physical discrimination have become
‘a way of life’ for millions of working class Muslim citizens and for many of
their middle class counterparts.
Beneath the vastness of the numbers of poor and very poor Indians is a
startling complexity of gendered and caste-based patterns of labour. These
include those which show the sustained involvement of children’s labour
at different ages in various trades, skills, tasks and industries (Huberman,
2010; Nieuwenhuys, 1994). Economic and historical approaches such as
Sharad Chari’s Fraternal Capital (2004) and Barbara Harris-White’s India
Working (2003) reveal the implications of an interplay between economic
structures, industrial practices with agricultural and small peasant practices
in the making of classes and class interests. Ray and Qayum’s ethnographic
study of domestic servitude in wealthy Indian and transnational households
connects the mechanisms through which the middle classes maintain their
dominance over the positions occupied by millions of mainly female domes-
tic workers in India. They note that ‘the present form of the institution is
based on conceptions of the modern Indian home and life that represent
not a break from but rather signify a re-articulation of ideas and practices
derived from a feudal and colonial past’ (2009: 32). A hard-hitting article
by investigative journalist Nilita Vachani, entitled ‘The Strange, True Story
of How a Chairman at McKinsey Made Millions of Dollars off His Maid’10
details an example of fraud, exploitation and criminal behaviour on the part
of a wealthy Indian expat towards his family servant Manju Das. The events
exemplify Ray and Qayum’s conceptualisation of quasi-feudal mistreatment,
but provide far more detail than they were able to provide via excerpts from
qualitative interviews. Showing the complexity of other accounts of poverty
in India, the article mentions that only the 250 million Indians who live on
less than 1 dollar 90 cents per day are counted/or should be counted among
India’s poor. The figure of the Indian poor is actually estimated at around
three times that, closer to 822 million or the 75.0 percent in the Asian Devel-
opment Bank Key Indicators report (2010).
First- and second-generation rural-to-urban migrant children might have
parents in blue collar jobs and live in slums; or they might belong to a
street-dwelling under-class. Many first generation working-class Indian chil-
dren who migrate or are brought to cities, end up in some form of inden-
tured servitude. Many aggregate statistics sketchily distinguish between the
rest of the Indian working-classes and the underclasses, both urban and
rural. There are categories of people who are absent in Indian census data on
cities. Several additional millions of extremely poor urban or r ural-to-urban
migrants and their children are estimated to live on the streets or in seasonal
and insecure plastic bag accommodation of the first and second tier cities of
India. Alongside slum-dwellers, these families also engage in a parallel econ-
omy of scavenging, rag picking, manual haulage, waste collection, sanitation
work, piece work – subcontracted and self-employed – professional begging,
hawking, street-food preparation, sex work, and more (Banerjee-Guha,
2009; Gidwani, 2006; Webster, 2011).
Many of India’s impoverished rural majority, with insecure, seasonal
incomes, no land, no sustained schooling, no savings, and in whose house-
holds children are most likely to engage in child labour out of desperate need,
are positioned by some poverty-line definitions outside the category ‘poor’.
Figure 2.1 Street-sleeping children.

Figure 2.2 What once was a home.
Figure 2.3 Home in a demolished slum.
The World Bank indicators and Indian government poverty reduction

schemes have a very fragile definition of ‘poverty’11. The India Food bank-
ing network estimates that nearly 200 million people in India go hungry
every day across both rural and urban areas, while working class families
in rural areas spend up to 70 percent of their daily income on food. Despite
this desperate attempt to feed themselves, malnutrition alone causes the
deaths of 3,000 children per day12.
Amongst both rural and urban groups, suicide rates have sky-rocketed in
the past two decades, many of the deaths being avoidable and d ebt-related13.
14
According to development journalist P. Sainath , there were more than
60,000 farmer suicides in the state of Maharashtra from 1995 to 2015,
and 296,438 farmer suicides across India as a whole. There are, of course,
political and pragmatic reasons for this and for the mainstream media and
politicians to name or engage with them. Mankekar (2000) and Fernandes
(1997, 2004) argue that since 1991, the vastness and specificity of rural,
tribal, dispossessed and working-class cultures in India have swiftly and
deliberately been erased from public representation, a view with which I
concur. For an already underrepresented segment of the population, this
public discursive erasure has a disproportionate impact on children in such
impoverished socioeconomic strata.
Millions are unemployed, or underemployed and agitating for work or
welfare provisions (Chandra & Taghioff, 2016); and multitudes of people,
many belonging to Adivasi15 communities, are contesting and being dispos-
sessed of land-rights (Chandra, 2014; Kumaraswamy, 2004; Kurien, 2007;
Levian, 2011; 2004; Meenakshi et al., 2001; Wilson, 1999). In this context,
rural or urban origins, education, and whether one lives in a ‘pukka’ (brick
and mortar) residence or in the open are markers of socioeconomic distinc-
tion. These factors pale in the face of the importance of caste as a marker of
status, a predictor of experiences of violence and suppression, a guarantor of
Figure 2.4 Young brick maker.

Figure 2.5 Village school.
Figure 2.6 Village children and ruins.
socio-economic inequality and a bar to socio-economic mobility. The ways

in which scholars of caste in India (Deshpande, 2013; Teltumbde, 2010)
explain the history and persistence of this phenomenon as it shapes con-
temporary capitalist social relationships, cultural, political and ideological
agendas and experiences is important in order to understand the extreme
contrasts between mediated and lived routines and environments experi-
enced by different groups of children in India.
2.1.3 C
aste: Identities, violence and socioeconomic discrimination
in the postcolony
‘Caste’, writes Teltumbde (2010: 67) ‘has been the most valuable asset for
the traditionally privileged in feudal India. It has served, even under capi-
talism, as valuable social capital’. But what is caste? And how, despite the
struggles of reformers such as B. R. Ambedkar (the author of the Indian
constitution), decades of ‘untouchability’ being outlawed by the Indian con-
stitution (1950), and several positive discrimination (reserved quota) ini-
tiatives, has caste come to serve the ends of the most privileged in India,
who have built a barrier against social and economic mobility? Teltumbde’s
(2010: 12–13) elaboration is among the clearest:
Caste as such is a form of social stratification involving a mode of hier-

archically arranged, closed endogamous strata, membership of which
is ascribed by descent and between which contact is restricted and
mobility impossible. The Indian word for caste is jāti. When we refer
to caste, we really speak of jāti, though many tend to confuse it with
varna, which refers to the basic classes, four in number, established
by Hindu scripture. The chaturvarna or four-varna system enshrined
a hierarchical segmentation of society into the following primarily
professional orders: brahmins (the priestly castes), kshatriyas (the
warrior/fighting castes), vaishyas (the business/trading castes) and, at
the lowest rung, shudras (the working classes: artisans, agriculturists,
food gatherers, hunters, fisherfolk and the like). While there are only
four varnas as given in Hinduism, there are thousands of jātis [and]…
it is jāti which really dictates the rules and regulations of life for the
average Hindu. Each jāti has its own special norms dictating permissi-
ble food, occupation, marriage, social interaction and so forth.
Further,
No matter the despised position of those at the lowest end of the varna
spectrum, to not find even such inclusion was no blessing. Caste soci-
ety did not cover India’s geographically isolated adivasis (its indige-
nous tribespeople, who lived in forests and in inaccessible mountain
regions), and those who, though part of the economic system in terms
of labour relationships, were excluded from all other interaction
because they were ‘untouchable’ or even ‘unseeable’. Any contact with
members of this group, even their sight, sometimes even their shadow,
was held to be ritually polluting and abhorrent…. To this group were
assigned tasks such as the removal of waste (including human excre-
ment…), butchery, the flaying of animal carcasses… the making of
footwear, and the tending of funeral pyres … . (2010: 15)
This description shows poignantly how important this racist institution

is both as a determinant of socioeconomic class and as a determinant of
everyday life experience for the children of any particular jāti, at whatever
level in, or below, the varna hierarchy. In his 2015 book Looking Away,
Harsh Mander recounts how in his district-level postings ‘as head of the
department charged with Scheduled Caste Welfare in Madhya Pradesh and
Chhattisgarh’ and, later, in his research into untouchability, he found that
in the majority of villages across swathes of the country, Dalits are still
barred from access to common wells and temples (336). Even where con-
versions to Buddhism or Christianity have taken place in efforts to escape
stigma, there is no guarantee that this stigma abates. Caste has psycho-
logical consequences for those in upper, lower and subterranean strata.
It is also an economic institution, which feeds into social perceptions and
attitudes.
In a qualitative account of Dalit organization and activism that remains
relevant today, Hugo Gorringe (2005) demonstrates that in the southern
state of Tamil Nadu, Dalits are subject to generations of oppression by
entrenched Backward Caste elites. One of the key material functions of
this oppression is to exclude Dalits from remunerative occupations, from
access to housing and other state resources and from educational spaces.
Rather than organizing spontaneously based on a wish for symbolic voice
and representation, Dalits in the state have frequently been pushed to col-
lective political groupings against a backdrop of daily humiliation, material
denial and violence. Aspects of this subaltern collective identity are rhetori-
cal, however, for those who never actively participate in struggles for social
equality, and who ally themselves with leaders in the hope of opportunities
delivered via patronage networks. Indeed, Gorringe argues, it is only in the
materiality of actual struggle that resistant rhetoric comes alive, and only if
seen in the context of the daily vicissitudes of survival, and over access to
scarce resources, that changing alliances between Dalits and the parties who
claim to represent them can be understood.
In The Grammar of Caste (2011), Ashwini Deshpande deploys a
political-economic anthropology tradition which is under-utilised in con-
temporary India. She situates caste both as a social and as an economic
practice, noting the vicious cycles of exclusion, misrepresentation and dis-
crimination that she argues account for a lack of opportunities for sched-
uled castes and tribes as well as those lower in the caste spectrum, despite
repeated assurances by bureaucrats and employers of caste-blind employ-
ment and pay policies. She cites a study by Shah et al. (2006: 15) in which
they document untouchability in rural India ‘based on the results of an
extended survey carried out over 2001–2 in 565 villages across 11 states’
and find that ‘untouchability is not only present all over rural India but it
has survived by “adapting to new socioeconomic realities and taking on new
and insidious forms” ’ (Deshpande, 2013: 8). From jāti-based matrimonial
alliances to an examination of the gendered features of caste discrimination,
Deshpande’s work reveals vast and consistent income disparities, linked
to gross and sustained prejudices and discrimination. Through discussions
about methods of testing discrimination and rigorous experiments, she con-
cludes that ‘employers talk the language of merit and confess a deep faith
solely in the merit of the applicant’ but ‘also believe that merit is distributed
along lines of caste, religious and gender divisions’ (2011: 16; 199–211).
These findings have been replicated by others such as Jodhka and Newman
(2010) and Thorat and Newman (2010). Ensuring that consistent social and
economic caste discrimination is not challenged is consistently shown to be
a key preoccupation for higher caste groups. This discrimination in turn
plays a significant role in shaping the opportunities – and occupations – of
children at different levels of the caste/class hierarchy.
Gorringe (2006), Mander (2015) and Teltumbde (2010) all confirm the
findings of numerous reports on caste in relation to the phenomenon of
caste-based atrocities. These are generally individual or group lynchings –
by rape-murder, burning, acid attack, knifing, hanging, beating or a combi-
nation of these forms of violence – perpetrated against Dalits in most Indian
states and even in the diaspora. In recent times, atrocities against Dalit and
Adivasi men, women and children have in no way lessened. Gorringe (2006)
explores the ways in which the violence that is involved in atrocities can be
understood not as an outlandish expression of unique or monstrous indi-
viduals but as a ritualised and normalised social approach to ‘others’ which
has become banal with time and repetition, just as nationalism is expressed
through ‘banal’ means in Michael Billig’s formulation.
Teltumbde’s argument is that these atrocities are necessary to oppressor
castes to instil the kind of fear and abject submission into lower caste and
scheduled caste and tribe members in a way that the hegemonic cultural
reach of the caste system fails to do. Raise your eyes to those of someone
from a higher caste, touch something of theirs, complain, break a spatial
caste taboo, look at a member of the opposite gender from a different jāti,
apply for a position when there are higher caste candidates – and we will
annihilate you, destroy your family or even your village and ensure that you
will never achieve justice, is the way he characterises these inter-class and
inter-caste power relations.
These claims are supported by evidence that most police complaints
lodged by survivors of caste atrocities or caste violence are stalled, refused,
disappeared, or worse, lead to further abuse and violence by higher caste
police in the pay of or simply identified with upper caste agendas. The fact
that Dalit leaders emerge in these circumstances, that some persevere and
continue to demand justice for fellow citizens, is noteworthy, even more so
than the observation that many are silenced, en masse, or choose to support
politicians who loudly trumpet essentialist rhetorics of empowerment. With
this analysis of class as background I turn to studies that take children as
the primary protagonists.
2.2 Children and social structures in India

A few weeks ago, Abdul had seen a boy’s hand cut clean off when he
was putting plastic into one of the shredders. The boy’s eyes had filled
with tears but he hadn’t screamed. Instead he stood there with his
blood-spurting stump, his ability to earn a living ended, and started
apologising to the owner of the plant. ‘Sa’ab I’m sorry’, he said to the
man in white. ‘I won’t cause you any problems by reporting this. You
will have no trouble from me.’
(Boo, 2012: 15)
In this passage, journalist-turned-ethnographer Katherine Boo reports on

the life of an Indian working class child. He is one amongst many whom
she compassionately and respectfully interviews and observes during several
years in a Bombay slum. Everything about the lives Boo describes seems
ordinary to the children; but perhaps to some middle class readers comes
across as indescribably painful, unbearable and dignified. Her account, as
well as my own observations over the past decade, such as those with Dhan-
ish and Ravi at the beginning of this chapter, serves to underline the dis-
quiet I feel in response to assertions about how new media and technologies,
smart phones and computers are empowering children and young people
across the globe. Yes, perhaps they are, for some. But what about this little
boy and his stump, his terror of his employer, and of starvation? Is his expe-
rience and that of children like him significant to scholarly interest in new
media and communications technologies and vice versa, and if it isn’t, what
does that say about our field? Given the way in which capitalism works, it is
evidently naïve to imagine that the experiences of such children in insecure
and hazardous employment can have much purchase with technology devel-
opers and educators. Nevertheless, it is still worth suggesting ways in which
television programmes, internet shows, games and apps might be made more
diverse and relevant to the lives of children like the children in Boo’s narra-
tive. But I am getting ahead of my argument.
At least four disciplines – history, education, social psychology and social
anthropology – produce numerous works on childhood in India. In the past
30 years, a disproportionate number of these examine education, particu-
larly learning and schooling, but fewer examine leisure or pleasure. Further,
while schooling and class have not gone unexamined, the informal learning
and class are only addressed tangentially. The tension between children’s
efforts at and entitlements to leisure in different classes, and adult com-
munities’ construction of the idea of ‘responsible development’ of children
receives less attention still. This section focuses on studies that have engaged
with children’s learning, everyday life, inequality and agency within partic-
ular social classes and sub-classes.
I examine this literature with a view to assessing whether, when familial
economic circumstances improve, some aspects of children’s lives in media-
poor communities are replaced by the routines of normative middle class
(Westernised) childhoods. Of particular interest are their learning about
the environment, their caring for younger and older family members and
their ‘resourceful conservation’ (Banaji, 2015: 17; Dyson, 2014) which are
often ignored in favour of studies on digital divides, and digital revolu-
tions. Further studies are needed to ascertain whether this homogenisation
is already evidenced through the narratives of urban middle class children
in India and whether these aspects of children’s everyday lives are tied to
their educational and economic capital or to political, social and cultural
norms. In particular, more evidence is needed to evaluate changes wrought
by new media penetration, and particularly by access to the internet via
mobile phones (Doron, 2008; Jeffrey & Doron, 2013) in relation to the
visceral difficulties of both middle and working-class children’s everyday
lives in India. It is to these everyday contexts of childhood in India that we
turn next.
2.2.1 Schooling
There is an established literature on primary education in India, much of
it focused on access, methods and the right to education, or examining
pedagogy, literacy and numeracy. Most of these studies provide analysis
of children’s everyday lives which does not rely on speaking to children
themselves, or seek to understand phenomenological perceptions of school-
ing. However, Meenakshi Thapan’s Ethnographies of Schooling in Contem-
porary India (2013) and Manabi Majumdar and Jos Mooij’s Education
and Inequality in Contemporary India (2011) contribute substantially to
knowledge about children’s experiences of schooling as a part of everyday
life in India. Both contain data on the scales of school enrolment in differ-
ent types of state, state-aided, private mainstream, private religious and
alternative private schools. The picture that emerges in their accounts in
relation to teachers and teaching methods is complex but also concerning.
It suggests that while many teachers are complicit in a corrupt and under-
funded system that fosters intolerance, caste prejudice and authoritarian
values, a minority feel trapped by the system; and dedicate long hours and
much thought to caring for the children in their schools. Majumdar and
Muiij argue that the colonial model of education as a form of social pro-
gramming is still the norm across swathes of India, and in rural areas in
particular.
Majumdar and Muiij’s analysis confirms that broadly, ‘the idea that
competition is a good incentive to stimulate learning pervades the Indian
school system’ (2011: 103). Chalk and talk are still the norm in the vast
majority of urban and rural schools. Although some high-fee charging pri-
vate schools are depicted as embracing child centred methods, a notably
Western-oriented curriculum, and foreign examination boards, paying high
fees is no guarantee that a hidden curriculum will not introduce inequality,
competition, caste and religious pride and patriarchal prejudice. Many text
books contain decontextualized, inaccurate ‘facts’ or opinions, and propa-
ganda presented as history or social science, creating a ‘disabling curric-
ulum’ (103). Languages tend to be poorly taught, with rote learning, and
corporal punishment for mistakes rife. Constant testing, the measurement
of learning through the ability to regurgitate the text book formulations
rather than through ‘doing’, ‘experience’ or ‘activity’ are all common-place,
as they are in many other exam-oriented education systems. Further, in
schools where chalk and talk, and memorisation are the norm, Majumdar
and Muiij’s study found that “active de-learning”, namely children being
socialised to become less curious and inquisitive, is taking place.
Located in the South Indian state of Karnataka, a qualitative study by
Aarthi Sriprakash ‘examines young students in rural government schools’
(2013: 325). The 16 primary schools in Sriprakash’s study, which ranged
in size from 50 students to over 400 students in grades 1 through 7, were
funded and managed by the state government. This study offers a template
for understanding how rural schools differ from urban ones, and poorer
schools from those in middle class areas. The schools had basic resources
and infrastructure typical of rural government primary schools in the area:
‘buildings were made of concrete and children generally had access to a
playing field. Free school lunches were provided by the government and
were cooked on site. Classrooms were equipped with blackboards but other
learning materials, especially books, were scarce. It was quite usual for one
teacher to have up to 50 students in a mixed aged, mixed grade class’ (328).
Usree Bhattacharya (2013) discusses ‘banking education’ and literacy prac-
tices in another suburban village school:
[English] texts were translated and paraphrased into Hindi without

pointing out which syntactic and lexical items were being introduced
or excluded in the translation process. This affected students’ ability to
identify the meaning of individual words…. (173)
Space was a major constraint … few classrooms had windows…
[T]he school itself was located in an area that was home to multiple
open drains overflowing with sewage, unattended garbage, building
materials, spilling over from under construction buildings and puddles
of mud that were breeding grounds for swarms of mosquitoes… the
school had neither a playground nor a garden, and a very limited staff.
(175–176)
Poorer children’s home lives and backgrounds are viewed as inferior to

school and to book learning, and the school environment is seen as a means
for disseminating views and values that make the children into more worthy
and civic human beings. Middle-middle class and upper-middle class urban
children, while also subjected to punishing regimes of study, testing and
competition, have been shown to find themselves closer to their teachers
who are, or aspire to be, middle class in tastes and values. Additionally, as
Anannya Gogoi (2014) observed, in certain government schools such as the
one in Delhi where she did her fieldwork between 2008 and 2009, rituals
and authority structures tend to follow caste Hindu practices, as well as
nationalist functions, while constructing the space of the school itself as
sacred, disciplined and pure.
Despite the efforts of a dedicated minority of teachers whose aim is to
deliver the curriculum in a way consonant with their students’ dignity and
with critical thinking skills, government or state schools in India are there-
fore places not only for the manufacturing of docile future citizens but tend
to be oriented towards the manufacture of particular classed, religious and
nationalist forms of citizenship. While ‘hidden transcripts’ of dissent are
manifested in tiny alterations to school uniform, or humorous asides, to
various extents students and teachers internalise the ideals set by school
authorities and frown on those who reject the dress and behaviour codes.
Gogoi’s personable interactions with children in the school also suggest
a series of countercultures and alternatives centres of power amongst the
older students, particularly favouring those with liberal parents, friendly
manners and good voices, as suggested by the observation that excellent
singing and strong friendships carried high social capital amongst the chil-
dren. Further, as Maitrayee Deka (2014) has discussed, school students do
not necessarily internalise all of the values and ideologies of their school’s
explicit and hidden curricula. Instead, either deliberately or unconsciously
the children in Deka’s study adhere to specific aspects of ‘Indianness’ (usu-
ally associated with religious and ethnic imaginaries) and studiousness; and
resist others while conforming in superficial ways. Thus, when some schools
attempt to inculcate resistance to neoliberal consumer practices outside the
school, urban middle class children can and do subvert these values and
negotiate spaces for the worship and strengthening of consumer behaviours
in fashion, food and gift-giving. Likewise, despite admonitions against mix-
ing between genders, older teenage boys and girls can and do engage in
covert cross-gender friendships (see Chapter 5 for a further discussion).
2.2.2 Social learning and the hidden curriculum

All school children in India learn as much about power and inequality,
about what it means to be Indian and what it means to be respectable,
from the hidden curriculum, as they do from the explicit one. Although this
could be said to be the case about all schools, it is particularly the case in
countries with long histories of entrenched racial and ethnic discrimination
and contradicts claims about the ways in which universal education might
bring about a stronger sense of democracy within its citizenry. Daniel Sol-
orzano (1998: 122) suggests that ‘[a] critical race theory in education chal-
lenges the traditional claims of the educational system and its institutions
to objectivity, meritocracy, colo[u]r and gender blindness, race and gender
neutrality, and equal opportunity. The critical race theorist argues that these
traditional claims are a camouflage for the self-interest, power, and privilege
of dominant groups’. Applying this lens to Indian schooling reveals vast and
painfully ingrained practices of prejudice and discrimination.
City spaces and their schools are segregated in new ways along religious
lines and segregation is policed ever more ferociously. Manjrekar (2015)
delineates how there has been a gradual convergence of segregation and
marketization in Indian schooling that breaks with an anti-colonial egali-
tarian vision:
In the 1960s, the idea of the ‘neighbourhood school’ was recom-

mended as a measure to promote the ‘emergence of an egalitarian and
integrated society’ in India (Education Commission, 1964–66). By the
late 1970s, this larger social vision of free, equal and accessible schools
offering quality education had been jettisoned in favour of a market
driven, highly stratified schooling system promoting the interests of
elites, reflecting the complex dynamics of education in a postcolonial
context of educational inequality and structures of domination. Neo-
liberal reforms in recent times have served to further these social pri-
orities, with education becoming increasingly integrated into the free
market economy. (2015: NP)
Even in free or very inexpensive neighbourhood schools, language, rules,

and rituals which favour Hindus and higher castes over lower and Sched-
uled castes or their non-Hindu counterparts are ubiquitous. Consider the
following testimonies16 given by children in Gujarat to the the survey Voices
of Children of Manual Scavengers:
My name is Padma Ratilal Goriya. I live with my parents in Vasai

Village in Daskroi Taluka of Ahmedabad district. I am 13 years old. In
school, children from Darbar caste used to tease us with derogatory
words like ‘Bhangda’. Non-Dalit children used to throw our school
bags out of the classroom. Our parents complained to the school teach-
ers. The teachers replied that you are ‘Bhangiya’ and if the non Dalits
call you ‘Bhangiya’ then your children should not feel bad. Hence I left
my school from 2nd standard in the year 2003. At present I go to beg
for leftover food every night in the Darbar, Patel, Thakor and Rabari
locality with my mother. I drag away dead dogs and I get a small bowl
of grains from each home.
My name is Nayanbhai Khushalbhai Nathani. I am 12 years
old. I live with my parents in Bala village in Vadhwan taluka in
Surendranagar district. I face discrimination and untouchability from
other caste students at the time of mid-day meals. One of my friends
earlier used to eat with me but later his mother came to know this and
asked his son not to eat with me. Valmiki children students are not
allowed to serve the food and we have to sit separately. For the entire
week, I and five other valmiki children clean the toilets and urinals.
I go to get leftover food during social occasions with my mother. I
drag dead dogs and cats and for that I get 40 to 50 rupees. During
the school prayers we are asked to collect paper and waste from the
ground and also to do cleaning work.
Legal prohibitions on untouchability notwithstanding, dozens of accounts

in the above-mentioned survey catalogue the severe, legitimised and routin-
ised nature of bullying and discrimination against Dalit children in Indian
schools. Dalit children in Jagatsinghpur in Odisha report17 that in their
school the teachers will not mark their books or allow them to touch teach-
ers for fear of ‘pollution’. These children and their parents therefore have no
idea if they carry out any of the school tasks correctly; their work is never
marked. In October 2015 a 10-year-old Dalit boy was severely beaten by
his teacher in Osian Tehsil, not far from Jodhpur in Rajasthan, because he
touched the midday meal utensils used for non Dalit students18.
Morning assembly in numerous ‘secular’ schools begins or ends with a
sanskritised Hindu prayer from which Dalit children are sometimes openly
excluded19. In these circumstances, either being excluded from or being sub-
jected to the prayer are actions which display the power of a narrow casteist
Hindu version of citizenship, and these prayers are one of the ‘mundane’
forms of Hindutva practised decades before an openly Hindutva regime took
power in Central government. In schools where text books are used, and
children can afford them, language stories and history in these text books
may exclude, demonise or make snide references to Muslim rulers and lead-
ers, even those in the anti-colonial movement; and they often exclude or ste-
reotype women and girls as carers, mothers and wives of freedom fighters.
Some text books and teachers assert openly that the only ‘true’ Indians are
Hindu. While a recent update to the curriculum in state run Muslim schools
(madrasas) has allegedly meant that in some states Hindus are now sending
their children to these schools in pursuit of a cheap and well-rounded educa-
tion20, there are fewer madrasa places for girls, and numerous substandard
madrasas, which teach a narrow, sexist curriculum, often subjecting students
to a depressing regime of physical punishment and religious observation.
However, the force of the supposedly secular but not particularly covertly
‘Hinduised’ curriculum, and of discriminatory practices by teachers, fellow
students, and school authorities is not the only threat which Muslim, Sikh,
Buddhist and Christian children have to contend with.
Across the country, thousands of schools are run exclusively by affiliates
of the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS), and other organisations of the
Hindu right. They teach explicitly that Muslims and Christians are invad-
ers, terrorists and anti-national, that they are all destitute migrants from
Bangladesh, or that they are potential rapists and despoilers, waiting to lure
Hindu girls into conversion to their faith. Since Tanika Sarkar (1994) wrote
about this, the phenomenon has grown across the country (Visweswaran
et al., 2009), its material effects visible in the polarisation of youth commu-
nities in places such as Uttarakhand and Assam where there was previously
less historical animosity against Muslims.
Conversely, in the past two decades, and particularly in response to
increasing threats of physical violence in the streets, and epistemic violence
in the curriculum, many Muslim families choose to send their children to
Muslim schools or to schools in predominantly Muslim neighbourhoods.
Avoidance of the risk and stigma of overt and covert discrimination fur-
ther ghettoises minority religious children’s lives. Also, what appear to be
private family decisions about Muslim children’s schooling can be seen
as at least partially produced by entrenched patterns of discriminatory
governance. Manjrekar (2015) confirms that ‘contrary to the claims of the
“Gujarat model” that is firmly embedded in the public imagination and
contributed to the installation of the Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra
Modi as Prime Minister of India in May 2014, Shariff’s21 findings show
that for Gujarat’s Muslims, poverty and educational marginalisation
are being reproduced through exclusionary modes of state governance’
(2015, NP).
Matthan, Anusha and Thapan (2014) observe that for the girls in a
lower middle class Muslim school in Gujarat, the shadow of pogroms and
anti-Muslim communal discrimination acts as an ever-present force which
shapes, not only the language and rhetoric of the school curriculum, but
the aspirations and desires of the teachers and girls themselves. An effort
to forget the violence targeted at the Muslim community in 2002 by the
Modi state government is inscribed in everyday practices, shrugging off
injustice and asserting a national imaginary. Far more than the fear that
the girls admit to feeling at the mention of Modi’s name, the overwhelming
fear on the part of teachers in the school is the possibility that none of the
younger generation of Hindu students in Gujarat will ever question the lies
being taught about Muslims or about history. An often-spoken prohibition
on interacting with Muslims, on inviting Muslim friends home and even
on making Muslim friends in neighbourhoods, is bolstered by government
sanctioned communal segregation of schools and enforced by aggressive
Hindutva organisations. Matthan et al. show how this has led to an invisible
wall between children from the two communities in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.
Elsewhere, children from lower castes and from Scheduled castes and
tribes experience multiple overlapping discourses of discrimination if they
enrol in and attend schools, often starting with an injunction that they
should abjure beef, which is one of their diet staples. School curricula and
teachers’ everyday speech are suffused with propagandist speech against
Muslims and Christians, who are represented as invaders, anti-national
and anti-Hindu; and against Sikhs, who have frequently been typecast or
mocked in national media, and who suffered terrible targeted violence in
1984. Working with (mainly Santal) Adivasi children in two villages in
Jharkand, Marine Carrin (2015) examines the ways schooling for many
of these children from disparaged and stigmatised rural communities is a
further marginalising experience. They already cope in their home environ-
ments with adult alcoholism, expectations of contributions to household
labour, extreme scarcity of food and other resources, and the pulls of radical
activism to combat state violence. At school, children are often humiliated
by Hindu teachers with religious and caste prejudices. School knowledge
seems like an intrusion, which is difficult to integrate into the tribal world,
and for which the children’s own knowledge and values must be rooted out
and abandoned (2015: 356–359). The children find themselves conflicted,
unable to share new knowledge with their families, but also confused by
the distance of what they are learning from the realities of their own lives.
Carrin quotes Puska Hembron, a 13-year-old girl who explains:
Education [should be] not only for us, but for all children. We can
share the dances and the prayers with our parents and our elders, but
we cannot share the school knowledge. Education becomes like a secret
property. We like to have a Munda or a Santal schoolmaster since they
use examples from our life. When Masterji is a diku, a Hindu, he does
not listen to us, he does not answer our questions. (Ibid., 357)
A 12-year-old boy, Sinku Kisku, who is one of Carrin’s informants, explains:
At home, we receive a kind of education (orak parae), we learn how

to behave in the sacred grove, how to respect the elders. In our text-
books, we do not find anything regarding our life, we do not learn how
to cope with scarcity during the rains. What is the use of books when
they do not teach us how to survive? (Ibid., 357)
Carrin’s commentary on her informants’ lives is reminiscent of the experi-

ences of Balagopalan and of Boo, albeit in a different geopolitical context.
While the study is not about the family lives of these children, there is a
sense of children’s interactions with familial adults:
In Jobradaga, the feeling of marginalisation in school is part of a

broader apprehension about the various forms of violence and mar-
ginalisation and fear of leaving the village. Youth from 14 to 16 are
conscious of cultural oppression and feel the need for resistance. They
experience corruption when they cannot find a job because they lack
connections in town. … the boys stress the need to learn new tech-
niques, like irrigation and systematic breeding of cattle. The girls
simply say they learn from their mothers how to transplant and clean
rice. Even as children appreciate the school knowledge, they do not
abstain from criticising the textbooks or perceiving school knowledge
as a kind of violence, which obliges them to censure village knowl-
edge…. Adivasi children feel that while Mundari languages carry the
voices of ancestors, they are no use for finding a job. They under-
stand that knowledge is contextualised, and that Hindi as the language
taught at school, is out of place in the village. They “feel sad” that
tribal languages are associated with poverty. (Ibid., 357, 359)
Carrin’s work is concerned with forms of knowledge – which are enunciated

through formal educational structures and which are despised or relegated.
She follows Ellen and Harris (1997: 9) in defining indigenous knowledge
as ‘local, orally transmitted, a consequence of practical engagement rein-
forced by experience, empirical rather than theoretical, repetitive, fluid and
negotiable, shared by asymmetrically distributed, largely functional, and
embedded into a more encompassed matrix’. This definition offers scope for
analysing complex differences between the propagandist nature of Hindu
and Christian schools and teachers in the region, and the views and val-
ues of local children, but it is problematic insofar as it regards indigenous
knowledge as not being theoretically informed or derived. In this sense,
this reflexive anthropological work on rural childhoods in India displays
what Mignolo and Grosfoguel term ‘coloniality’, and warrants scrutiny. The
assumption that the principles guiding the Adivasis are not theories weakens
the value of the insights Carrin later offers about these children’s participa-
tion in cultural reproduction through shared political concerns with Santal
adults. However, her analysis of children’s responses to the various state-led
or Maoist-guerrilla rhetorics they have to contend with and negotiate, and
their transmission of environmental values and ideas through theatre, song
and poetry remains valid.
Balagopalan (2014: 50) suggests that ‘the use of “culture” as a temporal
placeholder within an evolutionary construction of a normative childhood’
should be discarded so as to abandon ‘a singular understanding of moder-
nity’. This might be transposed to suggest that we should discard the use of
the word “empirical” knowledge as a temporal placeholder within an evolu-
tionary construction of a normative, Western and universal notion of theory.
This is emphatically not a rejection of empirical research and knowledge
and its use in building, contesting or nuancing theory, but rather a counter
to the repeated suggestion that communities (including children) only hold
and act on practical and empirical knowledge rather than holding theories
of the world. Thus, the disciplinary technologies of the academy – which
at various points offer children in the non-West vehicles for narrating their
stories in opposition to the totalising stories of adults in national and inter-
national bureaucratic regimes – are also sometimes potentially misshap-
ing forms of power. Even this brief synopsis of a range of studies provides
significant evidence about, and tools for judging the political and psychic
significance of the many long hours and days of pedagogic labour in Indian
school-children’s lives.
2.2.3 ‘Pedagogised’ childhoods: rules, risks, protection

Discussions of children and childhood in Chapter 1 suggest that formidable
ideological standpoints and the authoritative discourses which accompany
them can legitimise certain ways of being a child and delegitimise others.
Universalised ‘adultist’ perspectives on childhood impacts on research with
street children, as in South Africa, where Judith Ennew (2003: NP) reminds
us that:
[t]wo sets of ideas define the notion of childhood current in the inter-
national community, both based on relatively recent Northern his-
torical constructs. The first separates children from adults, defining
the ideal family as a nuclear unit consisting of protected children and
protecting adults. The maintenance of family form and the state of
childhood is ensured through the existence of bodies of knowledge
and groups of experts who actually or implicitly authorize the state
to advise on the socially defined problems of the adult-child relation-
ship and act in order to eradicate or alter irregular situations. The sec-
ond set of ideas separates adults from children within the production
process. According to this, children cannot be workers, but they do
require a special kind of socialization that cannot be provided within
the family group. Thus education serves a double purpose. It teaches
the skills and habits required by the formal economy, while operating
a process of selection and rejection that reproduces class relations. At
the same time, it provides an additional form of control of childhood
that is external to the private, family world.
In this section, I turn to four substantive studies, which encompass emblem-

atically contrasting narratives in relation to work, leisure and the schooling
of children who are economically affluent and those who are economically
deprived and socially marginal. The emerging conceptual frameworks and
the tools these offer for rethinking universal or context-specific childhoods,
agency and social class will be subjected to further scrutiny and analysis in
Chapters 5 and 6.
In data collected by Hia Sen (2014), both adults and children seem to
make efforts to conform to the sets of ideas described in Chapter 1 as nor-
mative Western childhood, and recast by Ennew previously. In ‘Time-Out’ in
the Land of Apu: Childhoods, Bildungsmoratorium and the Middle Casses
in Urban West Bengal, Sen analyses narrative interviews conducted with 33
lower- and middle-middle class children, parents and grandparents in the
Calcutta suburbs. Her major conceptual frames are German educationist
Zinnecker’s notion of Bildungsmoratorium or ‘childhood as a form of time
out from adult experiences and responsibilities’ (2014: 24); the concept of
agency – and how it is expressed by middle class children in West Bengal;
and Bourdieu’s cultural capital (Ibid., 45). She argues, ‘the conceptualisation
of culture as capital has not only allowed for a more nuanced understand-
ing of distinction between and within classes, but has provided figuratively
speaking a conceptual banquet for cultural theorists of class, incorporating
aspects such as informal social networks of parents… gender [and] emo-
tional capital of middle class parents’ (Ibid., 45).
Frustrated by the fact that ‘social science research, like the media has some-
times shown a readiness to be thrilled by… this “new” India where tradition
is married to modernity’ (Ibid., 59), Sen examines the way middle class chil-
dren’s lives increasingly become intensively pedagogic, domesticated, confined
and contain far more ‘leisure stress’ than their parents’ and grandparents’
lives. Saliently, children who hail from families of the old and established
middle-middle and upper-middle classes are shown to be less likely to be pres-
sured with constant pedagogic demands than their peers from the new middle
classes and in the lower middle classes: ‘Today a frenzied school week where a
12-year-old child has tuitions six days a week, and classical music and draw-
ing at the weekend, is more likely to be associated with families with less
cultural capital’ (Ibid., 139). Further, ‘the lower middle class are confronted
with a disproportionate increase in expenses, in keeping with the need for
electronic appliances… and adjusts their budget by cutting down on other
expenses which are perhaps considered less visible markers of status, like food,
for some’ (Ibid., 66). While leisure refers only to time spent outside school and
not to relaxation, Sen reveals how many of the children had less and less time
for play, or for any kind of unsupervised and unstructured activity, physical or
otherwise. Sen’s study gives some space to media reception and use.
With more than 12 hours of each 24-hour period taken up studying at
school, in tuition or doing homework, Sen’s interviewees express their desire
for exploration and freedom, often through friendship or the use of literature
and television programmes for fantasy, with reading occupying ‘a significant
place amongst undocumented leisure activities’ and television remaining the
‘most domesticated medium’ (Sen, 2014: 187–196). She notes the popularity
of American shows such as Hannah Montana and The Wizards of Waverley
Place and animés like Doraemon (see also Chapter 4) about Japanese chil-
dren and ways in which they engage with magic, and escape punishment
despite the pressures they face at home and in school. Precisely because it is
located within the home, a relatively ‘safe’ and bounded sphere, children’s
television viewing seems to be the least curtailed of their many desired ‘fun’
pursuits. While middle class children recount playing ‘downstairs’ in build-
ing compounds to avoid the dangers of traffic, or being taken to organised
sporting events, girls in particular seem to get less exercise and have less
unsupervised leisure, than their mothers’ generation.
Sen reveals how cultural and economic capital are structures which inflect
practices and values in which ‘childhood is experienced and enacted’. Her
take on agency is that ‘there is a rich spectrum at the intersection of “being
allowed” and “obeying” or protesting, accepting with delight, or doing with
misgiving, between “structure” and “agency”’ (Ibid., 174–5), reinforcing her
argument that ‘it would be misleading to equate the concept of agency with
some image of applaudable resistance of children to adult manipulations
or to that of protest’ (Ibid, 27). If we ask what role television seems to be
playing in these children’s lives, the answer appears to be that, as they do in
many other parts of the world, these programmes – many of them dubbed
in Hindi rather than vernacular languages – are providing children across
classes and in different regions of India with an ‘idea’ of childhood against
which their own experience can be evaluated. They also provide middle
class Indian families with a shared vocabulary of childhood which both
naturalises and universalises the idea of a particular version of middle class
childhood. So, if the zone of urban middle class childhood in India is cross-
cut with overwhelming school labour, aspirational study with tutors and in
and out of school classes, and leisure stress, with surveillance, confinement
to the domestic sphere and escape into imaginary lives fuelled by fiction on
television and in books, what does the zone of urban w orking-class child-
hood in India look like?
2.2.4 W
orking childhoods: economic production,
social reproduction and agency
Sarada Balagopalan’s important ethnography of children, labour and school-
ing, set in post-colonial Calcutta and its environs, opens with an insight that
post-colonial theorists of identity have ascribed to and which the quote from
Ennew (2003) previously also conveys a sense of theoretical intertextuality:
narratives from one part of the world feed into and bolster narratives from
another part of the world. She notes that given the rhetorical imperative
felt across the Indian middle classes in relation to their ‘place in the world’,
both academics and the media construct a narrative about modernity which
suggests the many complex, labour-filled, hungry and ‘marginal’ childhoods
experienced by Indian children reside in a distant, colonial past. She asks: ‘To
what extent does this present moment of ‘urgency’ related to reforming the
lives of marginalised children in the non-west reflect a larger global politics
of “victimhood”? (2014: 7). She analyses discourses about children’s ‘right
to education’ in current policy, suggesting that increased anxieties around
safety and sexual abuse that circulate in relation to children’s lives in the
west form one part of the circulation of a hegemonic and singular ideal of
childhood within global policy discourse. For upper and middle class Indian
children in the global south, this leads to a contradiction in terms: ‘pro-
tected liberation’ within the space of the family-as-disciplinary-technology’
(2014: 52). Bourgeois Indian children’s lives would thus seem to contain
primarily ‘regulated experiences of freedom’.
Balagopalan returns to the question of the quality of the education that
all children legally have a right to, and contrasts what they actually expe-
rience, that is, poorer Indian children’s frustrated, disappointed evaluations
of their ‘subpar education’ with their ‘self-taught learning of lucrative skills’
amongst peers on the streets (2014: 16). Balagopalan notes that for destitute
and urban working class children living in the station environs of Sealdah
station, and attending charitable foundations in the area, schooling plays out
‘as a semi-fictive sphere’. In this sphere, she suggests, the rhetorics of some
humanitarian adults have led some in the charity sector to ‘hyper-idealise
[school’s] transformative capacities’ (Ibid). The testimonies of the children
confirm that multiple modernities exist in India.
Balagopalan critiques philanthropic and charitable constructions of the
charity worker self as perpetually ‘saving’ poorer children from ‘contamina-
tion’. She argues that these poor children in the non-West, whose everyday
lives do not fit the bourgeois ideal are potentially always open to being cast
as victims in an absolute and universal sense, and sometimes as reprobates
in the charity-worker narratives. Their experiences, wants and desires are
often reconfigured to fit a ‘rights-based’ narrative of educational reform to
the point at which they learn to dissemble their kinship, hide, their exercise
of adult responsibility, disguise their real learning (94–96), or their practices
within street networks of peer apprenticeship and solidarity: ‘[t]heir gradual
knowing, because of its existing outside of available scripts of knowledge
and representation, formed instead a liminal space for their emergence into
a new mode of being in the world, of being in the streets, of dwelling in
the unexpected and versatile possibilities it afforded’ (2014: 94). Instead
these children will learn to offer their so-called teachers and benefactors ‘a
credible narrative of neglect’ (2014: 35) and to perform their street child
identities through shows of submission, affection for staff, and cleanliness
which equates to respectability.
At a broader level, in a society ridden with violent caste norms on purity,
an absence of regulation and of mechanisms for imposing bourgeois norms
of cleanliness and self-presentation is one of the benefits of not being in
school. Scavenging and learning about the environment maintains the pos-
sibility of a future outside of back-breaking labour. Contrary to the promise
of education as a great leveller and empowerment tool, Balagopalan argues
that its underwhelming reality has betrayed generations of poor children
and their parents in India. To date, education schemes for poor and very
poor children have failed to deliver even the meagre economic improvements
that child labour apparently does. Nor has it offered the mind-opening,
horizon-expanding, enlightening possibilities of mathematics, liberal arts,
history and science. At the same time, these schools have devalued working
class children’s own knowledge in favour of mechanistic literacy and tried
to teach them to view their cultural practices as ‘corrupt’. The answer to this
devastating betrayal she suggests is, ironically, not a reform that would see
all working class Indian children attending vocational training centres or
technical schools. It is one which could deliver genuinely dignified ‘liberal’
education without enclosing it in frameworks of regulation and surveillance
which show contempt for the children’s home and street lives, knowledge,
and responsibilities, as ‘non-modern’.
In her study of encounters between Western tourists and children who
work as guides and peddlers along the riverfront in the town of Benaras,
Northern India, social anthropologist Jenny Huberman confronts questions
about value, affect, identity and labour: ‘How do children come to be valued
and devalued within the global sphere?’ and ‘How and why have children
increasingly become objects of the tourist gaze’? (2012: 4). Huberman’s
interviews and observations with local seven- to 14 year olds from amongst
the 1.27 million strong population of the town, and with tourists, explore
the interactions between the two groups, and the ways in which the chil-
dren seek ‘to produce themselves as valued and respected subjects’ (8). They
do so through a variety of strategies, including insinuating themselves into
the affections of particular tourists in order to gain special favours as well
as constant and deliberate pestering and embarrassment. Discourses which
are recognisable from the discussions in chapter 1, and contexts which are
specific to global south locations and class formations, clearly play a role in
tourists’ responses to the children who sell fake jewellery, incense, post cards
or guided tours by India’s most famous river. ‘Oscillating between premod-
ern and postmodern conceptions of the child as “miniature adult” … and
Romantic conceptions of the child as a “noble savage” … tourists variously
praised the children for their savvy business sense; scorned them for their
apparent corruption; indulged them for their playfulness and innocence; or
alternatively pitied them as neglected “street kids” ’ (Huberman, 2012: 4).
Understanding Western tourist discourses on Indian childhood also
allowed Huberman to analyse the kinds of guilt, denial, and projection that
global north adults engage in when faced with very poor children in the
global south who do not fit their expectations of humble subalterns or inno-
cent victims. Huberman’s child respondents were usually overtly despised
by most Indian middle class residents and tourists. She was warned off from
interacting with them, and regarded with curiosity or irritation for focusing
on them. The children enacted a range of complex social networks amongst
themselves and with particular adults. These ranged from the ways in which
they implicitly showed solidarity and care for each other when in danger or
trouble; avoided highly competitive pitches in their sales in the knowledge
that all the children had a right to earn enough for survival; domesticated
outdoor space and policed each other’s speech and attire (in the case of
girls); and dealt with adult opprobrium in the case of the boys. However,
the encounters with adult strangers that the children in Benaras take for
granted, and utilise in their survival strategies, are very specific to the con-
text of an internationally known tourist town. Children in more secluded
small towns and villages have little or no interaction with adults who do not
belong to local communities.
Social Geographer Jane Dyson’s work is valuable for its meticulous evi-
dencing of children and young people’s ‘crucial contributions to the agrar-
ian economy’. She argues that they are ‘central players in the agro-pastoral
regime, helping older villagers with agricultural tasks, caring for younger
children, and collecting materials from the forests surrounding the village’
(2014: 22). Dyson’s analysis of a year of observations in Bemni also empha-
sises that working class Indian children between the ages of seven and 17
are resourceful and resilient, develop affective relationships with their envi-
ronment, maintain complex relationships with younger children and adults;
and find moments of fun amongst their labour. Just as Huberman noted
in Benaras with the working children, Dyson finds that children in Bemni
quickly learn, recognise, internalise or cooperate with adult ideologies, cus-
toms and values; while they also commit much of each day to repetitive
and exhausting labour. They do this not because they are passive victims,
but usually in a conscious and deliberate effort to build up their standing
within the wider community, and solidify the adults’ view of their capacities
(Dyson, 2014: 43–54). In relation to their relationship to schooling, Dyson
also notes that many carefully balance participation in primary education
with their household and field labour. Girls are gradually edged out of sec-
ondary schooling due to time pressures, seasonal burdens on adults, as well
as the lack of particularly rewarding experiences at school. Teaching is gen-
erally not particularly inspiring at the village school; beatings and humil-
iation are common; and de-skilling an everyday experience. Despite these
flaws, some children say they like school, while most are ‘highly adept at
managing the twin burdens of accomplishing household tasks and keeping
their school attendance’ (2014: 54).
Notwithstanding occasional romaniticisation of working class children’s
adept negotiation of crushing and unfair circumstances of which I myself
am also, at times, guilty, Balagopalan, Huberman and Dyson add substan-
tially to our understanding of patterns of everyday life. Labour is universal
and some form of schooling at least a peripheral experience in the everyday
lives of working class children in urban and rural India. But what of media?
In Huberman’s and Dyson’s work, media – in the form of songs on the
radio, oral cultures through theatre and songs, and the recounting of stories,
some of which come from films – play some role in the haphazard leisure
of the working class town and village children, though new media are all
but non-existent. A decade later, as will be seen in Chapter 6, the situation
is slightly different, in that a number of adults even in poorer households in
some such locations, have acquired mobile phones. This has changed adult
practices of communication with those in the plains; while television is more
ubiquitous, and watched, even by children and even in remote mountain
regions. However, to all intents and purposes, working-class children, living
in towns and villages, remain so distant and different from the imaginaries
of ‘digital life’ and ‘digital childhood’ constructed by journalists, and in the
policy sessions of development NGOs and academic institutions, that their
everyday lives might as well be on another planet.
2.3 Conclusion
In this chapter, I discussed class as a social formation subject to historical
change, political manipulation and geographical variation. In India, the
intricacy and complexity of class is, of course, tied to capitalism, but it is
also increased by violence, by patriarchy, by the history of colonialism, by
religious sectarianism, by modernisation pathways to development, and by
caste. I drew on studies which suggest that the material and psychic effects of
class – inflected by other aspects of identity – reverberate in every moment of
cultural, social, political and economic life. So class, in a certain sense, brands
us physically and psychically, marking those with slight economic means,
Adivasis, Dalits (particularly women and girls from these groups), in very
distinct and differential ways, bracketing the upper classes and upper middle
classes off in a cocooned Indian equivalent of ‘white privilege’. Food and
dress, posture and gait, gaze and language are all implicated in this segmented
and discriminatory ensemble. Communalism22, spirituality, sacredness, con-
scientisation, solidarity with adults, ecological awareness, sexism and femi-
nism, casteism (or anti-casteism) are sets of ideas and of practices that shape
the everyday routines of children in India from the moment of their birth,
and affect them differentially based on their class. From this, I take class to be
not just a structure which is entirely rigid but also a space and a location. It
works through the material life and embodied experiences of adults and chil-
dren to galvanise and to stifle. This is how I will approach class in relation to
children’s narratives of their media consumption and use in Chapters 5 and 6.
This book is interested in the kind of knowledge that can be produced
about the social world in collaboration with and through attentive listening
to groups of children from diverse local communities (Grosfoguel, 2007;
Mazarella, 2010; Sundberg, 2013; Todd, 2016). Unlike many countries
where the middle classes constitute the largest proportion of the popula-
tion, all of the various segments and categories within the Indian upper and
middle classes add up to less than one-third of the population. Despite this,
the media consumption patterns of these groups – and of children in these
groups – have been studied repeatedly and theorised more thoroughly in
relation to economic growth, mediated citizenship, and changes in the polit-
ical fabric than those of the diverse and varied working classes. Widening
the lens from the middle classes, this chapter drew attention to studies of
children’s lives which attended to the workings of gender, caste and class
in different settings such as school, street, home and field. With a view to
elaborating the material and affective relationship between class and other
aspects of children’s lives, the rest of this book discusses the lives of children
from these groups who are generally well represented, as well as those who
are under-represented or unrepresented in media, in politics and, academic
studies. I do so from a position which acknowledges social and interpretive
worlds as both individually and collectively experienced, constructed and
reproduced. Chapter 3 turns to questions of reflexivity and method.
Notes
1. See Chapter 3. I had thought about excising some of my swearing from note-
books, but have ended up deciding to keep it in. As a researcher, it’s one of the
only ways to deal with the emotions that build up during fieldwork.
2. See passages like the following in this research for Deutsche Bank by R Saxena,
ML Lanzeni, T Mayer - Issues, in 2010: ‘The middle class is not (yet) the biggest
segment of India’s overall population. Given all the attention focused on India’s
middle class in recent years, it is important to keep a proper perspective on its
size and potential purchasing power. While there is no official definition of the
middle class, estimates range from 30 million to approximately 300 million
people. Even using the most generous estimates of the group’s size, the mid-
dle class comprises less than 30 percent of the population. Thus, the rich and
the poor combined far outweigh the Indian middle class.’ The casual yoking
together of the 70 percent supposedly poor and the less than 2 percent rich into
a single category which is not middle class is very problematic. Here it is not
the classification in itself that is misleading but the way in which the juxtaposi-
tion of rich and poor in a single category elides particular claims about groups
not under scutiny. Also sources such as: http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/mgi/
in_the_news/next_big_spenders_indian_middle_class.
3. Even the estimates I use to describe the middle classes in this section probably
over-estimate the middle class in India by as much as a 140 million or 10 percent
of the population. Figures therefore suggest that class groupings are not fixed.
4. http://countrymeters.info/en/India.
5. For a detailed discussion of poverty lines and poverty in India, see Asian Devel-
opment Bank Report 2011 ‘Understanding Poverty in India’. See: http://tinyurl.
com/ADB-povertyinIndia.
6. http://links.org.au/node/18.
7. http://www.adb.org/publications/key-indicators-asia-and-pacific-2015.
8. Of an absolute listed population of 1.21 billion in 2011, census data suggest
that there were 444.2 million (36.7 percent) children between the ages of 0
and 17, or whom 11.5 percent) were under five, and 305.3 million between
six and 17. According to Human Development Report 2015 (Table 9: 240),
47.9 percent of Indian children under the age of five are stunted (2008–2013).
Stunted is defined as being more than two standard deviations below the median
height-for-age ratio of the World Health Organization (WHO) Child Growth
Standards. This is a measure of extreme poverty.
9. https://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/india/.
10. http://www.thenation.com/article/the-strange-true-story-of-how-a-chairman-at-
mckinsey-made-millions-of-dollars-off-his-maid/; Accessed 2 November 2015.
11. h t t p : / / w e b . w o r l d b a n k . o r g / W B S I T E / E X T E R N A L / T O P I C S /
EXTPOVERTY/EXTPA/0,,contentMDK:22397595~pagePK:210058~
piPK:210062~theSitePK:430367,00.html; Accessed 11 November 2015.
12. http://www.indiafoodbanking.org/hunger.
13. http://www.businessinsider.com/hundreds-of-suicides-in-india-linked-to-
microfinance-organizations-2012-2?IR=T; Accessed 9 November 2015.
14. http://psainath.org/maharashtra-crosses-60000-farm-suicides/; Accessed 9
November 2015.
15. ‘The 67.7 million people belonging to “Scheduled Tribes” in India are generally
considered to be “Adivasis”, literally meaning “indigenous people” or “origi-
nal inhabitants”, though the term “Scheduled Tribes” (STs) is not coterminous
with the term “Adivasis”. Scheduled Tribes is an administrative term used for
purposes of ‘administering’ certain specific constitutional privileges, protection
and benefits for specific sections of peoples considered historically disadvan-
taged and “backward”.’ From ‘The Adivasis of India A History of Discrimina-
tion, Conflict, and Resistance’ By C.R. Bijoy, Core Committee of the All India
Coordinating Forum of Adivasis/Indigenous Peoples. PUCL bulletin, February
2003. http://www.pucl.org/Topics/Dalit-tribal/2003/adivasi.htm. See also Uday
Chandra’s careful contextualisation of the complex use and misuse of the term
‘tribals’ in Chandra (2013).
16. http://idsn.org/wp-content/uploads/user_folder/pdf/New_files/India/Dalit_
children_in_India_-_victims_of_caste_discrimination.pdf.
17. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bhubaneswar/Dalit-kids-Untouchables-
and-uneducated-too/articleshow/8079690.cms.
18. http://indiatoday.intoday.in/education/story/dalit-student-thrashed-in-
rajasthan/1/490437.html.
19. The issue here is not about the holding of prayers in religious schools, (which
abound in India; and about which one could have an entirely separate debate),
but about the use of prayer as a naturalisation device for particular religious
communities in supposedly secular government schools. In an interesting case in
the United States, the Hindu American Foundation is incensed that some United
States states have tried to mandate a Christian prayer in public schools, and are
campaigning against this on the grounds that it contradicts the secular ideals of
the United States: http://www.hafsite.org/media/pr/prayer-public-schools.
20. http://www.rediff.com/news/report/why-many-hindu-students-study-in-bihars-
madrasas/20110603.htm.
21. Primary author of the 2005 Sachar Committee Report on the Social, Economic
and Educational Status of the Muslim Community in India: http://www.
minorityaffairs.gov.in/sites/upload_files/moma/files/pdfs/sachar_comm.pdf.
22. In the South Asian context, communalism means the often violent and discrim-
inatory mobilisation and persecution of communities along religious-political
lines; clashes between majority and minority; and the exclusion of minority reli-
gious communities from educational and other opportunities; also the insistence
on distinct identities, customs, spaces and representatives for different religious
communities – is a vastly significant and much discussed area. Cf. Chandra, 1984;
Engineer, 1995; Pandey, 2006. Communalism, while arguably a form of racism
against people of the same ethnicity, is akin to caste discrimination in that it tends
to be policed by threat and atrocity, to burn on propaganda and hate speech, and
to flare into inter-communal violence which affects members of minority com-
munities disproportionately. In India these are Sikhs, Muslims, Christians and
Buddhists, significant numbers of the latter two groups having also ‘converted’
from Hinduism in the past centuries to avoid stigmatisation by the caste system,
only to discover that caste stigma and stratification follows them into their new
religion, while the new religion brings further threats from Hindu chauvinists.
3 Methods and reflection
For those of us working with children and on issues of inequality, a discus-

sion of methods, ethics and reflexivity is an important part of the research
process. In this chapter I explain my methodology and the specific methods
I use – textual analysis, ethnographic observation and interviewing. I also
explain my phenomenological perspective which informs my framing and
interpretation of my data.
3.1 Epistemology
A determination to be guided most of all by how and what children in
different contexts in India said and appeared to feel about communication,
and about the variety of media and technologies with which they inter-
act or communicate, led me towards data-gathering guided by principles
drawn from interpretive phenomenology. Describing the advantages of such
a method, Groenwald (2004: 13) writes that:
‘[a]t the root of phenomenology, “the intent is to understand the phe-

nomena in their own terms – to provide a description of human expe-
rience as it is experienced by the person herself” (Bentz & Shapiro,
1998: 96) and allowing the essence to emerge (Cameron, Schaffer &
Hyeon-Ae, 2001). The maxim of Edmund Husserl was “back to things
themselves!”’.
It seemed to me that there were a variety of ‘things-in-themselves’ that I

could return to, amongst these, the routines and practices associated with
life in the middle and working classes in urban and rural India, the different
forms of media in the everyday lives of children, other tools and technologies
which form part of their everyday lives, and the built or cultivated environ-
ment, relational spaces in which people, media, work and technologies are
imbued with meaning or emotion. Mouton and Marais’s (1990: 12) argu-
ment that individual researchers’ ‘hold explicit beliefs’ and H ammersley’s
view that ‘that the researcher cannot be detached from his/her own presup-
positions and that the researcher should not pretend otherwise’ (Groenwald
2004: 7), also gave me scope to unpick and explore my own beliefs and
Methods and reflection 75
experiences of children, learning, social class and technologies, alongside
those of the children and media practitioners interviewed.
I felt and still feel that even though I gained children’s explicit permission
to write about their lives, there is something troubling about doing this, when
many of them cannot write, and will probably never read what I write. There
were times when I felt the choice to contemplate my data without communi-
cating it was politically sound, since I had neither the resources nor the energy
to travel through the interior of India, through the North-West, the South and
the East, interviewing more and more communities of children, whose experi-
ences were likely to be significantly different from those of the mostly central
and Western locations I had contact with. There is always a possibility that
some readers might stereotype and homogenise India and the notion of Indian
children based on snapshots I construct to contest a different set of stereo-
types. However, Linda Alcoff’s rejection of ‘reductionist theories of justifica-
tion and essentialist accounts of what it means to have a location’ pushed me
to think of this book as a form of dialogue which leaves open the children’s
experiences; and I found myself in agreement with her argument that ‘[t]o say
that location bears on meaning and truth is not the same as saying that loca-
tion determines meaning and truth’ (1991: 7). Alcoff argues that speaking for
is always political and one does not control all of the meanings taken away
from what one says but still retains responsibility for most of the meaning
taken from what one says in a given context. Contexts are thus paramount.
3.2 Research design, data collection, analysis

The central data chapters of this book are based mainly on my own original
qualitative data. These data include:
• Key informant interviews with NGO child rights workers and expert
media producers carried out by myself or Aarthi Gunnupuri for this
study between 2011 and 2015.
• A literature review and survey of content in relation to children’s repre-
sentation in Hindi films by me, and a content survey of available televi-
sion for Indian children carried out and analysed by Aarthi and myself
in 2015.
• Participant observation, observation and extended in-depth interviews
with 76 children including 41 girls and 35 boys aged between nine and
17; plus 20 shorter peer interviews.
Table 3.1 In-depth child interviewees

Ages 9–17 Girls Boys All
Urban/Small town 29 25 50
Rural 12 10 22
All 41 35 76
• I interviewed most of these children on extended research visits between
2007 and 2015; four of the children included here were interviewed in
Gujarat by Chetasi Kane in 2013.
• In 2014, working closely with me in Maharashtra, Drashti Shah, the
daughter of a dear friend carried out 20 shorter peer interviews and
media-diaries with young people from diverse socioeconomic back-
grounds. I have included some of the contextual detail from these in
chapters five and six.
• Photographs of everyday life with children in different communities in
India, taken over the past five years by Javed Iqbal. For ethical reasons,
I have chosen not to use most of the hundreds of photographs taken by
myself and the dozens by Chetasi Kane during the research as most of
them make children and the places they were interviewed identifiable.
Instead, Javed’s photographs add a sense of place and materiality as
they are set in communities very like the ones in which my interviews
were conducted, but without risk of identification to the children who
willingly participated.
• Finally, although I draw on this data only for background reference due
to space constraints, from 2007 onwards I also organised focus groups
with around 40 children and young people from ages seven to 17 in
Northern and Western India.
Choosing qualitative interviews and participant observation as methods for

collecting data seemed intuitive in relation to this subject matter. Telling
stories, reporting stories and listening to stories about people’s lives has been
used in oral histories and ethnography, but undervalued in the mainstream
Euro-American social sciences. It is one of the most important ways in any
research of allowing children – and in particular poorer or less academically
‘trained’ children – to voice their feelings and their shared theoretical per-
spectives about their lives.
Stories provide the necessary context for understanding, feeling, and

interpreting. The ahistorical and decontextualized nature of much law
and other “science” renders the voices of dispossessed and marginal-
ized group members mute. … Delgado (1990) argues that people of
color speak with experiential knowledge about the fact that our soci-
ety is deeply structured by racism. That structure gives their stories a
common framework warranting the term “voice”.
(Ladson-Billings 1998: 7–24)
So, bearing in mind Ladson-Billings’, Delgado’s and Alcoff’s analysis of

much contemporary science and social science as implicated in practices
of erasure, I filled note books with notes during fieldwork when I would
help with homework, discuss their day, play and cook with children, watch
television alone with them or with families, listen to their commentaries
on social media ‘soap-operas’1 as they scrolled and clicked or snapped and
uploaded through their own and others’ lives; or just sat with them listening
to traffic, insects, or to them talk about their day. I wrote extensive com-
mentaries on interviews, and on observations or participant observations
which also captured aspects of these narratives. Interviews generated hun-
dreds of pages of transcripts; I used these alongside dozens of spreadsheets
about televised and film content containing depictions of children or aimed
at child audiences.
In analysing all the data and relating it to each other, I looked first at
the ‘typical’ and secondly at the ‘atypical’. In doing so I was guided by my
research questions:
In what ways do the historical debates which frame childhood in rela-

tion to development, media and communications, and risk, represent
children’s diverse and changing realities, feelings and capacities?
How do academic and practitioner conceptualisations of childhood,
social class, agency and subalternity inflect attitudes and behaviours
towards, and scholarship about, children?
And: What can we learn about media, communication, agency
and social class from an analysis of the ways in which children from
diverse social classes in India encounter, experience, use and commu-
nicate with available tools and technologies?
The importance of not misinterpreting or speaking over children’s stories,

but also answering key questions, while both paramount, seemed at times
consistent and at times in tension. I therefore started my analysis with whole
interviews and transcripts, listened multiple times to stories, for elaborations
on individual everyday lives, and listened again with a focus on sections
of data that spoke directly about the ‘things-in-themselves’ which seemed
of interest or spoke to issues of identity, geopolitics, learning, agency and
subaltern experience on the part of different groups of children. I sought
for evidence of such patterns, absences, confirmations and contradictions in
every narrative, and analysed narratives recounted as evidence which also
contain conceptualisations of identity, theories of knowledge and theories
about the world. You will find these in discussion about family or media
with Tara, Avinesh and Ruhi, with Hemant and Pari, as well as several of the
older children in Chapters 5 and 6.
I also examined media that children were interested in, and looked up
texts mentioned by parents, other researchers and media practitioners. Nev-
ertheless, unlike my work on Hindi cinema in Reading Bollywood, the focus
of this book is not on individual texts or even on the many ways in which
certain genres of media text offer children imaginative and informational
resources. It is more interested in the imperatives, temporalities, routines,
rhythms, spaces and textures of everyday life for children across India, their
different classes, locations and age groups, and in the ways in which they
experience and articulate capitalist practices and structures, media, labour
and social exclusion, compulsion and leisure via different forms of agency.
3.3 Longitudinal research

In all research, things change as research progresses. In the course of a single
interview, people change their minds, decide to reveal things they had pre-
viously hidden, trust where they were first mistrustful and contradict them-
selves. Methodologically, one could interview a child once, at a particular
moment in time, and get a misleading snapshot both of them as a person
and of the society which their talk animates. Or one could interview a child
at 10 and then at 15 (as I did in some cases), and find that they hold different
values, views and reside in different circumstances. Materially, people’s bod-
ies change, grow or decay; we become aware of our sexuality. Children have
accidents and illnesses, and heal from these. They experience bereavement,
communal violence, commuting, and illness or health and these experiences
leave psychic marks. The passing of time in work which lasts over several
years or extends over decades is experienced differentially by researchers, by
research informants and by people involved in other ways with research. It
is also experienced differently by adults and children, by those with social
power and those without. Research is also experienced differently by chil-
dren from different communities, locations and social classes. All of these
distinctions and changes are exemplified in the testimonies of children in
Chapters 5 and 6.
I’ve known some of the children whose stories are included in this book
from the time they were born; and worked with their young mothers, who
were my informants, even before they were born. I’ve re-visited their fam-
ilies and contexts repeatedly. In other cases, I’ve gotten to know a child
well through their siblings or friends whom I’m interviewing and hanging
out with, and then interviewed them at a later date. Many of the children I
worked with on several occasions, usually separated by intervals of years,
and formed friendships with as they grew older; often there was less con-
tinuity with the working-class children than with the middle class ones, as
their lives were so much busier, and some of their work meant they changed
location when an employer let them go or moved. On a couple of occa-
sions my own relationships with working children’s employers’ changed or
deteriorated to such an extent that I could not jeopardise the children by
continuing contact.
One of the issues with trying to get a longitudinal view, however, is that
there is no guarantee of re-interviewing children who are homeless, or live
on the streets, or in seasonal and vulnerable employment situations. For
instance, Mansi (eight years old) and Dheeraj (12 years old) street-dwelling
garbage sorters in my study, were neither willing to be taped nor available
for repeat visits. Our acquaintance started when I met them outside a mall
outside which they were standing around on a Sunday evening. I bought
them some biscuits, and wasn’t going to interview them, as I was in a rush
the day we first met; but Dheeraj asked if I wanted to take a picture of them
with my camera, and I asked him why. So we got chatting and arranged
to meet the next day. I thought they might not turn up and had no way
of contacting them, but they were both waiting for me on the steps where
we’d first met. I never took a picture. But I did give them some food and
money, and found them incredibly friendly and talkative. However, I was
not invited to visit their street dwelling, and though I came back to the place
we met several times, did not see them again. Roughly one-third of the data
in Chapters 5 and 6 is based on single interviews or encounters, and the rest
is based on repeat visits.
3.4 The logic of statistics

Apart from the quantifications necessitated during the content analy-
sis of representations in children’s television programming (coming up in
Chapter 4), almost all original data in this study are ethnographic and qual-
itative. However, in a country with a 1.32 billion strong population2, it was
important to have a sense of the breadth and depth of various phenomena,
such as the occurrence of income inequality, who qualifies as poor, rural and
urban populations and employment figures and child poverty. To connect the
hundreds of original cases examined qualitatively in my research with this
broader picture, I was dependent upon statistics reported in several dozen
different places by organisations such as the Indian Census (and the Socio-
economic and Caste Census) 2011, the International Labour Organisation,
the Asian Development Bank Key Indicators, The World Bank and similar
reports produced from 2005 to 2015 by United Nations organisations.
Based as they are on probabilities and confidence intervals, most statistics
are prone to lack of clarity, and at times outright contradiction. In some cases,
data might be skewed depending on the source. Reports might cite statis-
tics from 2011 in relation to most indicators, but then fall back on statistics
from a report in 2005 on malnutrition of under five year olds. Two reports
produced in the same year by the same major international organisation had
widely differing definitions of the poverty line, and reported different per-
centages of the population living below it. For these reasons, the figures for
proportions of the population who occupy different class groups and occu-
pation types discussed in chapter two are reported as being between two
percentages. This breadth reflects the manner in which the recording and
reporting of statistics about poverty and wealth in India varies even between
respected international sources. What’s above and below a line depends on
where you draw the line.
To a certain extent, where the line is drawn also depends on who is draw-
ing it and how they are affected by it. Cross-checks on income levels between
World Bank, Asian Development Bank and Human Development Reports
and Socioeconomic and Caste reports suggest flaws in the manner in which
some World Bank data on poverty are gathered and reported. So, it is import-
ant to be aware that statistics can be used to support divergent ideological
narratives about poverty. In the Indian context, this often means downplay-
ing the absolute numbers of the impoverished and destitute and playing
up those with mobile phone connections or in the middle classes3. Highly
politicised poverty-line indicators sanctioned by the national government
are rarely challenged in the mainstream media. Notwithstanding the prob-
lematic nature of the figures, the statistics I cite illustrate two things: The
majority of the 1.32 billion Indian population, including children, is rural.
A large majority of the 1.32 billion falls into the category ‘working-class’,
with a significant minority being very poor or destitute by global standards
and by most poverty line definition.
3.5 Content analysis

At the outset in analysing media content relevant to the themes of this book,
I examined a number of Hindi films which include children or are targeted at
them (something which is obviously inadequate when it comes to the repre-
sentations of children and childhood in India’s diverse vernacular cinemas).
Second, in light of changes in children’s television content since the 1970s
and 1980s when there were no dedicated children’s channels, and very few
children’s programmes except on weekend mornings on the national channel
Doordarshan [DD] channels, Aarthi Gunnupuri, an experienced journalist
and researcher, and I carried out a content analysis of available children’s
content in a cross-section of Indian states in the summer of 2015. At this
time, in addition to National Doordarshan and over a dozen regional DD
channels airing round the clock music videos, Hindi films, series and serials
as well as news, comedy shows, sport and other factual programmes which
could be accessed by children with televisions in their homes, there were
approximately 18 children’s television channels on the schedule, across age
groups and a few regional languages.
During the content analysis, we focused on counting variables related
to representation or non-representation of factors such a caste, class, reli-
gion, gender and age, which we felt were of relevance to the discussions of
children and childhood: the intersections of language/region, gender, social
class, religion and caste were also very interesting, though not always easy
to pinpoint given the large portion of non-Indian content we found. We also
noted where programmes originated, and whether they we simply dubbed
into Hindi at fairly low cost, or remade and glocalised in substantive
ways. Working from an inclusive electronic content schedule and from our
detailed notes on examples of children’s content on television (also curated
by YouTube and on the websites of children’s channels), we covered 163
distinct children’s programmes in our content analysis. We report the con-
tent analysis in a series of figures and tables in Chapter 4, which I discuss in
light of the key research questions in this book. The content analysis comes
with several caveats: this is a snapshot taken in 2015 in around one-quarter
of Indian states, and part of a largely privatised and rapidly changing televi-
sion landscape; while we counted instances of presence, we did not have the
time or resources to examines issues such as disability, or the quality of lan-
guage and narratives across the board; children in Chapters 5 and 6 report
watching significant amounts of content made for adults and not shown
on children’s channels; and, in cases where we were explicitly examining
issues such as children’s names and caste, we had a more limited number of
programmes to work from since we noted only the ones produced in India,
which used Indian names.
Some of the tendencies we gleaned from our content analysis – for
instance, the names of key media giants in the child entertainment field –
guided us in our selection of media producers for key informant interviews
about children and representation in India, but in the main we did not inter-
view producers of regional and vernacular content.
3.6 Expert interviews with adults

This study considers children to be experts about their own lives and about
aspects of their families and communities. I, and in some cases my research
assistants, trusted them to tell us things about their experiences and to
explain their interactions with media and communications tools and tech-
nologies, to reflect on the ways in which they contribute to families or relate
to adults and peers. While we spoke to many adults during the study, includ-
ing parents, teachers, informal educators and employers of the children,
I did not position their views beside or in opposition to those of children,
but have tried to integrate their narratives, attitudes and behaviours in the
vignettes of children’s everyday life in Chapters 4 and 5 to thicken descrip-
tion, or add context to children’s narratives. Given the subject matter of this
book, it seemed pertinent to hear the experiences and canvass the opinions
of those considered ‘expert’ in a more conventional sense about the lives
and experiences of children in India. While some of these adults wield con-
siderable power in political-economic and social terms, others do not; and
some were at lower levels in their organisations or fields; and subject to the
caprice of larger organisations or the market. Despite these variations, the
adult experts that Aarthi and I interviewed were uniformly knowledgeable
in their fields, with years or even decades of experience in corporate media,
child rights and criminal justice, education policy, media and film education,
and technical animation and media production. Table 3.2 details the fields
and roles of these adult experts.
All our expert interviewees were offered the option of complete anonym-
ity and confidentiality for themselves and their organisations. Some chose
to be named, and to have their organisations named also, but indicated
where they were speaking as an individual. For reasons of safety or not to
jeopardise future work options, four interviewees chose anonymity and to
Table 3.2 Producer interview details
Type of Producer Field or Role Name or Alias Location
NGO: Humara Child rights and Preeti Prada Bhubaneshwar,
Bachpan public space. Orissa
Campaign Founder and
director
NGO Child trafficking ‘Sheela Patil’. Pune,
and child labour Anonymity requested Maharashtra
for self and
organisation
NGO: Saarthi Media Education. Vijay Pandey Lalithpur, Uttar
Child reporters and Pradesh
Balvani child-based
news magazine
NGO – Pratham Social work: Farida Lambay Bombay,
Children’s Maharashtra
education and
schooling for the
poorest
NGO Learning Film education/ Ruchi Anand. Bihar
through Videos’ schooling. Project
(with Children’s co-ordinator
Film Society of
India)
NGO: Saarthi Child labour and Director: Tarkeshwar Patna, Bihar
child migrants Singh
Media producers Contract Requested anonymity Bombay,
Freelance animation for and assigned aliases: Maharashtra
children’s shows ‘Iqbal Sheikh’ and
‘Vanita Kamat’
Media producer: Vice President, Vijay Subramaniam
Walt Disney India Content and
Communication
Media producer- Executive Director Krishna Desai Bombay,
Turner and Network Head Maharashtra
International CNN and Pogo
Media producer Media education, ‘Phalguni Singh’ New Delhi
Freelance children’s literature Chose to speak
and children’s anonymously
participation
Media producer Editor, Indian Reena Puri Bangalore,
Amar Chitra children’s comic Karnataka
Katha series
keep their organisations confidential. Aarthi and I treated all the expert inter-
views as moments of connection in which both reflection and debate might
emerge if appropriate. We asked them questions about their conceptualisa-
tions of childhood, how they came to be working in the fields they now inhabit,
what it was like to work with and in regard to children of different classes,
child labour, film narratives, media tools and technologies, how they felt
religion, ethnicity, gender, caste and class played a role in their experiences
and everyday work with children; we also asked about the intermediaries,
enablers and barriers to Indian children’s full inclusion as citizens, and the
ways in which they think the circumstances in their field might change or
improve in coming years. We were fascinated by their worldviews, interested
in their accumulated knowledge and receptive to their accounts of experi-
ences in their respective fields. I used thematic codes developed from my
research questions and conceptual framework in relation to media, child-
hood, agency and social class to analyse these interview transcripts. Due to
space constraints, fascinating anecdotes as well as personal details of these
interviewees, professional trajectories have not made it into the book. Fol-
lowing an analysis of media content for and about children in India, Chapter
4 presents excerpts from what were generally hour-long taped interviews.
3.7 Reflexivity and ethics in researching with children

As with all the research I conduct with children under age 18, my paramount
concern was my young interviewees, emotional and material well-being
during and after the research process. I avoided situations or circumstances
which could result in harm to them; for instance, when it became clear that
parents might listen in or use the opportunity afforded by my interview to put
pressure on their children, I withdrew or asked neutral questions. Informed
consent from children meant explaining repeatedly what I was doing, where
my research was going (into a book, and into classroom teaching materials)
and how it might be used or ignored. Children withdrew when they had to,
broke appointments when other exigencies arose, or stopped speaking and
ended interviews if they were called away. I worked with them until they felt
confident of my interest and intensions. Several of them keep in touch with
me as adults and beyond the conclusion of the research.
A staple of ethical procedures is also informed consent from parents and
adult carers. In some cases, this was straightforward and I was invited into
homes with full understanding of what I was doing, observing and research-
ing. However, overall, this was a more complex matter. Many of the children
could not or would not allow parents and/or adult employers to know that
they were participating in my research. Some of them were not in contact
with parents. Some of them trusted one parent (usually a mother) but not
the other, and informing one parent might lead to the other finding out.
In her poignant account of children’s lives in a Bombay slum, Katherine
Boo avers: ‘When I settle into a place, listening and watching, I don’t try to
fool myself that the stories of individuals are themselves arguments. I just
believe that better arguments, maybe even better policies, get formulated
when we know more about ordinary lives’ (2012: 202). The search for bet-
ter arguments, and for better policies based on those, often starts with a set
of heuristic assumptions and hypotheses. Despite the wish to gather data
phenomenologically, I started with some assumptions. Some were rooted
in my own childhood and schooling in Bombay, growing up without media
tools or technologies, yet surrounded by music from loudspeakers, songs on
television, school friends discussing film stars; others began with my teach-
ing career more than two decades ago, and in my experiences with young
audiences of Hindi films as a researcher. The idea that working class chil-
dren usually have their lives subsumed under the needs and wants of middle
class ones, and that research needs to pay attention to their psychic life and
desires just as one might do with middle and upper middle class children
threads its way through a number of ethnographies, but has failed to make
significant changes in the kinds of questions asked by large-scale survey
research.
As Kovats-Bernat (2006) discusses in his ethnography of street children
in Haiti, researcher ‘detachment’ is particularly problematic in situations of
unrest, danger or injustice, and particularly in research involving children.
On several occasions during my fieldwork, I witnessed incidents of violence
against children and found it difficult to stay outside the situation, to not
remonstrate with the adults, even in order to retain access to them. The fol-
lowing excerpt from one of my field notebooks illustrates the problematic
aspects of doing participant observation in settings where there is routine
violence against vulnerable young participants, but where access to the field
site or to that participant depends on colluding or pretending not to see
and be shocked by this violence; and in fact treating it as commonplace and
expected practice.
Prerna. Age 14. August 2012

Today I went to visit B in her flat to drink tea as a pretext for seeing
how Prerna is getting on since our last interview. B’s sons are out and B
welcomes me, asking advice about Engineering colleges which I know
nothing about and chatting away. I find it hard to hide my dislike, so
it is good that she is unobservant. We are roughly the same age, but
I catch myself almost calling her ‘aunty’ to distance us. At 3.45pm she
calls Prerna to make tea. Prerna doesn’t come immediately. I suspect
she might have fallen asleep as she has told me she is prone to do in the
afternoons. So I anxiously tell B that I’ve just had some tea. She insists
that I ‘take some more’ and then rises to find Prerna, making rude
comments about this young maid under her breath. I hear a thump
from the kitchen and something metal clangs. I jump up and go to
see and Prerna is crouching on the floor bleary eyed, and B is literally
raging, clutching at her ear, her hair, yelling abuse, then turning to me
saying “Disgusting, lazy [kaamchor]. No time for work. Always sleep-
ing”. Prerna wakes up at 5.30 am in the morning to prepare breakfast
for the boys and pack their lunches, I now feel the urge to raise my
voice at B and pull her off Prerna. Instead I narrow my eyes, and look
out of the balcony, while Prerna rises and pulls her chunni around
her shoulders, lights the gas and reaches for tea leaves. B says, ‘Come,
here’ and sets a chair for me on the balcony. Then she excuses her-
self and goes to the bathroom. I put a hand on Prerna’s shoulder and
she touches it. I whisper ‘Should I say something’ and she shakes her
head. Then the toilet flush goes and I retreat to my chair. I’m always
surprised that Prerna doesn’t cry. As B and I are drinking our tea,
the phone rings, and without being asked Prerna gets it. B then again
excuses herself and has a conversation in the other room. I pour half
my tea into Prerna’s cup and she sits on the step to drink it. Suddenly
she says ‘I am going home’. I ask if she means to her village, for a vaca-
tion. She says ‘I’m not coming back’. Later she tells me that S, the older
brother in the family who is 16, has started looking at her ‘in a cer-
tain way’, ‘with meaning’. She has decided to leave and contacted her
father. Although they need her income, their wish to be able to get her
married is greater. (Prerna has an ambivalent relationship with S, sym-
pathising with him when his mother attacks him, sometimes calling to
him for support when she needs it. She is adamant that he has never
harassed or touched her. She is just not willing to take the chance).
Drawing clear distinctions between observation and participant observation

in these circumstances is misleading. There were occasions such as this one
in which the very dynamics of the situation meant that I was constrained
not to participate or that I was a participant observer with children and
an observer with adults. I also positioned myself as an ‘observant partici-
pant’ (Moeran, 2007) and not a participant observer in moments of social
inequality and injustice that created severe ethical dilemmas. Had I written
this fieldwork up as an ethnography of employer-employee relations (as Ray
and Qayum, 2009 did with their fieldwork) or of adult-child relationships
(as Sen, 2014 does), I would have been constrained to spend as much time
with the employer/adults, to enter into their concerns and value frameworks
directly, and to try give their subjectivity space in the narrative. Instead,
here, both out of solidarity and because of the key goals of my research,
I observed repulsive behaviours and noted them without contextualising the
adults’ persistent complaints against the child to which I had, as part of the
‘payment’ for gaining access, to listen.
Here, as in the example from my work with Dhanish in chapter two, the
complex sensibility of Prerna suggests a moral ecology at play beneath the
surface of other economic and social employer-employee and adult-child
relationships in modern India. Prerna’s vulnerability to the predations of
her middle class employers and to their self-centredness and violence exists
across India regardless of mine, or anyone else’s, presence or recording of
these phenomena. Once recorded, the imperative to do something, to take a
stand, to push back increases. In some instances, my presence deterred what
might have been more aggressive actions from adults. These changes to the
‘natural’ research environment are not surprising. In other instances, just
my presence, just conversations with me, were problematic for the children
experiencing these things, because they began to view themselves, and their
employers, through my eyes, or at least as they imagined I was seeing them.
In these situations, I opted to share details of my own childhood, including
punishments and humiliations, and to allow them to talk through their feel-
ings. Repeat visits and in-depth interviewing as a method allowed for both
conceptual and affective explorations and reflections.
In a seminal paper, ‘The right to be properly researched,’ Beazley, Ennew
and colleagues summarise a research guide and introduce a special jour-
nal issue on this topic. As discussed in Chapter 1, they point out that
‘some key concepts for child-research both North and South, such as ‘the
child’, ‘the adolescent’, ‘youth’ and ‘the girl child’, are both essentialist and
power-driven’. Further:
Powerful adults construct ‘the child’, but powerless children are unable
to construct ‘the [equally genderless] adult’. ‘The girl child’ is problem-
atic, while ‘boys will be boys’. ‘Adolescent’ and ‘youth’ are constructed
(largely in the North) as locations of problems, and, like childhood,
exported South through ideological imperialism (Boyden 1990). It
seems not to matter that children in the South do not pass through
Piagetian developmental stages (Burman 1996) or that adolescence is
neither recognised nor regarded as the location of existential crisis
and raging hormones … What happens is that the diverse gazes of the
South are deflected into uniformity by the Northern terminology of
international agencies.
(Beazley et al. 2009: 367)
There are ways of displacing and revealing the ideological basis of the con-
structions outlined critically here. Waksler (1986: 71), for instance, argues
that ‘[s]eeing children as “nothing special” but simply as actors in the social
world makes it possible to draw on social science resources not usually
applied to children’. Like the observation made previously, this was advice
which had significant purchase in my work with children during the research
I conducted over the past decade. In the same vein, Waksler (Ibid.) also
reminds us that ‘[r]outinely, in seeking to understand children, traditional
sociology has either turned to psychological theorists (especially Freud,
Erikson and Piaget) or elaborated on sociological theories of socialization.
As a consequence, the sociological study of children has neither benefited
from nor contributed to sociological understanding in general but has for
the most part been an independent sphere of study’.
Concepts such as agency and labour are being theorised in relation to
adults. They are sometimes treated in a rigid and unwieldy way. One either
labours or is unemployed. A person has or a group has agency, and they use
their ‘voice’, or they do not. Agency and voice are usually defined in relation
to participation, resistance and civic action; or they are defined in relation
to consumption and individuality. Those who are said to have no agency
appear to be suspended below citizenship, sometimes even in a realm which
is not quite personhood. One aspect of my research treats children ‘just like
adults’ when it comes to issues of agency, action and meaning. However, I
also distinguish between children, between girls and boys of different ages,
classes and castes, examining the ways in which their vulnerabilities, tenden-
cies to conformity and resistance are changed by circumstances beyond their
control. My analysis examines the ways in which this treatment of children
as just like adults in all their complexity and difference might yield insight
into how we modify or how we apply concepts such as agency in relation
to adults.
This chapter has outlined some of the ways in which research choices,
power and meaning criss-cross each other. The methods utilised in this
study are influenced by work in reflexive observation (Ginsburg, 1997;
Pillow, 2003; Ruby, 1991) and interviewing (Greene & Hogan, 2005;
Kvale, 1996; Oakley, 1981). Here I contextualised the relationship of my
methods to research questions which run through the book and set out the
quasi-phenomenological perspective taken up in eliciting and interpreting
children’s attitudes and experiences. Questions about imbalances of power
in research between children and adults, academics and impoverished
communities will also guide discussions of interviewee narratives in coming
chapters.
Notes
1. On several occasions, middle class girls jokingly dubbed Facebook, Instagram
and Snapchat ‘soap operas’ and ‘melodramas’ of their contemporaries’ lives,
explaining that few fiction programmes could compare with these ‘reality
shows’ as friends courted and split, fought and competed for attention.
2. http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/india-population/.
3. On occasion, the opposite also occurs in position papers or presentations to
donors and the numbers of girls who are married off by age 12, or children who
live on the streets (as opposed to in slums) are misreported. While this may well
be seen as a justified strategy in trying to create awareness and concern amongst
donors, the real numbers are so significant in themselves that such vagueness
and overestimation can only damage the cause in the long run. While wishing
to draw attention to the magnitude of the numbers of people who fall into the
Indian working classes, we should be wary of classifying these groups and the
children therein as a single monolithic mass of ‘the poor’.
4 Mediating Indian childhoods
Texts and producers
4.1 Introduction
It is now generally accepted within the new sociology of childhood that there
exists not a single universal childhood (see extended discussion in Chapter 1),
but many widely different childhoods (James, Jenks & Prout, 2004; Katz,
2004; Wells, 2014). However, the supposition that these differences fall along
geographic lines between the global north and the global south, or the ‘devel-
oped’ and ‘developing’ worlds, still shapes some research agendas and out-
comes (cf. Bartlett, et al. 2013; UNICEF digital agenda1). Additionally, as
discussed in Chapter 1, the notion of a universal childhood, or something
closely approximating this, which relies on ages and stages or developmen-
tal scales, is still commonplace for some professionals working with children
(Davey & Davey, 2014), while others draw on aspects of both old develop-
ment models and new sociology of childhood in relation to resilience. By con-
trast, in chapters 1 and 2, I set out an alternative framework for discussing
children, childhood and media in India. Both children and media use should
be located within a historically and geographically specific, intersectional
matrix that takes account of gender, age, caste and class. Affective and embod-
ied experiences of class should be used to situate both experiences with and
meanings made from media and communications tools and texts. This frame-
work also pays attention to the fluid, complex and ephemeral ways in which
children’s agency manifests itself through decisions, actions and inaction that
may be neither directly compliant nor directly resistant to adult values and
authority structures. With this framework in mind, in this chapter, I turn to
the second part of a central research question: How do practitioner conceptu-
alisations of childhood, social class, agency and subalternity inflect attitudes
and behaviours towards, and scholarship about, children? In answering this
question, I use a thematic content analysis to explore the extent and man-
ner in which international, national and regional audiovisual media (primar-
ily Bollywood and children’s television) represent children and childhood in
India, and address differences between the ways key producers of content
for and about children, and stakeholders such as educational or child rights
NGO workers, conceptualise children and childhood in India. The concluding
section highlights commonalities of theme and interest in the representation of
childhood and concerns across fiction and nonfiction genres, media producers
Mediating Indian childhoods 89
for large media conglomerates both national and international, and media
productions from Japan, India, Europe and North America. These include a
resilient sense of otherness, difference and absence in the representation of
working-class and rural childhoods and a resolute avoidance of representa-
tion of issues to do with extreme poverty, religious intolerance, adult violence,
caste discrimination and caste violence, sexuality, sexual harassment, children’s
labour, romantic relationships and political choices in children’s lives. This last
set of issues, while generally absent in media representations of childhood, is
poignantly present in the accounts of child labour and trafficking given by
some of the expert interviewees in this chapter, and in accounts by lower mid-
dle class and working class children in chapter 6. These issues are also present
in the Hindi films which are ubiquitous in urban Indian children’s lives.
4.2 Children in Hindi films

Children in Hindi films have been theorised, by the relatively few scholars
who have shown an interest in them, to be a barometer of middle class
India’s relationship to nation, to marginality and conformity. These have
changed in line with changing national and social ideals and visions (Banaji,
forthcoming; Chattopadhyay, 2011; Creekmur, 2005; Sen, 2011). Hindi film
narratives have ranged from depicting an inclusive post-independence imag-
inary where citizens from all walks of life are encouraged to sublimate their
individual desires to those of the new Indian state, to the predominance of
contemporary urban consumerism and banal Hindu nationalism. Chatto-
padhyay writes that ‘discourse on childhood in India underscored the fact
that the family was envisaged as a realm that played the most valuable task
of shaping the individual’s life’ (2011: 139). In line with this, seniority was
and continues to be respected; fathers were disciplinarian and assumed to be
the supreme authority; sacrifice and duty were expected of all children and
women, with girl children confined to the domestic sphere; and boys associ-
ated with the nation and its place in the world. In the 1970s and 1980s ‘the
metaphor of orphaned, marginal, deprived boyhood … and correspond-
ingly vengeful male protagonists are parts of the mirror of the postcolonial
nation state’ (2011: 145). Creekmur (2005) suggests that the past is always
painfully, even traumatically, present, since ‘[c]hildhood in Hindi cinema is
generally staged as a primal scene projecting the adult protagonist’s identity,
actions and fate [and c]haracters in Hindi films are persistently wounded
yet driven by their childhood pain, drawing a direct causal – and conscious
chain between the suffering of youth and the acts of adulthood’ (2005: 350).
In Chattopadhyay’s view, the films of the 1990s break radically with
previous periods of representation where male children in particular bore
the burden of a nationalism laced with the Nehruvian visions of social jus-
tice and collective development (also cf. Brosius, 2010; Ganguly-Scrase &
Scrase, 2009). Boot Polish (1954) and Ab Dilli Dur Nahi (1953), which
detail poor children’s passionate struggles to survive and care for each other
in the face of economic and social adversity, are often cited as examples of
that vision. Instead, post-1991 with the political push towards de-regulation
of the media, ‘the neoliberal hero has no history’ (2011: 148). With increased
foreign direct investment in television, satellite channels have multiplied by
the month, and with this burgeoning the national censor board’s control,
and the contours of media content, changed. The number and significance
of development messages on national television has diminished; fun-loving,
fashion-conscious adolescent heroes of American and European series and
sit-coms are ever more present on Indian screens. Hindi films increasingly
‘portray what can be considered an infantilized male protagonist who is
oblivious of his own past’ (2011: 148).
The recent tendency towards adult protagonists who behave in what
might be thought of as juvenile ways – falling over, stammering, sucking on
lollipops, dressing in dungarees, onesies and other accoutrements of teenage
fashion – has led to a further resistance to representing and viewing child-
hood for and in itself. In many Hindi hits of the 1990s and thereafter, child
actors are replaced by young adults who act out a pantomime of a very
particular type of childhood – making friends, fighting shyness, learning to
dance, roller-blading through their bedrooms, which are piled from floor to
ceiling with stuffed toys, train sets, the accessories not just of childhood, but
of urban, Western, middle-class childhood. They exchange chocolate, play
practical jokes, discover the erotic and the romantic across a line that looks
like the border between childhood and adolescence familiar in Hollywood
movies, but cannot be, as they are evidently in a form of extended adoles-
cence that is unrelated to their physical maturity.
A small number of Indian directors have started making films about
childhood or even marginal childhoods which are influenced by the I ranian
and French new waves’ child-centred vision (Santosh Sivan’s Halo, Ashvin
Kumar’s The Little Terrorist, Vishal Bhardwaj’s Makdee, Aamir Khan’s
Tare Zameen Par and Amole Gupte’s Stanley Ka Dabba). However, apart
from Tare Zameen Par, none of these films had much box office success as
films fielding mainly adult actors. They attracted mainly urban audiences,
particularly in mall cinemas, and amongst young downloaders. While
children still appear intermittently as devices in a few commercial Hindi
films – go-betweens for adult lovers (a role epitomised by Sana Saeed’s
character little Anjali in Kuch Kuch Hota Hain, who unites her father with
his lost love), the comic jester who foresees romance or disaster (Kunal
Khemu, delightful sidekick ‘Raju’, who chaperons the adult lovers in Raja
Hindustani during their burgeoning romance), the pretext for adult vio-
lence (Utraksh Sharma who plays Tara’s half-Pakistani son in Gadar: ek
Prem Katha) or adult quests (Parzan Dastur, in Parzania, representing the
actual story of a boy missing the anti-Muslim Gujarat pogroms of 2002),
they are not protagonists with much autonomous agency.
Children have never dominated the narratives of Hindi cinema; nor have
they been central targets as audiences, despite the longstanding efforts of
organisations such as the Children’s Film Society of India. On the whole,
they continue to be marginal across the big screen. Yet the nature of their
marginality has changed. For instance, Meheli Sen (2011) suggests that the
economic precarity and cultural angst felt by many adults in neoliberal
India is embodied in the unbalanced, traumatised, neglected and undead
children of new Hindi horror films. Of course, children populate only a
small minority of Hindi horror films, comprising the audience of even fewer.
It is not appropriate to draw conclusions from this account about how chil-
dren might see themselves reflected in such ghosts and demonic spectres.
However, it is noteworthy that some child stars of both big and small screen
command sizable incomes and appear on billboards and in commercials as a
testament to middle-class children’s pester power in household purchasing.
Even here, there is a hidden story of economic change.
In a chapter dedicated mainly to biographical narratives of child per-
formers in Hindi cinema over the past 60 years (Banaji, forthcoming) I sug-
gest that while some child performers in the 1950s and 1960s did become
famous for their representations of iconic or prototypical child characters,
and were much adored by the film-going public of the day, early child per-
formers did not enter the industry with the aim of becoming stars. Parents
acting as managers were often more concerned with the income generated
through repeat performances; the content of particular roles were of no
great consequence. Individual performances were hit and miss. Child-like
authenticity was something that emerged rather than being prescribed by
directors. Whereas in the 1950s and 1960s, it was common for child per-
formers to depict children who lived in humble circumstances, to embody
the early lives of heroes and heroines in poverty or to represent destitute or
lower middle class orphans – implicitly aligned with most audiences’ own
realities in postcolonial India, and with the idea of a collective experience –
it is now rare to find a mainstream Hindi film with a reflexive depiction of
childhood in working-class or lower-middle class households. Hindi film
directors like the ones I listed previously, who take commercial risks by
centring their films around child protagonists, tend to touch on intergener-
ational and wider social conflict only in tangential or metaphorical ways.
4.3 Children’s television content: a snapshot from 2015

When my research assistant and I grew up in India, there were no dedicated
children’s channels, and very few children’s programmes except on week-
end mornings. There were, in fact, only two national channels, DD1 and
DD2. As the price of televisions was still relatively high and the economy
was highly controlled, many lower-middle class families had no television
at home, and relied on neighbours for their favourite programmes. Seminal
ethnographies by Arvind Rajagopal (2001) and Purnima Mankekar (1999)
elaborate the public and private, political and civic repertoires of Indian
television, and the consequences of the mainstreaming of television as an
entertainment and communication medium watched by adults and children
alike. Both Mankekar and Rajagopal call attention to the Hinduisation,
politicisation and sexism of the popular televisual public sphere. They show
how nationalist development messages were played out on the bodies of
women in animations and sit-coms. Entertainment education in the 1980s
had set the scene for the family as the archetypal sphere of development
messages, and women’s positions within the family were repeatedly circum-
scribed by vague, yet alarming, messages about ‘tradition’.
At the time of our final sampling in summer 2015, in addition to National
Doordarshan and over a dozen regional DD channels airing round-the-clock
music videos, Hindi films, series and serials as well as news, comedy shows,
sport and other factual programmes which could be accessed by children with
televisions in the their homes, there were approximately 18 children’s television
channels on the schedule, across age groups and a few regional languages2.
A selection of the channels available primarily in English and Hindi includes:
Animax, Cartoon Network, Discovery Kids, Disney, Disney XD, Hungama,
Nick, Pogo and Sonic. Most of these channels are targeted at a rather wide
age range. For instance, Pogo claims to target ages between four and 15 year
olds3, Discovery Kids says it is aimed at four-12 year olds4, Animax targets
‘teens’ and adults aged from 15 to 405, Disney creates special weekend con-
tent targeting children and adults in the age group of 4–346. Since content
for two to four year olds has to be quite specific, there are a small number of
dedicated channels aimed at this age group. These ‘junior’ channels include
Disney Junior, Nick Jr. and Baby TV. Many of these channels are owned by
the major networks. In this vein, Disney owns: Disney, Disney Junior, Disney
XD and Hungama; Nickelodeon owns Nick, Nick Jr. and Sonic; while Turner
International owns two of the most successful and widely viewed channels,
Pogo and Cartoon Network. Our analytic focus during the content analysis
was on issues of representation (and absence/exclusion) which we felt were of
relevance to the discussions of children and childhood in previous and coming
chapters: the intersections of language/region, gender, social class, religion,
and caste were paramount. We report these basic data in a series of figures and
tables below with the health warnings given in Chapter 3.
In comparison to the number of TV channels available for adults in India –
236 – the number of children’s channels was limited – only 16 in 2015. An anal-
ysis of the in.com TV schedule reveals that of 236 channels for adults, 140 were
primarily entertainment, 49 music, 23 documentary, 18 sports and six food and
lifestyle. While most of these are accessible to and viewed by a usually middle
class subset of children under the age of 17 (as discussed in Chapters 5 and 6),
the contrast with the number of children’s channels was stark: we found only 16
children’s channels. High-quality children’s shows, particularly animated shows,
are expensive to produce, costing in the region of 20 lakhs per episode, despite
the low wages and precarious conditions of local animators7. For this reason,
licensing international shows is the most common strategy for children’s chan-
nels. International networks like Turner, Nickelodeon and Disney produce their
own shows outside India or have international broadcast rights to shows they
may have aired in other countries. These shows are ‘recycled’ in India at low
distribution costs. Illustrating this, Figure 4.1 shows the country of origin of
our sample of children’s programmes aired in India.
Origin of Children's TV Programmes in Sample

Australia 2
Belgium 1
Canada 9
China 5
France 4
India 23
Japan 19
Pakistan 1
South Africa 1
UK 19
USA 42
Can't Determine 37
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
Number of Shows
ountry of origin of children’s television programmes (N = 163). Time

Figure 4.1 C
period of analysis: programmes aired during a week in June 2015.
4.3.1 Target Audience

Figure 4.2 depicts the target age groups of various shows analysed in this study.
Target Age of Children's TV Programmes in Sample
2-5 35
5-8 68
8-14 56
Adults 4
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
Number of Shows
Figure 4.2 Target age of viewers on children’s television in India (N = 163).
We collected data on the target age of viewers based on industry sources,

programme blurbs or channel blurbs and supported by programme reviews
in newspapers. With two to five year olds catered for by a relatively large
number of shows (35), and a fairly even distribution of shows targeting
five to eight year olds (68) or eight to 14 year olds (56), there are only
four shows which target 14 to 17 year olds. The knowledge that 14 to 17
year olds will be watching adult content may reduce incentives to produce
dedicated content for them. However, the difference between the themes
of the shows produced for a target audience of 8 to 14 year olds, and the
themes of much adult-oriented content on Indian television suggests a the-
matic and conceptual jump between these two types of content that younger
teenage viewers negotiate by beginning to watch things which are consid-
ered entirely ‘inappropriate’ by their adult family members. Discussions
with 12 to 14 year olds (in Chapters 5 and 6) reveal that they frequently do
not identify themselves as the target audience of the shows supposedly tar-
geted at them, and often watch content created for adults, including comedy
programmes, murder mysteries like C.I.D, the news, and Hindi films with
18 certifications, or suggested age ratings.
4.3.2 Genre
Since many children’s television shows aired in India belong to more than one
genre, the data for types of shows must be read with some caution. However,
the popularity of the adventure-mischief genre in India stands out in Figure 4.3.
Genre of Children's TV Programmes in Sample
Mystery 2
Drama 9
Comedy 20
Adventure-Mischief 49
Acon-Adventure 26
Educaonal 18
Sporng 2
Films/One offs/Can't Determine 37
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Number of Shows
Figure 4.3 General distribution across genres within sample (N = 163).
We named and attributed the genres based on programme descriptions in

blurbs and reviews. Our aim here was show the most significant clustering
of genres which are popular and thought to appeal to children. It seemed
to us that the clustering around Adventure-Mischief-Action was highly
indicative of thinking about ‘what children want’ and ‘who children are’ as
revealed by producers (see section 4.4). Far more should be written about
the generic complexities – and in particular the pedagogic coding, narrative
strategies, interpretive repertoires and imaginative invitations of the many
family and adult serials and films watched, as well as programmes such
as Ninja Hattori, Doremon, Roll no. 21, Burkha Avenger8 or Victorious.
Here only the most basic patterns in relation to language, gender, caste and
class will be highlighted to draw attention to ways in which seemingly triv-
ial products such as children’s television programmes reproduce and inflect
extratextual social tendencies, including discrimination.
4.3.3 Language
While the number of regional channels in India increases year on year, as
well as the number of dubbed shows offered by the national channels, Hindi
dominates the children’s content landscape, closely followed by English.
Disney offers channels in English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. Similarly, Turner
International offers programming – though not whole channels – in the
same languages. Krishna Desai, Executive Director and Network Head,
Turner International (see section 4.4) claimed that ‘Cartoon Network and
Pogo are mass channels in the country and [though] they have content avail-
able in English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu, about 60 percent of viewers pre-
fer to watch the channel in Hindi’. Regional language children’s channels9
include Chintu (Kannada, the majority language in Karnataka), Kalainagar
Chithiram and Chutti TV (Tamil, the majority language in Tamil Nadu) and
Kochu TV (Malayalam, the majority language in Kerala). Of these, Chintu,
Kochu and Chutti TV are owned by the Chennai-based Sun TV Network,
a major player in the Indian national media landscape. Some producers of
children’s content indicated during expert interviews that providing content
in regional languages is a step towards being more diverse and inclusive.
Discussing this issue in relation to comic books which are also now an ani-
mated TV series, interviewee Reena Puri, from Amar Chitra Katha Media
argues that ‘translations are important’ because most children ‘do not speak
or read English’.
4.3.4 Indianness and gender

Since most of the shows are licensed from international sources, India as
a nation is not usually represented overtly. Even in shows produced in the
country, Indianness is symbolised mainly in the way clothes are worn or via
language (glocalised English versions use Indian English and local accents).
There are, however, dozens of subtle markers which suggest a particular ori-
entation towards the nation and to national pride. In particular, animations
with quasi-mythological characters frequently feature villains who appear
to be from other races, and are defeated by the Indian male child or ani-
mated protagonists. Humour, generosity, physical strength, bravery, honour,
tenacity, hope and inspiration are just some of the characteristics associ-
ated with the young Indian male protagonists in these programmes, while
most of the girls and young women are shown as being loyal and loving,
funny and kind-hearted, delicate, able to manipulate parents through their
cute ways and often in need of saving or wooing by boys and young men.
Open a random moment in The Adventure of King Vikram, for instance,
and he will be saving a damsel in distress, saying something like ‘Aap dukhi
mat hoiye devi, hum aapki raksha karenge’/‘Don’t be distressed, divine lady,
I will protect you’.
Of the 163 children’s programmes captured in one week in June 2015 on 13
privately owned channels, approximately 23 originated in India or were Indian
co-productions. Excluded from this list are programmes such as Haddi
Mera Buddy and Dora Yude Prayanam made outside India but dubbed in
an Indian language. Several of the unclassified programmes were one-off
showings of films that originate in India, but, since they are not series or
serials, they were excluded.
In the shows listed in Table 4.1, the term ‘originating in’ needs to be explained.
For instance, Best of Luck Nikki is a Disney India ‘original’ and has Indian
characters and locations but is based on the American teen situation comedy
Good Luck Charlie; the much-touted art and crafts programme, Art Attack is
an Indian remake of the United Kingdom-based show, while The Suite Life of
Karan and Kabir is a straightforward Disney India remake of The Suite Life of
Zack and Cody. Protagonists of Karan and Kabir, and Best of Luck Nikki tend
to get their own way with parents, to have plenty of leisure time, and to acquire
experiences and consumer goods through their interactions with others.
Table 4.1 O
f 163 shows analysed on 13 channels during one week in June 2015,
approximately 23 originate in India
Name of the Show Channel
Roll No 21 Cartoon Network
The Adventure of King Vikram Disney XD
Ishaan: Saponon Ko Awaaz De Disney
Best Of Luck Nikki Disney
The Suite Life Of Karan and Kabir Disney
Art Attack Disney
Hero: Bhakti Hi Shakti Hain Hungama
Little Krishna Discovery Kids
The Adventures of Tenali Rama Discovery Kids
Akbar Birbal Discovery Kids
Motu Patlu Nickelodeon
Vir: The Robot Boy Hungama TV
Galli Galli Sim Sim (co-production) Pogo
Chota Bheem (marathon) Pogo
Shaktimaan Pogo
Ammu and Friends Chintu
Amar Chitra Katha Chintu
Pyar Mohabbat Happy Lucky Zee Q
Aayu Zee Q
Bandbudh Aur Budbak Zee Q
Karadi Tales Zee Q
Detective Rajappa Kochu TV
Villali Veeran Kochu TV
Source: our own analysis of industry sources, websites and programme reviews.
A far higher proportion of children’s television shows in our sample have
male human protagonists (42 percent) compared to female human ones
(10 percent) or gender neutral and mixed gender ones (9 percent) with the
rest (40 percent) devoted to animals and animated puppets or creatures.
Stark contrasts in relation to numbers of depictions of girls and feminin-
ity, and boys and masculinity are evident. An overwhelming number of the
shows produced specifically in India have male human protagonists, or
animal and/or fantastic ones that speak in male voices. The shows set in
fantasy settings use personified or fantasy objects/animals as lead charac-
ters. Fantastic leads are rarely gender-neutral and usually have some gender
association, even if only via the use of names. Some of the rare nationally
distributed shows with female protagonists include Sofia the First on Disney
Junior, Burkha Avenger on Zee Q, Winx Club and Dora the Explorer on
Nick Junior and Dora Yude Prayanam on Kochu TV. Hannah Montana was
also a stable favourite in the mid- to late 2000s, while Victorious became
popular with teenage girls but not with their parents. Again, to gain access
to these shows, children must have access to paid subscription bundles
which include these channels.
Other
(Animals,
Male
Puppets,
41%
etc.)
40%
Mixed
Gender Female
9% 10%
Figure 4.4 Distribution of children’s programme protagonists by gender.
4.3.6 Religion
Meanwhile, amongst the shows originating in India, the majority of the
central protagonists seem to be Hindu (extrapolating from names, which
of course are occasionally applicable across religions) and a small minority
are Muslim. Exemplifying this tendency in our sample for Indian children’s
television programmes to concentrate on central characters with recognis-
ably Hindu identifying markers, Table 4.2 shows the associations between
the naming and religion.
Table 4.2 E
xamples of religious associations of protagonist names on children’s
television
Name of Shows Name of Central Characters Religion
Ishaan: Sapanon Ko Awaaz Do Ishaan Sharma Hindu
The Suite Life Of Karan and Kabir Karan and Kabir Jaiswal Hindu
Vir the Robot Boy Vir and Dr. Sahay Hindu
Bhakti Hi Shakti Hain Joy Sehgal Hindu
Roll No.21 Kris Hindu
Akbar Birbal Akbar & Birbal Muslim
The Adventures of Tenali Raman Tenali Raman Hindu
Chota Bheem Chota Bheem Hindu
Ammu and Friends Ammu Hindu
Little Krishna Krishna Hindu
Best of Luck Nikki Rohan, Dolly and Sunny Singh Sikh/Hindu
Aayu Aayu Hindu
The dearth of heroic protagonists with Muslim and Christian names or iden-
tifying markers in these children’s television programmes produced in India
echoes the increasing stigmatisation of Christian and Muslim communities
across the country, notwithstanding the insistence of top children’s content
producers who we interviewed that such discrimination does not occur in
their programmes (see section 4.4.2). Albeit amongst children, representa-
tions in the sample exclude the rituals and everyday dress or habits of some
communities and normalise and naturalise the practices of others. Such mun-
dane exclusions and misrepresentations are especially notable at a time when
both educational text books and the electronic news media in India have come
under pressure to a toe an ideologically Hindutva hardline (Hasan, 2002),
which involves the public stigmatisation of Muslim and Christian communi-
ties, identifying them historically as invaders, traitors, foes and foreigners, and
ignoring or belittling their achievements and the crimes committed against
them (see discussion in Chapter 2). Given that many Indian Adivasis and
Dalits have converted en masse to Buddhism or Christianity, the absence of
characters who pay even lip service to Christian or Buddhist faiths can be
read as evidence of a double exclusion of children from these communities. If
the hegemonic winning of consent to the idea of nation, community or ritual
through a particular articulation of culture is something adults create and
participate in, this is a process which has to be seen as beginning in childhood.
4.3.7 Class
In our sample, most children’s shows with human characters steer clear
of representing class differences between children in a precise man-
ner. Some depict only generic universalised urban middle class settings.
Narrative tension tends to arise from issues of morality and choice, honour
and shame, mischief gone wrong, pranks and a desire for revenge on bullies,
rather than from hunger, the need to find paid work, or other struggles for
survival. No children’s show in our sample appeared to address this topic
openly, or showed an interest in the significance of social class in Indian
children’s lives. In many of the 163 shows we analysed, the task of identi-
fying class differences was complex because the setting or the protagonists
or both were fantastic and/or animated. For instance, a talking hen or deer
could not be classified as upper, middle or working class.
In the case of programmes set outside India, and particularly the ones
located in the global north or in Japan, where contextual knowledge
might allow us to surmise that characters are from lower middle class
backgrounds, it is likely that their representation in these shows would
strike working and lower middle class Indian child viewers as being
linked to luxurious, upper middle class settings. Using contextual cues
including voice and accent, types of housing depicted, the range of con-
sumer products available in the vicinity or consumed and the ways in
which language is deployed by adults in the programme, the following
broad classification for about a quarter of the sample (46 shows, includ-
ing some animations) is illustrated in Figure 4.5. This suggests that a
majority of Indian children’s TV shows are set in upper middle class
settings.
Class of
Protagonists
Mostly Middle-
middle & Lower-
middleclass
39%
Mostly Upper
Middle Class
61%
Figure 4.5 Social class in children’s shows with human protagonists (N = 46).
Representations of working-class children and adults are almost entirely

absent in children’s programmes in our sample because they were not the
heroes or main protagonists. They might, for instance, be represented as
part of a crowd of ‘villagers’ watching Chota Bheem uproot a tree or defeat
an enemy; or there might be a subtext of poverty when a character requires
justice to be delivered in Roll no 21 or Little Krishna. However, contextual
factors – such as parents seeming anxious about jobs and money; torn or
tattered clothing and shoes; slums or tenements; children caring for younger
siblings or doing housework – were not represented in most of the shows
with human protagonists. In programmes that are remakes of Disney shows,
the taken-for-grantedness of upper middle class belonging is striking. Chil-
dren depicted often have the latest technological gadgets and their own
rooms in luxuriously furnished houses, hangout in cafes, play in bands, and
learn musical instruments; parents own cars, washing machines, laptops;
they employ domestic workers and take their families on holiday.
4.3.8 Caste
Examining these findings using caste as a proxy for, and also in tandem
with, class, allows us to consider whether working class children play a
more significant role in the Indian produced shows in our sample. Adult
programming in India – for instance, in the ubiquitous Hindi soap operas
and serials – represents religion and caste through markers such as family
surname, occupation, housing, clothing, facial marks such as the ubiquitous
red kum-kum, bodily piercings, status in household, religious and marriage
rituals, language-use and sometimes even skin colour. Such overt symbolic
visual markers or other forms of representation of caste or the caste system
are rare in the sample of children’s programmes we examined. This seems
to exemplify a particular form of India-specific political correctness that we
encountered in several of our interviews with parents, NGO workers and
media producers: namely, the idea that it is the representation or discus-
sion of differences in caste status that is problematic and dangerous, while
caste distinctions and practices themselves are ‘natural’. The only show that
seemed to deploy an overt symbolic marker was Tenali Raman via the white
thread worn by Hindu Brahmin males. The central protagonist, Tenali,
Caste of Lead
Can't
Protagonists Determine
11%
OBC
11%
Brahmin
Other Upper 56%
Castes
22%
Figure 4.6 S urnames of lead protagonists from Indian-produced children’s shows,

by caste (N = 23).
based on a prominent upper caste poet of the 16th century, is shown wear-
ing one in every episode. Additionally, in India, surnames are a key site of
caste recognition. The surnames of major protagonists from the shows in
the sample indicate that a high proportion of them are Brahmin, despite
the relatively small proportion of Brahmins in the Indian population (under
5 percent in 2011).
Table 4.3 provides a sense of the relationship between names and caste
as represented in our sample of content on children’s television produced in
India – bearing in mind that there is no claim here that all children would
decode the characters in this manner.
Table 4.3 E
xemplary surnames and caste inferences in Indian-produced children’s
TV shows
Name-Surname of the
Protagonist Name of the Show Caste (inferred)
Ishaan Sharma Ishaan: Saponon ko Brahmin
Awaaz De
Karan & Kabir Jaiswal Suite Life of Karan & Brahmin
Kabir
Dr. Sahay Vir the Robot Boy Other Upper Castes
Joy Sehgal Hero Bhakti hi Shakti Brahmin
Hain
Little Krishna Little Krishna Other Backward Castes
(OBC)
Tenali Raman Tenali Raman Brahmin
Shaktimaan Pandit Gangadhar Brahmin
Shastri
Chota Bheem Bheem Other Upper Castes
Some of the media producers we interviewed asserted that children are

inherently egalitarian beings, and that markers of caste such as surname
mean nothing to them. This may be the case for some children and in some
age-groups. However, the interviews with children which I discuss later
suggest that many children are keenly aware of caste (jāti) as a marker of
social status in India and of borders and boundaries. They are aware of
the requirements for maintaining one’s caste position and not insulting
those above them in a hierarchical society. Some children were not able
to articulate what alerts them to the distinguishing features of their own
and other social groups’ status, but this does not mean they do not partic-
ipate in caste practices. The next section shifts to a discussion about the
disseminators and producers of discourse about children and childhood by
considering the child related imaginaries and experiences of adult experts
who work directly with children in India or with child audiences through
media texts.
4.4 P
roducing childhood: communication professionals
in child rights, advocacy and media production
As set out at the beginning, this section, like the foregoing content analysis,
aims to answer the question: How do key producers of content for and
about children, and stakeholders such as educational or child rights NGO
officers, conceptualise children and childhood in India? This section draws
substantively on in-depth interviews conducted between 2011 and 2015 by
Aarthi Gunnupuri or myself with 12 expert interviewees. Table 3.1 in the
previous chapter detailed the fields and roles of these adult experts.
4.4.1 Producer conceptualisations of children and childhood

My thematic analysis of the interviews with experts (see discussion in
Chapter 3) suggests that conceptualisations of children and childhood var-
ied across the adult expert interviewees, ranging from the belief expressed
by Reena Puri of ACK comics that ‘children change, adults change… you
cannot really have one image of a child’ to phrases and discourses easily rec-
ognisable from the opening chapters of this book: ‘children are essentially
innocent [yet] they can also act as change agents’; ‘Children are innocent,
they need space for growing up, for exploration’, ‘their innocence remains,
despite terrible hardships’, ‘they are very stubborn’, they ‘are all sitting flip-
ping pages on tablets and phones’, they ‘learn by doing’, they ‘ape adult
behaviours so we have to be very careful what we show them’. Each of
our adult experts explained children and childhood from the perspective of
their own job and experiences, expressing a world view that had a degree
of persuasive ‘expertise’ but that also reflected a certain professional orien-
tation or class perspective. Take, for instance, two excerpts, the first from
an interview with Vijay Subramaniam, Vice President of Walt Disney India,
the other with Sheela Patil, a field worker on child labour and trafficking.
VS: Kids don’t look at the world the way we adults do. For them,
what they’re seeking is really wholesome entertainment, entertain-
ment that appeals to them, that gives them stories and narratives
they are able to understand, characters that they are able to relate
to and form emotional relationships with, mostly positive, and
that’s very important, that’s where the brand of entertainment
becomes very important. They’re also looking for stories that are
definitive, that take them on their journey of growth and imagina-
tion and all the other things that happen in their lives. Last but not
the least, they’re looking for stories that create their sense of space
and time. You know, ‘This is for me. This is coming from a brand
that understands me, it’s a brand that I like to call my own,’ and
that’s it. And they don’t really then see a difference between a local
piece of animation that’s hugely appealing and an international, a
global piece of animation that is equally appealing. They don’t tell
the difference. They consider great stories. That’s point number
one. Point number two is they don’t distinguish one brand from
another as long as they are brands they can call their own. You
really have to look at it from their space …
SP: The kids I meet, we meet, in course of the job, these are kids who
have been through something so terrible. Their innocence is still
there however. Their optimism. That is the point of the work we
do. To give them a chance to start again.…In some ways they are
more mature than the adults. They have seen so much, suffered.
They have realised ki: ‘I have been lied to’. They have worried, ki:
‘will I ever get out of here, will this end? Will my parents care?’
They have faced the worst treatment: rape, beating, acid, burn-
ing, dogs, no water. One girl we collected her, I will tell you in
Haryana, not so far from Delhi. She had been chained. Chained
when she was not doing the work of those peoples. Nother one,
he was so surprised that we took him and did not ask him to
work more for us. That is what he thought would happen. … But
he asked so innocently, ‘What is this?’ when we showed him a
picture book. Can you believe it he never saw that before. Never
expected… He had worked with garments, stitching, embroidery.
Many of these kids are alert at every time. Submissive to adults.
Ready to be punished.
These two passages speak to experiences of childhood, development and

risk, as well as to definitions of agency and subalternity in relation to
children (see Chapter 1); and the contrast is stark. In one, a recognisably
Western, well-to-do, protected, consumer childhood emerges. Here, ‘enter-
tainment’ and ‘brands’ are a common feature of thinking about ‘how the
world is’ and ‘what I want’. Needs are expressed in relation to not being
bored, to being entertained, to being an individual who knows what she
or he wants. As Francis Nyamnjoh argued more than a decade ago, ‘[s]een
as individual consumers, even children are treated as autonomous agents
glued together by a selfless market slaving away for their cultural freedom,
development and enrichment as global citizens with power to arm-twist par-
ents and guardians to service their consumer instincts … [t]he shift makes a
virtue of consumption, presenting it as the ultimate symbol of civilisation’
(2002: 46). SP’s account, on the other hand, provides a near-infernal vision
of bonded labour, fear and curtailment. The conditions of children’s life in
this account, while antithetical to ideals of universal child rights, coexist
with her assumption of inner innocence, and her belief in the innate opti-
mism of oppressed children. SP’s experiences include unimaginable cruelty
to children, mistreatment and neglect of children by adults, as well as chil-
dren’s learned responses: alertness, low self-worth, anxiety and surprise at
being considered worthy of kindness. SP’s account seems to speak to social
learning theories, and suggests how learning can be both overt and covert.
This discussion indicates that children learn orientations towards their own
selves alongside the multiple skills and emotional manoeuvres that serving
powerful adults entails.
Although both accounts are about subgroups amongst Indian children,
the vast numbers who fall into each group mean that they are significant
minorities, running into tens of millions. The accounts of people who work
with each of these groups can be understood to have purchase for an anal-
ysis of childhood in India. This is all the more the case if, as Myron Weiner
(1991) argues, the beliefs and goals of those who interpret and implement
policies in relation to children are absolutely paramount in whether par-
ticular outcomes are stalled or achieved. Weiner’s concern that ideological
worldviews, whether about caste, fate, or social positioning, hold back edu-
cational policy makers from passionate and consistent enactment of chil-
dren’s right to equal treatment in education cannot be easily dismissed as it
crops up frequently in adult expert discussions of policy making processes
and practice in relation to children’s rights.
Figure 4.7 Girl with father disabled in work accident.
Other accounts by our expert interviewees describe everyday life amongst

the vast majority of children – those who are not necessarily bonded labour-
ers or rescued from trafficking but who nevertheless might live in biting
poverty, or precarity in urban and rural India. Preeti Prada, the director
of children’s charity Humara Bachpan Campaign describes children who
grow up in the claustrophobic and hazardous conditions of urban slums,
getting dressed into neat school uniforms every morning only to arrive late
at school because there are no places for children to cross busy roads. Ruchi
Anand, Farida Lambay10 and Vijay Pandey all discuss the ways in which the
formal education system works: Lambay and Pandey suggested that while
it serves some well, it could do far more to combat its own inequalities and
inadequacies. Some are punished, humiliated and outcast by teachers for
‘failing’ to meet standards of literacy in the very system they have struggled
so hard to join. With little background in reading or writing the languages
of instruction, many Adivasi and migrant labouring children sit for hours
being bored or humiliated as a teacher dictates instructions for the class to
copy or scribbles questions on the black board. Several interviewees men-
tioned schools where children are not allowed to sit on the benches because
they are considered to be too ‘impure’ to interact with the upper-caste chil-
dren, or where they are subtly ostracised because the teachers know they are
from labouring families, and are offended by their clothing, or think that
their smell will offend the middle class children (and their parents). Other
interviewees had worked with starving and illiterate parents who travel for
seasonal work taking their children with them, or leaving babies behind
in villages with elderly relatives. Girls who want to go to school, who are
excited about learning, are prevented from doing so by their caring duties
for critically ill parents or siblings.
These adult experts also described to us systemic things that are broken,
that do not work. School buildings which leak, so that schools themselves
only open half the year. Teachers who are so poorly paid that they moon-
light by disappearing to fix drains or cut crops. Extended journeys to school
and work for children as young as six. While some aspects of rote learn-
ing are changing in some schools, and being challenged by the more child-
centred methods which include learning through doing, local knowledge
and local languages of instruction, such sensitive practices are the exception
rather than the norm. Farida Lambay, who offered us a wealth of insight on
dozens of topics related to different types of childhood and the education
system in India, was adamant that most Indian children have not been well
served by adults:
FL: Everybody – political powers, legislations and we, as a society,

have been very unfair to children. We don’t value our children and
so we consider them as economic assets, we consider them as they
can be sexually abused and basically have no voice of their own.
Why are we so bad to children, I don’t understand, as a society?
Therefore, when you say child labour or vulnerable children or
children on the street you know parents might say or might feel
they are “destined”. How can one be destined? Basically all of us
together have neglected these children. And education, you know,
we started Pratham to look at education as an equaliser because
I always felt that education is one thing which will be the key to
development and the children will not be marginalized.
Amidst all of this, household chores, the learning of local songs and lan-
guages, the aspiration to live a better life, to not be ill so often, to change
things is also very resonant. Like Sheela Patil, these four interviewees’ con-
ceptualisations of childhood seemed very clearly to have been shaped by
their experiences with children. All five were adamant about the spark and
resilience amongst the children they work with and, in particular, about
their hunger for justice, as well as for excitement and fun, their enthusiasm
for fresh and interesting ways of communicating and expressing their wants
and needs.
Figure 4.8 Domestic caring: girl looks after baby sibling.
Reena Puri commented that she had observed hundreds of children in

the Southern states reading comics and books on trains and buses, in court-
yards and compounds. Meanwhile, like Vijay Subramaniam, Krishna Desai,
another major player in big media companies producing content for child
audiences, appeared to be more sanguine about children and childhood, and
plans programming in terms of a ‘regular kid’:
KD: Our channels, Cartoon Network and POGO, are mass channels
in the country and we have content available in English, Hindi,
Tamil and Telugu. About 60 percent of viewers prefer to watch
the channel in Hindi. As a mental picture of a child when we’re
creating shows, we think of a child, a 6 or 7-year-old boy from
Raipur [capital city of the state of Chhattisgarh), could be sort of a
bullseye audience, who is a regular kid, who is… if you look at any
kids on the street, you know, who is smart, who loves to play, who
loves to watch television, like a normal kid from Raipur would do.
For POGO, we also consider a girl as well not just a boy, it could
be also a Raipur girl. For Cartoon Network, it is definitely a boy.
[Emphasis added]
My analysis of the ‘expert’ transcripts suggests that many distinctions and

divergences along the lines of class, caste, religion and region operate in
relation to adults’ overall conceptualisations of children and childhood.
These were related to our adult experts’ awareness of social structures and
their reflexive (or unreflexive) acknowledgement of their positions within
social structures. Reflexivity can influence conceptualisations of childhood
directly and indirectly, influencing narratives and underlying assumptions.
Children from government schools, from very poor neighbourhoods, from
tribal and rural areas, those who do not speak English, whose parents
require their labour on a regular basis and who live in urban slums are
all distinguished by interviewees Ruchi Anand and Sheela Patil at various
points from the ‘norm’ – the children who come from securely housed mid-
dle class families, reside in urban areas, usually attend private educational
facilities and have access to healthcare, technological gadgets and signifi-
cantly higher life chances. The slippage between talking about children as
classed groups and children as if there is an expected norm happened even
in interviews with highly reflexive practitioners who work with the poorest
and most remotely located child populations. At the less reflexive end of
the spectrum, some of the media producers were neither interested in nor
curious about children who would find it difficult to be audiences for their
products.
4.4.2 Media producers and media texts

Political and economic motivations, as well as ideological issues pertaining
to expected, imagined and desired child audiences, seemed to trigger par-
ticular types of commentary from our adult interviewees. Reena Puri com-
mented on the ways the comic book industry has retrenched and changed
in response to perceived threats from the closure of book stores and (middle
class) children moving towards digital leisure. Her own company, which
began printing Hindu mythological and Indian nationalist comics in the
1970s, has become more corporate, developing new distribution channels.
The world view expressed in the comics, however, has been charged with
being strikingly in tune with wider political trends across the country, par-
ticularly in relation to their emphasis on Hinduism as a defining feature of
national identity (Sreenivas, 2010). Faced with this observation, Reena Puri
gave two accounts of the work of the Amar Chitra Katha comic team, each
plausible in its own way, and displaying a deeply internalised belief system
about which ‘stories’ authentically constitute India:
RP: Of course, there are people who criticise us all the time and call
us BJP stooges or RSS [Rashtriya Swyam Sevak Sang] (laughs)
and things like that, but the fact is that it’s a tiny team of young
people over here (laughs) and if you listen to the conversation
(laughs loud), and all we do is tell the stories as they are and we
find mythology fascinating. I don’t feel that Indian mythology is
Hindu or anything and I feel it’s for us, it’s for this country and it’s
like the Greek or Roman or Egyptian – it belongs to that country.
Whether we are Hindus, or Christians or Muslims, why not lis-
ten to the stories from our own country? What’s wrong? There’s
absolutely nothing wrong with it. And frankly speaking, I… I am
born a Christian and to me these stories are so valuable and so
important and I just love them and I would like to tell them to the
whole world.
But then:
RP: What we do when we take a story from Indian mythology or his-

tory, we are telling it as it is written. We are not bringing in our
own thoughts… If I am taking Sita as she is written by Valmiki,
I don’t have any view of my own, I’m going to represent her as
she is presented to you. This is just an authentic telling of some-
body else’s story. We are not changing it in any way. I mean they
were written 3000–4000 years ago and were written in a certain
way. We are just telling those stories. Take those stories and inter-
pret them as you will. [At] Amar Chitra Katha, we want to pres-
ent the stories as they are, as authentically as possible. Of course
we are careful, because they are children and our mythology is
full of the most… (laughs) amazing stuff which we cannot tell
children. So we have to see where we are going and how we are
presenting, and what we take and what we leave out. …Certain
aspects which, like Sati, let’s say. Earlier we used to depict Sati but
today I wouldn’t or you know, or the scene in Ramayan where
Shatrughna catches Manthara by the hair and pulls her and he
rough handles her, I would not depict it like that. I would tell
my artist to let him catch her by the arm and not by the hair. So
that kind of violence, that kind of …typification of women, that
I would try and moderate.… These Gods whom we talk about in
our stories are being worshipped in our homes. So there’s a lot of
emotion attached to them …In fact in Tinkle we have Anwar and
Nasruddin Hodja, so it’s not that we don’t do stories with people
from other religions. There was one thing, in which if you had a
Muslim invader coming in, they all wore green and the Hindus
all wore saffron, so there was a colour coding (laughs) happening
there. In some of the comics they (Muslim invaders) looked cruel
but that was the artist’s depiction of how he saw it. We are trying
to change those things.
These comments disavow an ideological motivation for content choice,

while paying tribute to the gender sensitivity and creative licence of the
team. Reena Puri emphasises the ‘traditions’ associated with the ‘stories’
which are authentically Indian. This suggests that Muslims are included in
the nation, that the speaker, herself a Christian, loves the stories because
they are not just Hindu stories, but also universally Indian and yet jokingly
she agrees that colour codings for Hindu and Muslims are common prac-
tice. The reference to ‘Muslim invaders’ positions our informant within an
acceptable Hindutva discourse, but could easily be mistaken for a simple
factual account, while she also appears to agree that stereotypes such as the
‘cruel looks’ on the faces of the Muslim characters need to be changed. If we
recollect that ACK comics might have been the only reading material that
the many parents of today’s middle class children had access to in their own
childhoods, this observation seems both poignant and sinister. As Sreenivas
(2010) argues, the ‘aggressive, historically engaged initiative’ of the com-
ics ‘naturalised’ a certain kind of ‘sanskritised vedantic tradition as norma-
tive’ (2010: 17) and ‘moulded the self image, character and imagination of
hordes of children in the India of the 1970s and 1980s’ (2010: 2). The sig-
nificance of a leading editor at ACK mentioning critiques of the comics in
relation their ideological association with Hindu chauvinist parties such as
the BJP and the longstanding Hindu chauvinist activist network, the Rash-
triya Swayam Sevak Sangh (the RSS, which has been linked to the murder
of Mahatma Gandhi, by one of its former activists, Nathuram Godse) is not
likely to be lost on readers familiar with post colonial Indian history. As
Sreenivas argues, however, what is chilling about comics is not their open
championing of exclusive stereotypes. Rather, it is their subtle hegemonic
articulation of the Indian middle classes (from all religions) as an acceptance
of a single authentic Indian culture which implicitly rests on the othering of
non-Hindus, Adivasis, otherwise backward castes, Dalits and women:
It would be erroneous to suggest that the philosophy of the Hindu

nation underlying the philosophy of Savarkar or of the RSS is adapted
into the ACK worldview; one can never fully appreciate its ‘appeal’ if
one were to take that approach. However, and this is more disturb-
ing, it tempers the idea of Hindu nation with secularism, pulling them
into a harmonious articulation. Anybody who is rational, humane and
shares the ‘normative’ values of the nation, is qualified for its member-
ship. If the Muslim is excluded/othered it is because he does not share
‘our’ norms. (2010: 29)
Perhaps in response to the sentimental attachment middle class parents
report feeling for the comic genre as imagined by ACK comics of the 1970s
and 1980s, private satellite channels have leapt on the bandwagon of
mythological animation. The channel Pogo was struggling to get viewers
when it stumbled on a formula with an indigenous creation Chota Bheem
based on a shrunken-down, strongman character from the Mahabharata.
Chota Bheem, whose preternatural feats of strength are embodied in the
saving of villages from demons, the vanquishing of bullies, foreign foes,
corrupt leaders and the like, proved a hit with five to eight year olds and
allegedly revitalised the fortunes of the channel11. Ironically, in a decade
when the policing of the cultural public sphere by religious chauvinist
organisations has reached an all-time high, some children’s shows which
use Hindu Gods have also run into trouble, as Turner’s International net-
work head explained, not for being biased towards Hinduism, but for
representing it in a manner which the far right Hindu organisations do
not approve of:
KD: [We had a] complaint about Roll Number 21, [where] we have this
boy who is an ‘exchange student’. Lord Krishna is an ‘exchange
student’ who comes on earth as Kris, his alter ego, and who can
transform to Lord Krishna. This was probably one of the 30 or
40 shows which has Indian Gods on the channel. Now, the com-
plaint from these guys was that you are depicting Lord Krishna
in a human form, which is hurting our Hindu sentiments. …This
matter was taken to court and we were relieved by the court’s
decision…. Anyway, after that we got strict, and what we did was
we removed [the God element] we made Kris into a regular boy,
who gets blessed by Lord Krishna and then he gets his powers to
do whatever he gets to do…
This tale of a legal grievance against a children’s channel, which was defeated
in court, nonetheless led to self-censorship. It epitomises the climate of
hegemonic policing and organised harassment around so-called religious
sentiments in which content producers in India from book publishers to
academics12 now operate. What this was poignantly illustrated in the case
of academic Wendy Donniger in her publication of an alternative history
of Hinduism which included interpretations of texts and events contesting
Orientalist, upper caste and patriarchal readings. A Hindutva organisation
called the Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samithi founded by a key far right edu-
cationist, Dinanath Bhatra, filed a case against the book on the grounds that
it was hurtful to Hindu sentiments and misrepresented the RSS. Fearful of
a backlash from other far right Hindu organisations and organised violence
by Hindutva thugs, Donniger’s publishers, Penguin India, pulped the book13.
Media sensationalism, and the pursuit of ratings in a saturated news cul-
ture has adverse effects for stories about children’s issues that meet neither
the criteria of sensation nor fall within the fluffy ‘cute-child’ norm. Preeti
Prada, who works on issues of liveability and urban space with groups of
slum children, elaborated:
PP1: The electronic media has not treated this as a campaign at all, not
picked it up at all. …We have to ensure housing that ensures the
development of the child, but the electronic media see this as an
aspect which relates only to adults. Actually children have their
own needs regarding housing.… With this whole set up with the
24/7 watchdog dimension that media has, I’ve heard the media
people saying “Oh, is it a sensational story? Did a child fall into
a pit?” Or “Was it a child rape that you want us to report on it?”
It’s absolutely sad to be hearing things like this. The media want
to run their sensational news; they don’t want to report on the
everyday dimensions that we are interested in. [If] you walk up
to a reporter and say ‘this has happened, and we want you to do
a deeper story on this’ they just say “Madam, just send us a press
release” Or “Do you have media statistics that we can explain it
through?”
Prada’s account tallies with research conducted by media development NGO

Internews with regard to mainstream media discourses on and engagement
with issues of child rights. As Neeti Daftari emphasises in section on jour-
nalism and child rights in India for Internews Europe (Angle, Baerthlein,
Daftari, Rambaud & Roshani, 2013: 31–53):
Editors often assign only female journalists to cover child issues which
is perceived to fall under the ‘soft issues’ category, revealing the patri-
archal nature of the Indian media sector. The current economic melt-
down of the Indian media sector, particularly English medium, has
resulted in a faster than predicted move into the online domain with
print or TV journalists being made to double up as online reporters
who are not provided any trainings when making such a shift… [Focus
group] discussions and interviews [with journalists] revealed that the
primary reason for the media not being interested in child rights is the
lack of interest of its consumers in child issues, and the perceived low
political or economic significance of this theme. Low consumer inter-
est translates into low circulation figures, which in turn translates to
lower advertising revenues, providing sufficient reason for editors to
ignore child rights coverage.
Tarkeshwar Singh, whose work for 20 years has been on juvenile justice and
the state in Bihar, also recounted a pattern of mainstream media disengage-
ment or sensationalism in relation to issues faced by minors in the justice
system, and was even confused by the relevance of my questions about new
media, mentioning instead a few television programmes and films. In line
with their fields of expertise and experience, Ruchi Anand, Farida Lambay
and Vijay Pandey also mentioned ways in which after-school clubs, class,
language and region-sensitive schooling, or film and media education pro-
grammes are potentially useful means for engaging with, and hearing, the
voices, aspirations and concerns of deprived communities of children. Given
these experiences and views about the apparent sensationalism governing
mainstream Indian news narratives on children, and lack of new media
infrastructure in proximity to working class communities, the salience of
fiction media formats and genres for and about children (discussed in pre-
vious sections) seems even greater, and the need to engage journalists with
regard to ethical frameworks for discussing children’s issues more pressing.
4.4.3 NGO experiences, rights discourse and interventions

with children
Working with excluded and disenfranchised children – who make up the
majority of the child population – and attempting to draw attention to the
issues they face, can be a daunting experience. Witnessing violence, inequal-
ity, discrimination and suffering on a regular basis, and the slow pace of
change is not easy; the lack of interest in or dislike and disgust towards
poorer children displayed by some members of India’s middle and upper
class population is dispiriting; and the lack of action by institutions is an
ongoing battle. The mainstream media are not the only institution to be crit-
icised in this regard by adult experts. While there were exceptions, we were
told by these interviewees that members of the police, government officials,
policy makers, school boards and teachers had all at various points shown
indifference, lack of compassion, contempt and/or aggression towards poor
children, and particularly towards those from minority religious communi-
ties, Dalits, Adivasis, and Scheduled Castes. In all these cases we were told
that poverty overlapped with another structural characteristic to render these
children ‘the other’ and to somehow exempt the adults dealing with them in
official or unofficial capacities from their duties of care and civic duty.
Practitioners working with children in extremely deprived communi-
ties described advocating on their behalf to government functionaries who
seemed to believe that some children are born sinful, evil and in need of
‘civilising’; they also described encounters with employers who felt they
were benevolent in providing employment for ‘useless’ and ‘lazy’ children
of the poor. These expert interviewees recounted incidents in which they
had witnessed hypocrisy and malpractice on the part of other International
NGOs (I)NGOs or local NGOs working in the field of child rights and chil-
dren’s participation in India, including the co-option of poor children’s time
and labour to further the image or the cause of the (I)NGO, and the cre-
ation of opportunities for fake participation14 based on whatever space or
role adults saw fit to accord children. Some aspects of contempt or mistrust
of poor children and parents were evident in the language used by one or
two of our expert interviewees, albeit perhaps unwittingly, when they talked
about ‘backward mindsets’ which led children and their parents to ‘prefer
manual labour’ to schooling or ‘innate stubbornness’ which led children to
fidget in class and talk when an NGO worker was trying to address them
and get them to do an activity.
We were also told about initiatives that tried – and sometimes even
managed – to hold adult desires and ambitions in check for long enough to
be of use, and even an inspiration, to some children in deprived communities.
None of these initiatives was perfect. A critic might suggest ways in which
they could become more reflexive, or more sustainable, or more accountable
and less hierarchical. However, these accounts add depth and definition to
this analysis of the ways in which organisations engage with poor children
in and around issues of communication. Vijay Pandey described how his
NGO Saarthi had a children’s magazine initiative Balvani15 in collabora-
tion with UNICEF. The initiative consisted of child reporter clubs in the
Lalithpur district of Uttar Pradesh, which included over 600 villages. In the
initial ‘child reporters’ clubs, 30 children were selected from local govern-
ment schools. Although one or two had parents in white collar jobs such as
school teaching, the children’s parents were primarily agricultural workers
or daily labourers.
Saarthi staff worked with the children to develop discussion about issues
that affected their lives, such as the fact that 60 percent of the girls were
compelled to drop out of school as they reached their teens whether they
wished to or not; that child marriage, violence against children and sex-
ual abuse were rampant. The process of reporting was not always easy but
my interpretation is that the funders had to be convinced not to interfere
and to allow the children to express themselves in ways that suited their
communities and histories. But the children were so highly motivated and
so committed to trying to explain, understand and change practices they
observed around them that they apparently became an embarrassment to
and an inspiration for adults on various occasions:
VP: For example, a child had depicted [in a drawing published in the
magazine] a child marriage that he had witnessed at a railway
station. He saw a small bride and a small groom. That must have
triggered something in him and he felt like publishing his story. We
used to conduct capacity building workshops for the child report-
ers, and we would also involve and invite people from the govern-
ment. As child reporters they had so many questions, and once
interviewed the superintendent of the police. The children showed
him the child marriage drawing and asked him innocently, that
while they were always taught that men must be 21 and women
must be 18 to get married, in their village, little girls and boys
are getting married, and what is the police doing about this? The
superintendent and other policemen were quite surprised by this
question and they were speechless.
Likewise, Preeti Prada, who initiates and oversees clubs for the Humara
Bachpan Campaign (HBC, ‘Our Childhood’ Campaign), described the
determination of children in slums, their gains in confidence after inter-
acting with the ‘young leaders’ selected to train them in participatory and
communication techniques, and their increasing resilience and creativity in
the face of bureaucratic indifference to the plight of slum families. She also
emphasised that having face-to-face safe spaces for deprived children to
meet with each other afforded the youngest or least confident ones a space
to recount traumatic experiences which they had not mentioned previously:
PP: So there was another issue that came up in a club where one of
the tuition teachers would kind of oil the private parts of a seven-
year-old kid, and the little girl would never be able to speak about
it – children are frightened of what their parents will say – and so
during the child club discussion with us she found the strength in
her to share it across. We then took it up with the police. But then
it is also the pressure in the community. Because the person [com-
mitting the abuse] was well off, the parents fled the locality! They
said “we are not going to take the case ahead”. It’s so difficult to
be even speaking about it. Layers and layers of issues come up in
the child clubs.
The hope of those working in a reflexive NGO that desirable outcomes of

justice and restitution for children will be really straightforward, is often not
achieved. Even where the space of the child clubs was used to support chil-
dren’s well-being, life outside the clubs continued with its adultist and ine-
galitarian rhythm. The relative wealth and security of wrong-doers, and the
relative poverty and powerlessness of slum children’s families, outweighed
considerations of justice and rights. Parents were depicted as making choices
that reflected their own social knowledge and anxieties. Some Hindi films
and entertainment education series (Banaji, 2006; Mankekar, 1999; 2015)
have raised contested and uncomfortable issues of religion, class and caste in
relation to adult lives. These accounts and experiences would make grim but
extremely watchable films, television programmes, or web comics – in the
same vein as the Balvani child reporters’ stories – and could potentially speak
directly to the experiences of a vast range of children in India and elsewhere.
4.4.4 Media, life, political economy

In the period prior to the 1990s, all genres of television were compressed
and aired on one, and then two, national Doordarshan channels. All were
available free to those who could afford television sets. While most of
the content aired during the week was cross-generational or aimed at
adults, by the late 1980s the shift from non-fiction, developmentalist state
broadcasts to soaps and fiction content was already under way (Mehta,
2008). The advent of satellite and cable television in the 1990s, and the
consequent multiplication of formats, segmentation of audiences by age,
gender, and class – particularly among those with the capital to afford a
connection and those without – proved an alluring opportunity both for
those outside the state who wished to market particular ideological values
(Rajagopal, 2001) as well as for corporations in search of markets. How-
ever, strikingly, while children’s channels became more innovative in their
content, the surge in advertising on these channels was much slower than
on other content.
Vanita-Kohli Kandekar, who does rare work on the political econ-
omy of Indian television, notes that ‘[f]or all their popularity, chil-
dren’s channels got only about 4.5 per cent of the Rupees 13,600 crore
(US $203,837,000) that advertisers spent on Indian television in 2013. That
is about Rupees 612 crore (US$91,726,800), compared to Rupees 2,000
crore (US$299,761,000) that was spent on news channels at roughly the
same viewership’16. Kohli-Kandekar links this information about the lack
of sponsors to the struggle some lower cost channels had in producing
original and high quality content for children. In fact, a portion of the
advertising on children’s channels in 2013–2014 was aimed at women, who
are assumed to be a large, silent, and economically enabled viewership of
children’s shows. Moreover, recently, the bundling of children’s channels
into packages has obviated the need for less popular channels to compete
directly through subscription fees with major ones at the consumer end.
However, just being available as part of a package for middleclass house-
holds does not guarantee viewership.
Discussions with several media content producers led to the same con-
clusions: most adults who pay for television and internet connections do
not want to watch programmes in which children lead traumatic or difficult
lives, experience pain and suffering, challenge adult authority, or appear
to be anything other than the happy carefree beings that contemporary
adultist ideology says they should be. Tropes of mischief, fun and minor
rebellion against unpleasant adults may be tolerated, as are programmes
and books depicting the lives of Japanese or Western children, but media
content for children ‘should have happy endings’, according the media con-
tent producers. In this view, contradictions and conflicts must be resolved
and adult order restored for films and TV shows to be saleable to adult
audiences. Likewise, the corporate sponsors were extremely sensitive about
the kinds of material screened around their commercials. There is ‘no room
for all that caring and activist business’ in the competitive environment of
commercial television, as one producer put it off the record. While such
market logic is no doubt a factor in all capitalist economies, the scale
of poverty and disenfranchisement in India, and the lack of widespread
free-to-air public service media for children, makes its operation all the
more troubling.
In this context, producers of alternative media content for children –
from educational games to web shows – need largely to be able to fund
themselves or align the ideological content of their work with the pre-
existing moral narratives of the NGOs and (I)NGOs. Narrating how his
original creations have been rejected by major channels, animator Iqbal
Sheikh explained that content about justice and rights is not seen as
commercially viable:
IS: Our group have been very influenced by Miyazaki, Studio Ghibli…
[unclear] we brainstormed and made this animated feature on the
topic of climate justice – we wanted to visit this topic from per-
spectives of children across interior of India. We showed this story
of one girl and one boy, in early teens, I can show you. It is their
fights with water – too much rain, then no rain and how it affects
in city and in villages. It raises issues of deforestation, mining,
but in some way children can understand. It was intended to be
a series for the majors [children’s channels] but they said ‘who
will watch this?’ ‘This will offend sponsors’ ‘It’s nice but “children
today” want fun, masti-mazak, they don’t want to see this’. After
four years we gave up with the majors. We list it in our resumes. It
could be up on Vimeo. And after seeing it [an NGO] had contacted
with us and asked to work on a website and animated game … for
their campaign… but when it came to invoicing – it was like we
would have to pay them to work for them, the payment was so
less, the work was so much. So we’re back to animating Disney
style, piece rate, others’ stories. What can we do – the rent has to
be paid?
So, although I gathered no quantitative evidence of this, thematic analy-

sis of expert interviews suggests that financial constraints and the political
economy of children’s media, be this in the arena of games and comics or
television and film, have a tendency to dominate the types of representa-
tions of children’s life, and of India. Large producers and distributors act
as a channel of economic censorship (Richards & Murphy, 1996) against
content with scenarios and values too explicitly critical of modern capitalist
society, of regressive gender practices, of sexual violence, or other discrim-
ination that affects children outside the urban middle classes. In India, just
as the project of getting sex and sexuality education onto the school curric-
ulum has faced dozens of setbacks, even when linked to highly moralistic
schema or presented as HIV-awareness education, children’s content that
makes adults – and in particular those adults in authority over c hildren –
deeply uncomfortable, or provokes them into questioning their own under-
standings of children and childhood, is unlikely to gain much visibility in
programming schedules. This ‘common sense’ is present in relation to the
dubbing and adapting of European and North American content made for
teenage viewers into regional languages and in relation to Indian-made
content, as in Iqbal’s example.
My questioning about whether alternative and emerging media technol-
ogies might provide a basis to help children in slums to articulate their con-
cerns or to challenge dangerous behaviours led to an emphatic exchange:
pp: he poor children don’t have access to that technology. There is

T
just one phone for the family. As for games consoles, they do not
actually have access to the gadgets. They do not have any kind
of access to ipods or tablets or phones really…. when it comes to
children here, they mainly have access to television […] There have
of course been few instances of funding agencies going across and
lavishly giving laptops and tablets to the children. But sadly no.
int: So what about online safety issues – things to do with digital liter-
acy? Is there a need to help these children to learn about issues of
online safety or urban safety through online campaigns?
PP: I n the contexts that we work, that is in 23 cities, online is absolutely
irrelevant. Absolutely. Having majorly online campaigns, or any
kind of online information, since there is no access, or such limited
access to all communication technologies, it would be difficult for
the information to seep into them, into the communities where they
belong. I see a strong role of technology maybe in the coming years,
and it is a thoroughly engaging idea for children from the [middle
class] mainstream, and they have been active on social media. They
have access to that and not the children from poor areas.
Having heard repeatedly about the lack of access to, and/or interest in and/
or relevance of new media content and technologies from working class
interviewees, I was not surprised by Preeti’s response.
Like Preeti, and in line with Jeffrey and Doron’s (2013) work amongst
adult Indians and Kleine et al.’s (2014) work with child-related ICT4D
experts, it is possible to hypothesise that eventually the internet and mobile
media will have an increasing significance in the lives of poor children in
urban India. But it is important to consider what ideological commitments
motivate funders and scholars in the global north to assume that these are
already widely available.
Although one-off free laptop and tablet initiatives may help to support
children’s leisure time and foster their information rights, albeit haphazardly,
an NGO discourse which suggests that policy-makers and politicians can be
influenced more easily via social media, and that the achievement of clean
water and safe urban space in India will follow from the endowment of poor
children with internet skills and tablets is utopian at best (Warchauer &
Ames, 2010).
Figure 4.9 Plastic truck.
Figure 4.10 Child and doll with empty eyes.
4.5 C
onclusion: adult representations of children
and childhood
This chapter has provided evidence on some of the types of media representa-
tions of children and childhood that are available in India, particularly to those
able to afford digital media packages for television or who go to the cinema.
With some exceptions, most Hindi film depictions of children and child-
hood are primarily targeted at adults, and have increasingly jettisoned
the anti-colonial symbolic role of children as unifiers and inheritors of an
egalitarian, integrated Indian nation in favour of infantilised adults who
perform tragicomic consumer citizenship in a whirl of semi-permanent ado-
lescence. A small number of films in Hindi, Hinglish, Tamil and in vernacu-
lar languages such as Marathi, Gujarati, Telegu and Bengali have focused on
childhood as an arena of imagination and innocence, fun and learning, on
marginalised childhoods, village life, autism, poverty or civil war, and pre-
sented stories in ways which are both physically and emotionally accessible
to a greater number of child viewers. Some of these fall into the third, or
independent, cinema category, but others aim to find a mass audience. The
children’s film society of India has played a role in promoting content such
as this through clubs and educational projects; but its reach – and also the
reach of the subtler children’s films – remains limited. The fact remains that
most children in India who have access to films – whether these be in Hindi
or other languages – will watch films made primarily for adults, and for a
mass market, rather than primarily for children.
Our analysis of children’s television content suggests that programmes
for children, particularly those available to middle class children on pri-
vately owned channels, tend to be sourced from an international market,
including Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, with minimal
tailoring (usually at the level of language dubbing) for local audiences.
There is evidence of an assumption on the part of producers, distributors
and parents that the narratives of these foreign shows are ‘universal’. This
is because they are about school and friendship, homework, parental regu-
lation, budding relationships, fun, mischief and courage. The settings of the
Disney channel and other shows are mainly urban and mainly middle class
even in Western contexts, while the fantastic and animated shows often use
language in ways that do not resonate with children from deprived com-
munities. Where content is made in India or tailored for a notional ‘Indian’
child, there are significant representational omissions – a preponderance of
boys over girls, and male over female ‘voices’, a greater number of upper
caste symbols and of Hindus than other religions, and of middle and upper
class locations. Representations of other religious groups are often miss-
ing, or confined to essentialist binaries and problematic stereotypes. Shows
and programmes which speak to the practical and emotional challenges and
daily lives of rural children, or children from slums, or just the vast working
class child population of India, remain few and far between.
The excerpts from those who are active in media production and child
rights advocacy tell an interesting story. On the one hand, most of the experts
now belong securely in the middle classes. Those who work in corporate
media and whose daily encounters are not with children in deprived or dis-
criminated groups were charismatic and informative, but unsurprisingly less
interested than their NGO counterparts in the issues faced by a majority of
Figure 4.11 Living with destruction.
children in the country – from traffic accidents, seasonal displacement and

homelessness to caring for younger siblings, child labour and child abuse.
With significant influence over the types and choices of programming and
comics available to groups of children in India, it was clear that the major
producers were not naïve about the children and parents who comprise their
primary markets. They had fine-grained knowledge of age segmentation,
gendered viewing patterns, fandom and narrative affordances as well as of
changes in family viewing habits and technological access amongst the mid-
dle classes. However, the contrast between their view of childhood and the
views of those working with children in deprived communities was stark.
With few exceptions, everyday problems besetting a majority of children in
the country – lack of clean drinking water, of safe public space for leisure,
lack of time to sleep or play due to caring, labouring, or education-related
duties, and a generally adult-centred school and justice system – exacerbated
by structural inequalities, appeared only as a coda to the NGO workers’
narratives and were absent in the major media producer narratives.
While the expert interviewees also spoke of longstanding attempts at
institutional redress – campaigns for child rights, alternative media narra-
tives, and better living conditions, making space for children to express their
concerns, needs, ideas and expectations was not a priority for mainstream
media or schooling in India. Interviewees provided a narrative about not
one, but several Indias. But most of these Indias do not make it into sus-
tained screen representations of children. Interviewees working for major
media franchises asserted that children crave fun and mischief and find these
attributes attractive in the heroes of commercial television programmes and
comic books. There were precise connections between this account of child-
hood and the textual features of much available media content for children
in India.
Channel viewing figures suggest that the bright colours, laughter and
tears, slapstick double takes and easy camaraderie of teenage boys and girls,
animals and fantastic creatures in many of the foreign shows are popular
with many lower middle class children in India. Nor is it the case that the
highly selective, reductive or biased representations of minority religious
groups, lower castes, Dalits, Adivasis, girls from all non-elite groups, rural
childhood and poverty in general prevent some children from these groups
from gaining enjoyment from the programmes. Several of the producers
interviewed for this chapter pointed out that their market research or work
with poorer children in NGOs suggests considerable enthusiasm on the part
of girls and boys, as well as children in deprived communities for some of
the most mainstream television products. As I have pointed out in relation
to Hindi films (Banaji, 2008: 24) ‘just because restricted textual representa-
tions and discourses do not force or entail psychic closure for audiences does
not mean that we should not call for meanings to be more open, for com-
mercial [media] to cover a greater range of imaginaries and possibilities’.
Adult expert testimonies in this chapter, indicate that there is space – and
a pressing need – for a transformation in India in all sectors of the media
sphere which touch on and pertain to the lives of children. This calls for a
representational and content delivery paradigm shift in the balance between
corporate, government and the non-governmental sectors. It requires a
policy commitment from public broadcasters to commission, licence and
produce media content for children that is more egalitarian, challenging,
inclusive, diverse and critical of social structures, and which addresses the
everyday lives of children in the 14 to 17 age range, in the working classes
and remote regions, and children in all classes and religions equally. As yet,
this goal feels light-years away.
Notes
1. As exemplified in: http://www.unicef.org/publications/files/Childrens_Rights_
in_the_Digital_Age_A_Download_from_Children_Around_the_World_
FINAL.pdf; accessed 5 June 2016.
2. Data based on in.com’s online TV schedule.
3. http://www.rediff.com/money/2003/dec/13channels.htm.
4. http://corporate.discovery.com/discovery-newsroom/discovery-networks-
asia-pacific-makes-its-foray-into-kids/.
5. http://animax.wikia.com/wiki/Animax_India.
6. http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-12-20/news/57257603_1_
disney-india-disney-junior-disney-channel.
7. Interview with freelance animators, Iqbal Sheikh and Vanita Kamat, Bombay,
2014.
8. Sourced from Pakistan, this recent animation is an exception to many rules: http://
thediplomat.com/2015/04/can-pakistans-burka-avenger-score-fans-in-india/.
9. As per in.com’s online TV schedule.
10. Farida Lambay mentioned to us that while Indian media often ignore or exclude
these issues, she has known foreign media to hype up these issues in sensational
ways, or NGOs to exaggerate particular problems in terms of statistics for the
effectiveness of campaigns. This, she explained, has left her wary of which plat-
forms on which she reveals her campaigns around education justice, gender and
education and child related matters.
11. http://www.afaqs.com/news/story/38030_Indias-Biggest-Cartoon-Success.
12. http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/lead-article-by-ananya-vajpeyi-why-
sheldon-pollock-matters/article8361572.ece.
13. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/13/indian-conservatives-penguin-
hindus-book.
14. The phrase ‘fake participation’ refers to the work of Ferguson on development
discourse and to Sherry Arnstein’s ‘ladder of participation’ in which citizens are
consulted for a variety of purposes and notably to legitimise the work of the
organisations and authorities who consult them; however, their concerns and
voices are not really included in aims or outcomes of projects, and their power
is very limited.
15. http://unicef.in/Story/637/30-village-child-reporters-geared-up-to-change-the-
world.
16. http://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/kids-channels-grow-up-
but-not-the-money-114100200839_1.html.
5 ‘Media rich’ in India
Routine, self-construction, conflicted
conformism
5.1 Media wealth and social class

Chapter 1 discussed tensions between universalism and relativism in
relation to the study of children’s lives in different eras and geographical
locations. As Sarada Balagopalan (2007: 575) argues, ‘[t]he difficulty in
studying non-western childhoods is the fine line that one needs to tread
between circumventing the moral yardstick of a normative childhood as
the universal referent, while making sure that one does not inadvertently
privilege some form of cultural relativism.’ One of the best ways to unpick
these tensions and to maintain the connections between childhoods across
the globe while exploring some much-ignored differences is to compare the
routines of children from different classes within a country that is often
written about as homogenous. Before turning to working class children in
Chapter 6, this chapter takes as its focus the media wealthy or middle class
children in India, a significant segment for marketers, commercial children’s
television channels and journalists. Nita Kumar’s work on the middle class
child in India (2016) opens with the following: ‘The terminology of “suc-
cess” and “failure” imbues the discourse of the middle class child in India.
Middle class-ness is defined and supported by the success of the child, and
destroyed by the child’s failure’ (2016: 220). This might be an overstate-
ment, but there is ethnographic evidence to suggest that children and, in
particular, social relationships and educational pathways of children, are
stringently controlled by many parents in the 300 million plus members of
the middle classes of India as both are a form of capital. Further, as Con-
stantine Nakassis argues in Doing Style, many middle class teenagers and
youth in India experience and produce themselves as ‘youth through their
relationships to the forms of authority to which they were subordinate and
excluded’ (2016: 17): caste and money, their communities or ‘society’, fam-
ily elders – and older powerful men in particular. The young middle class
respondents in Nakassis’s study constantly negotiate between the appeal of
doing style and the possibility that their acts of consumption, the wearing of
brands, and other valued items will be read as boasting and snobbery which
distinguishes them too much from the crowd. The act of being above the
crowd, while remaining with the crowd is thus a form of labour for middle
class youth, and for young men in particular. Although less pressing in the
lives of children, these concerns are also evident in talk about phones in
this chapter. The ways in which class-linked environments structure every-
day routines, learning, values and media use, and provide opportunities for
agentic behaviour, is a central concern in this chapter. In tandem, the chap-
ter explores children’s own views about and interactions with media, and
examines social interactions of several kinds. Let us step into the world of
urban middle class technology use.
Nivedita, age 16, and Deepa, age 17, are avid WhatsApp users; both have
smartphones, previously owned by and now funded by their respective
parents (Nokia – Nivedita; iphone 4 – Deepa). They regularly use Viber,
Instagram, Snapchat, Gaana (the Indian equivalent of Spotify), location
services, Shopping online, Flipkart, Saavn (another music website), Book-
MyShow, Zomato and other apps. Deepa seems to have decided that her
boyfriend abandoned her due to her ‘dark’ complexion. The following inter-
action indicates the complexity of ways in which new media has come to be
entwined with young middle class Indians’ personal lives:
Deepa: He said he wanted someone modern. I am too [very] modern.

I look good in jeans, spaghetti straps, Ray bans. [She displays pic-
tures of herself wearing these items, though when we speak she
is in a kurta over jeans, and once, full Anarkali.] But sometimes
I think he might be looking for someone fairer. … [It’s] total bak-
waas that he broke up with me because of his family. I don’t think
his mom even came to know about me. Now he’s dating [another
friend]. She is like a model. [From her picture, the friend is appar-
ently fair skinned.] I’m just always looking at these pics, because
they tag everyone that’s in my group. This is just sooo … [cries].
This example from my fieldwork is consistent with an upsurge in interest

in the logic, potentials and effects of children’s new media, mobile media
and digital media use in India on young people (Fusilier & Durlabji, 2005;
Kaavoori & Chanda, 2006; Kam et al., 2009; Kanwal & Anand, 2003;
Sharma, 2008; Venkataraghavan, 2015). Themes of addiction, cyber-bullying,
sexual harassment and time-wastage are common in this literature. These
topics were present tangentially in my research in accounts of friends’ or
others’ mobile phone usage by teenagers: ‘My friend’s never without her
phone’; ‘I can’t sleep without WhatsApp’; ‘After my last boyfriend snapped
me in the shower and sent to his friends, I’m not relaxed around phones
any more’; ‘I’ve moved to Frendzter, which I heard was much more safer’.
These studies map changes at local level in relation to mobile phone con-
nection rates, internet-related practices by educators, or changing sexual
dynamics amongst urban middle class teenagers with mobile phones, but in
these works the terms ‘mobile’, ‘digital’ and ‘new’ are frequently used inter-
changeably with little attention given to scale of use, regional differentiation
and social class.
‘Media rich’ in India 125
While newspaper coverage tends to give an optimistic narrative of a digital
India, stories about the social suppression of mobile use based on gender are
common1. Even in scholarly works, statistics may be used with little context
and studies purporting to report critically on major changes in social life
associated with mobile phones employing survey methods without a reflex-
ive interpretation of the results. Narayana and Malloli, (2013), for example,
studied ‘801 users of Internet and mobile phones, [which] analyses media
habits and social cultural impact on the behaviour and attitude’ (2013: NP).
Their introduction states:
India has 898 million mobile phone users and 292 million of them are
living in rural areas. Mobile signals reach 77 percent of the geographi-
cal area. An estimated 121 million people including 24 million in rural
areas use internet in India. With the increase in mobile users every
fraction of a minute, it is believed that mobile phones will expand
the growth of internet. India is poised to exploit the benefits of media
convergence. No mobile industry can afford to ignore India’s 400 mil-
lion young population which is perhaps more than the population of
USA. India is also busy networking its over 800 universities and 24000
colleges through Optical Fibre Cable to improve quality of education
and increase employability of its youth by providing access to Internet.
(Narayana & Malloli, 2013: NP)
The claim that there were ‘898 million mobile phone users, with 292 mil-
lion in rural areas’, however, is problematic in view of the demographics
of India, since two-thirds of the population reside in rural areas. It may
be that the telecom companies report 898 mobile phone connections in
India – which is itself a far cry from individual mobile users. The picture
of mobile phone connections is also complicated by multiple mobile phone
ownership in cities and the ownership patterns of upper middle class indi-
viduals. However, neither of these things can account for inaccurate figures
such the ones quoted.
Kalyani’s family, whom I observed in 2015, exemplifies multiple mobile
phone ownership. The family owns a two-bedroom flat in a suburb of Delhi.
Kalyani’s father is a retired lawyer and does consultancy for the corporate
sector. The grandparents have their own bedroom with a television and dig-
ital set-top box, although the television in the main living area was broken
when I visited. Kalyani and her brother were not happy about this situa-
tion, although their mother expressed pleasure because she disapproves of
television ‘time-wasting’. Their flat is equipped with wireless broadband and
two laptops. The family own multiple mobile phones: Kalyani’s father owns
three – ‘one for work, one for personal, one for visitors and friends from
US’ – Kalyani’s mother owns two – one for her jewellery business customers,
another for friends and family – Kalyani’s brother, grandfather and aunt own
one mobile apiece. Kalyani and her grandmother do not own mobiles. Kalyani
accesses the internet on her mother’s laptop to do her homework, copying
and pasting frantically into word documents, and using the printer to print
out endless PowerPoint projects. She plays games on her brother’s phone, and
checks out the Instagram and Facebook pages of friends via her brother’s
Instagram and Facebook. Discussion with Kalyani’s brother reveals his belief
that his father owns a further two mobiles, but I saw no evidence of these.
Contrast this with the family of Dipu, a lower middle class, 13-year-old
girl I interviewed in a village in Uttaranchal state. Her family owns a substan-
tial amount of land, farmed primarily by women; they live in a three-room
traditional dwelling above a stable where they keep animals in the winter.
There are seven persons in the household, including Dipu, her younger sister,
her parents, aunt and grandparents. They have a tiny television on a stool in
their main room; it is turned on every evening although reception is erratic.
Dipu’s father has a smartphone, as do several of the male heads of house-
holds in the village; while some of the older women whose husbands work
in the plains have older mobile phones; no other member of Dipu’s family
owns a phone. Until 2012, there were no computers with internet access in
the 600-strong village, although some of the young men and women who
commuted to college in a town some hours away owned laptops. Dipu
tells me shyly that she has talked via the mobile to her brother who lives in
Dehradun. She is not otherwise allowed to use it. It is plausible that there
are 24 million rural internet users as Narayana and Malloli (2013) surmise
from the world internet report 2012. It is certain that this number is going
to rise in coming years. Many of these users connect at internet kiosks, and
rural children rarely have the minimal money and time to do so.
Set in an interdisciplinary communications paradigm, Nishant Shah’s
work on mobile technologies and the construction of ‘sluttiness’ in the wake
of two major sex-related mobile messenger incidents (Shah, 2015) points
to the dynamic relationships between gender, social discourses of sex and
technologies for young new media users in India. Payal Arora’s Dot Com
Mantra, an ethnography of computer usage in Northern India, describes
how, during a bout of fieldwork ‘in rural Andhra Pradesh South India, for
half a year, where Hewlett-Packard set up computer kiosks for the commu-
nity, [she] witnessed primarily boys flocking to play car games and not much
else’ (2010: 107). References to ‘students’, ‘girls’, ‘boys’, and ‘youth’ abound,
but mainly refer to age groups from 16 upwards and sometimes past college
age, and are not indicators of younger children’s uses of media and new tech-
nologies. In another study, Arora recounts how in cybercafes in Almora, a
northern hill town, ‘students come here to complete their school work, rang-
ing from accessing information/visuals to for school projects, typing their
thesis (primarily in English), discussing their projects to applying for further
education online.… They take over cybercafes, ask questions and demand
constant and continued assistance, disrupting all other activity …’ (2010:
115). My observations in cybercafés in Bombay in the early to mid-2000s
revealed similar tendencies and circumstances, suggesting an expected lag
in the arrival of broadband related habits in Northern towns as well as the
class stratified nature of public internet use.
This section has set out several different ways in which changes in children
and young people’s new media environment can be approached. Undoubt-
edly, large-scale studies have their place. However, as suggested, caution
is needed both in assessing claims and in understanding the implications
of the use of statistics in this field. The following sections provide insight
into everyday contexts of middle class children, and contrasts between new
media use amongst middle class children and youth in India, with a focus
on the role which media and communications technologies play in routines
and practices.
5.2 Media days and nights

Mrinali, age 17, was a college student when she was interviewed in 2014.
Her family epitomizes India’s aspirational middle-middle classes (Brosius,
2010; Ganguly-Scrace & Scrace 2009). Mrinali’s mother is a highly educated
housewife; her father is a businessman who trades in building materials.
Their family business employs six people, most of them relatives. Mrinali’s
younger sister was 15 the last time I visited them and had just passed her
school finals. The family lived in a one-bedroom flat in a suburb of Bombay.
Their home is very clean, with no books on display, and few in the cup-
boards apart from the girls’ school work. Mrinali’s mother cooks three
vegan meals per day and entertains relatives late into the night. Mrinali’s
father leaves the house at 10am seven days a week and returns late at night,
except on Sundays when he is home at by 3pm. An adult maid who lives in a
local slum arrives to wash floors and dishes twice a day. A chunky television
has pride of place in the living room as it has for the past decade.
Discussion with Mrinali followed a path where we discuss Hindi films
she has watched and she reveals how she ‘digs’ particular stars. The reasons
she provides for her fandom range from their ‘brilliant’ acting and ‘sexy’
bodies to their entrepreneurial spirit and the ways in which they have made
careers in film, but also as social activists, investors, or media commentators.
Int: Okay, so now I know how much you like Shah Rukh! Tell me a
bit about how you spent your day today, how was the morning?
Mrinali: I feel so lazy in the mornings when it rains. As soon as I woke
up today I had to see [watch] the television. Of course switched on
WhatsApp before taking my breakfast. Took a quick shower, got
dressed, left for college.
Int: That’s it? Did you go on your phone at college? I know that many
students do.
Mrinali: Of course! Always! When I travelled by metro first I had
all the time to surf through my Instagram and WhatsApp. I did
go to three of my lectures, but they were sooo boring, I wanted
to go on my WhatsApp. Sir just makes me want to sleep with
his voice. After lecs got over, as usual I checked my email and
my WhatsApp for messages, picked up the gossip. Reached back
to my home via Metro. At home, got on with my usual surf-
ing: I downloaded some songs from a music website; I watched
YouTube vids for some-time. Felt very lazy. Took a huge nap in
the afternoon. I visited the mall in the evening with my younger
sister, clicked loads of selfies on our way to post on Instagram …
used Zomato to search a good restaurant for dinner. Back home
by 10. Got ready for bed. WhatsApped my boyfriend till 2am.
Finally went to bed.
Mrinali’s account of her day is characteristic of accounts given by other girls

of her age group and in her religious, caste and class group. Her enthusiasm
about media was framed almost as a compulsion, just as her need for sleep
was. Having observed her on several occasions, I was aware that she would
switch things on and then go off to do household chores, returning only
briefly to a room where television or radio was playing.
As I’ve known her since she was four years old, her comfort levels with
me are generally high. Nevertheless, cautious around adults, Mrinali often
stops short of disclosing romantic events. Her sister, however, blurts them
out. On the day in question, Mrinali mentioned that she WhatsApped
her boyfriend, but she withheld that he travelled back from college with
her, and that he joined her and her sister at the mall. This emerged when
I was looking at ‘selfies’ and asked who the young man was; her sister
piped up ‘That’s X, Mrinali’s boyfriend’. She was circulating the image on
WhatsApp and Instagram, but was anxious about drawing attention to
such face-to-face meetings. She explained: ‘Mom’s cool with me having a
boyfriend since he’s from our community, but she doesn’t want me hanging
out with him when parents are not there. Mom isn’t part of my WhatsApp
groups, she’s not on Instagram. I have my privacy there. She’ll never come to
know.’ This flexible notion of privacy as absence of parental surveillance is
something I encountered repeatedly with this class of young people. The
naïve assumption that parents who are not part of social networks online
remain ignorant of postings was challenged on several occasions by peers
or siblings who ratted on those engaged in romantic trysts.
Mrinali’s account of an average day and of the intricate ways in which
technologies and media new and old run through it was echoed by other
interviewees in this class group. Girish, age 17, lives with his mother, who
is a housewife and his father who describes himself as a business man. They
live in a three-bedroom apartment in an industrial suburb of Bombay. Girish
is studying arts at college, but seems to spend his days at home or go in for
an hour of lectures. Asked to describe his day, he recounts:
Girish: I woke at 1.30pm. Wished “Good Morning” on Snapchat to

many people. Then checked my Facebook notifications. By 2.30pm
I was up from bed. I had my lunch. I was relaxing but then checked
my WhatsApp group and found that my friends were out playing
cricket. So I got ready in 3–4 minutes and went to play cricket
for an hour… Received a WhatsApp message from a friend, “Let’s
go for a swim”. Quickly packed my bag and went to the club.
Had a few snacks and a cup of tea over there. I sent a snap of
the cup of tea to a couple of friends! As we were walking home it
started drizzling, so we kept aside our phones inside our bags. As
I was not having access to a TV, I checked the score of the Mexico-
Cameroon football match online. I stayed up all night watching
Fifa. My phone was off as the battery was dead. I charged it up
and went to sleep by 5.00am.
In Girish’s account, television and his internet-enabled phone are central

in allowing him to access his friends and hobbies. Sport is significant for
him and playing cricket or watching football are frequent recurrences in
this and other discussions. He likes to stay informed about sport and rarely
seems to use the internet on his phone for anything other than WhatsApp
messaging or checking scores. All his college work takes place offline. At 17
he considers himself independent and stays up all night or sleeps till mid-
day. His mother cooks, so he has a comfortable routine. Unlike Mrinali and
other middle class girls who do things that they do not wish to do in order
to please their parents, Girish seems to be assertively in charge of his own
schedule.
Demonstrating the ways in which age can alter orientations towards and
experiences of media within the group ‘children’, consider this excerpt from
an interview with a 10-year-old boy. His account of his daily routine typifies
middle-middle class under 10 year olds:
Haroon: Didi (older sister, the way he addresses their maid) gets my
uniform in the morning. Baba travels in his job, he is sometimes
home, sometimes gone. Amma drives me to school gate and drops
me 7am then she goes to her office. I am good in studies, but
I don’t get time to play in school. In lunch-break I talk with my
friends, play catch-catch and football. I play in the school football
and cricket teams. I like drawing and painting, but I don’t get time
to do this. I would like to be a comic artist like [he names some-
one I have not heard of]. I come home 3pm with Didi in bus and
sleep for a while. Then I tackle my homework. Didi gives me milk
and takes me to tuitions at 5pm. I return from tuitions at 7.30pm.
Amma plays badminton with me or I play cricket with my neigh-
bours or I read a comic till 9.00pm while Didi prepares dinner.
Dinner is always delicious. I love to eat Didi’s chicken. I don’t get
much time for TV. I finish my homework and studies by 11pm. If
Baba’s home he reads some stories to me before I sleep. If Baba’s
away, I Viber him on Amma’s mobile, then I sleep.
I interviewed Haroon, age 10, in 2013 when he visited relatives in Bombay.
His mother teaches at a school in Hyderabad and his father is a software
engineer. The family lives in an old inherited bungalow with a live-in nanny/
maid who has looked after Haroon since his birth. Bespectacled and serious,
an only child, he recounted his ‘hobbies’ as being ‘Stamp collecting, cricket,
football, reading comics, and watching cartoons on TV’. Unlike several of
my middle class interviewees’ mothers, Haroon’s mother has always worked,
only taking a year off when Haroon was born. She comes across as thought-
ful and humane with a warm sense of humour. She is, however, in many ways
as implicated in middle class behaviours as other parents. In a manner rem-
iniscent of the accounts of master-servant relationships in Ganguly-Scrace
and Scrace (2009) and Ray and Qayum (2009), the daily routine of this par-
ticular family is enabled via the labour of their maid, Rani, whom Haroon
calls Didi (older sister). I could not ascertain Rani’s age from Haroon, but his
mother says she is 26; she has been with them since Haroon’s first birthday.
Both Haroon and his mother speak affectionately of Rani.
Despite prompting on my part, there was no mention of new media, mobiles,
the internet or anything digital until Haroon mentioned Vibering his father.
Viber enables Haroon and his parents to discuss their day without incurring
call charges. Haroon’s mother mentions that they moved to Hyderabad to
nurse her in-laws – having lived in Bangalore, Bhopal and Bombay previously.
After Haroon’s grandparents died, the prices of housing in other top-tier cities
being so prohibitive, they chose to settle in Hyderabad. When I asked Haroon
if he was interested in using a mobile phone, he said that he preferred to draw
and play football. When I provocatively asked Haroon’s mother if she would
rather do without Rani or without a mobile phone, she laughed uproariously
and immediately handed me her phone and said ‘throw it’. Then: ‘We couldn’t
live without her, Rani is priceless’. ‘Priceless’ or not, Rani gets paid Rs 7,000
(roughly 105 United States dollars) per month plus board, and has half of
Sunday off. Even if the scorn for the mobile phone is only rhetorical, much
about Haroon’s well-being and his parents’ security in the knowledge that an
adult is always there for him, cooking, ready to play, is down to the fact that
domestic labour is as cheap as it is2.
Only two years older than Haroon but more streetwise, Shilpa, age 12,
lives in a one-bedroom flat in a suburb with her older sister, parents and
dog. Her mother is a housewife; her father runs a medium-sized catering
business. The family are visited once a day by a maid who sweeps and mops
floors, cleans bathrooms and hangs out the clothes that Shilpa’s mother has
washed in their newish washing machine. In 2013, her parents were paying
for Shilpa’s basic smartphone and connection. The data cap is limited which
is why she often uses other people’s phones to upload images. An average
Saturday in her life has overlapping demands of education and socialising:
Shilpa: I woke up at 6 today as I had to study for my tuitions test. I

went for a bath and then I checked my WhatsApp. I had a bath
listening to my favourite songs on radio. … The test was long and
boring. After the test I took a walk with my tuition buddies and
then I went to my friend’s house and edited a few pictures of mine
because I wanted to get a new Facebook DP [Display Picture, out-
dated name for a profile picture]. I came home by 10am and spent
around an hour chatting with school friends on our WhatsApp
group and at 11 mom made Maggi [noodles] for me. Then
I watched music videos on television. Around 12:30pm I checked
my Instagram account and I started following my friends who
have recently joined Instagram. They were uploading nice pic-
tures. Even I commented. Then I had my lunch and studied again.
By 5pm I went down to walk the dog and play with my friends
then travelled by metro with my mom to my cousin’s place. There
we watched television for some time and then went out for dinner.
We clicked many images. Some of them were uploaded on Face-
book by my cousin. At night we watched television for some time
and then we played card games. It was very fun. Before sleeping
I took dog for a walk, then spent more than an hour chatting
on WhatsApp and then I checked my Facebook account before
sleeping and was surprised to know that all the pictures that I had
uploaded were appreciated by a lot of people!
The extent and manner in which media feature in this average Saturday will
be familiar to anyone who has researched the lives of urban middle class
teenagers in the twenty-first century. Work by boyd (2014), Ito et al. (2009),
Livingstone (2009) and Willett (2009) refers to the sorts of interactions
present in the stories the children I interviewed tell about the way media
are interwoven in the fabric of their daily lives. Based on studies of chil-
dren in Europe, Livingstone (2002: 67) proposes that in media-rich contexts
‘domestic media have become part of the infrastructure of everyday life’. This
includes ‘the penetration of media throughout the home establishing a cer-
tain set of expectations, practices and uses, and hindering others’ (Ibid., 68).
When I examine Shilpa’s day through the lens of old media, she seems
surrounded by a surfeit of old media: text books, music on the radio, music
videos on television, more television in the night and card games. Shilpa
does not have a room of her own, or much spare time away from school,
studies, and family members. At this moment in time (2014), WhatsApp is
the most used messenger service and Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram are
three of the most used online platforms for hanging out and communication
amongst urban middle class Indian 13 to 17 year olds3. Facebook is used
frequently but less intensively as an archive or repository, Viber is used by
many families, and apps like Hike and Frendzter’s (touting themselves as
‘secret chat’ facilities) are also used occasionally by older teenagers. Media
allow Shilpa to maintain a balance between sociability and mental privacy,
as well as between pedagogic labour and relaxation. In her’s and other
accounts, a difference emerges between the notion of the mobile phone as
individual and personal and the television as shared and sociable. Many of
the children and young people I interviewed spent considerable amounts of
time poring over phone screens together, texting each other, uploading and
downloading things onto each other’s and family members’ phones. Mid-
dle class children’s lack of a phone does not necessarily entail total lack of
access to mobile apps. In contrast, daytime television is often watched alone
while parents are at work, or cooking. As such, in my analysis cross-platform
old media and online messaging services seemed to play a role similar to
Livingstone’s (2002) idea of ‘infrastructure’.
Madhuri, age 13, from a mixed Tamil and Maharashtrian family, did
not have her own mobile phone, something she was acutely conscious of
when bored. Her highly educated mother works as a clerk in a bank, and
her father is a salesperson for a large company. She has three older brothers.
They live in a rented two-bedroom apartment in a rundown part of cen-
tral Bombay where the family have lived for three decades. The following
excerpt is from 2014.
Madhuri: I wake up at 6.00am with my older brother who goes into

office. I make his tea and his snack for office, and then I make
breakfast for my other brothers who are in school. All my bros
have mobiles. I’m allowed to play with their old mobiles but I
like to use their new mobiles which have internet. X has touch
screen. I like listening to Kolaveri di at the mo. Also seeing people’s
comments on Facebook. I have my own Facebook, but no time to
check in morning. I listen to loud music on TV when I am bathing.
Mama shouts and turns it off. She and I get ready and she drops
me to bus-stop and then goes to work. Today she didn’t shout and
I switched off TV because baba [father] wanted to do some work
in living room. School starts sharp at 7.15am. I am in X convent.
In school sometimes we use a computer, but not often.… Today I
came back from school at 3pm with my friends. We ate something
and then sat to play games on the computer for maybe 20 minutes
before going down with cycles. Internet was too slow. I came in
and had snack at 5pm then went to classes. I checked Facebook
before going to classes, M had posted funny pictures. I made a
comment to show I’d seen it. […] Classes were boring. Science sir
was lecturing us. I wished I had a mobile. I drew all over the back
of my book. I know everything in science anyways. I just go to
please mom. Came home. Helped mom with dinner. Afterwards
we all sat down to watch TV. [Int: What did you watch?] – news,
a comedy show, bit of cricket. Everyone was chatting about the
rains and heatwave to be honest, no one pays too much attention
on the TV. After warning me not to click in his Hike, eldest bro
let me borrow his phone. I took loads of selfies and posted one to
Facebook. By 10.30pm it had 73 likes.
Madhuri’s casual account of her early morning housework on behalf of her
working and school-going brothers was not unusual in my interviews with
families. Most of the middle class girls I interviewed were used to rising
early, sometimes before dawn on week days, and several of them helped
significantly, if rather sulkily, with household chores. Despite this, their
mothers complained that they didn’t help as much as they should.
Having older brothers means that Madhuri gets to see the latest gadgets –
like touchscreen phones – but then has to content herself with the occa-
sional borrow. This was also a common story amongst 11- to 13-year-old
girls and boys in this class. Madhuri was listening to a Tamil song Kolaveri
Di which was released at least a year before the interview, and her playing
of songs on television every morning – alongside the ritual of her mother
shouting at her – suggests that she uses the television to keep up with pop-
ular culture and then searches for these things online. Slow internet con-
nections, and infrequent use of computers at her fee-paying convent school
also accounts for why the internet via other means than phones holds little
attraction. In response to probing questions about what media formats or
moments mean to her, through phrases such as ‘to be honest, no one pays
too much attention on the TV’, Madhuri intimated that old media was fre-
quently background noise when her family were in the room together. She
also said that she felt sorry for her brothers having to use ‘secret chat’ apps.
‘It makes life so complicated, sometimes I think they will get heart attack
just from this’.
Unprompted discussions about civic and political issues with interview-
ees in this social class were rare. Gauri, age 16, the only child of a pro-
fessional couple, was unusual in mentioning a political discussion nested
within a sociable and media-packed Sunday:
Gauri: Got up at 7 this morning with the help of my phone alarm.

Went for a brisk walk. Got back at 8.30. Had my morning tea
while scrolling through news on the news app on the phone. Went
for a bath at 10.30am. Was listening to songs by The Script4 in
the shower. Which reminded me about a song I was advised to
download by a friend. So I got out and downloaded the song as
soon as I got dressed. Heard the song over and over again for
30 minutes. Then watched a movie Kabhi Khushi, Kabhi Gham
on television and had lunch simultaneously. The movie got over
at 2.30pm. I went to sleep till 5pm when my friend called me and
asked me to go out to meet her boyfriend with her. I went along
and we all had a general discussion about the politics in India and
about the reforms Modi was supposed to bring. Then we went
to eat pani puri on the road. I was back home at 9pm. Watched
TV for a while after dinner. A silly cartoon. WhatsApp was on all
throughout the day for no specific amount of time. Nothing had
my undivided attention. At 10.15pm, I was surfing through the
internet about various recipes to cook and settled for Palak Paneer
to cook for the next day. Asked mum to get all the vegetables and
paneer. Got ready for bed, then was listening to music and played
Candy Crush till 12am. Spoke to a few people on WhatsApp and
finally went to bed at 1am.
From recipes online, Candy Crush, WhatsApp and The Script to classic
Hindi films and cartoons on television, Gauri pursues her media interests
with active engagement and in an organised manner that mirrors the way
in which she approaches her studies during the week. She is an audience
member, a user, and describes the internet as a fantastically useful tool in her
leisure and social life. She downloads, scrolls and surfs. Several assertions
suggest that Gauri was a comparatively more experienced and self-conscious
interviewee: ‘we all had a general discussion about the politics in India and
about the reforms Modi was supposed to bring’, ‘A silly cartoon’, WhatsApp
was on all throughout the day for no specific amount of time’ and ‘Nothing
had my undivided attention’. The intermingling of face-to-face interaction,
old media and online media is seamless in her account: a solo walk, a socia-
ble stroll, a conversation about politics, songs, a film, online news, private
messages, online recipes. Notably, Gauri’s interactions about politics and
her urge to make something – i.e., spinach and cheese (Palak Paneer) are
both conducted offline. She gave no evidence of being a prosumer or a prod-
user and had no interest in making anything with media.
The mundane, or perhaps hackneyed, media encounters of these urban
middle class children and teenagers is in some ways a fascinating counter to
narratives which focus on youth and digital freedom, creativity and democ-
racy. In line with the limited amounts of leisure time and privacy in their
family lives, these young people surrounded themselves with media for all
kinds of reasons: music as a comfort, a pep up in the morning, or to be ‘in
tune with a mood’. Comics, film and television narratives are familiar and
entertaining, relaxing, exciting, enjoyable, used for imagination and socia-
bility, or as background noise. News is usually only peripherally viewed,
and questions about politics or news in general elicited shrugs from most
children under 12, despite the fact that when I discussed political issues with
parents many of them had strong views. I glean from these conversations
that several of the parents are annoyed about caste reservations and despise
those who get jobs based on reservation criteria, are ardent supporters of
sectarian Hindu nationalist parties, and in particular of Narendra Modi,
though most of them are wary of the local MNS (Maharashtra Navnari-
man Sena). Parents in this group come across as middle class in an under-
stated way, used to providing a good education and tutors for their children,
expecting their children to ‘do better’ than they have, used to having maids
to do the heavier housework, but not spendthrift with technologies or holi-
days, and sometimes but not always the owners of much-prized apartments.
Discussions with younger girls and boys in the middle-middle classes
often revealed the tyranny of educational routines. Long hours of school
were followed by long hours of classes, tuition and independent study. The
words ‘boring’ and ‘long’ as well as ‘sleepy’ and ‘tired’ were associated
frequently with narratives about school or tuition and extra classes. Finding
that children and especially girls often had ‘no time’ to watch television or
go on phones of family members on average school days, it seemed sensible
to ask about their weekends.
The children who fall into the group discussed here have grown up with
mobile phones and later with internet smartphones used by parents and
older siblings. Most of the older ones use phones to keep in touch with
social networks, communicate about safety, leisure or share amusing anec-
dotes and as a repository for photographic memories. However, few in this
group either know about or make serious use of the affordances of the inter-
net and, in particular, its intellectual and political reach. I was interested,
therefore, in deepening the discussion wherever possible with children who
had a more complex relationship with new technologies.
5.3 Media narratives, research and time

As section 5.2 discussed, the relationships between middle class young peo-
ple and computers or the internet have changed in Indian metropolises in
the past six years with the increased status of computers, tablets, internet-
enabled mobiles and broadband in many middle class homes. The longitudinal
nature of this study, with multiple interviews with some respondents also
allowed me to provide a nuanced analysis that takes into account personal
and social changes (see Chapter 3).
Pavan, a lower middle class teenager from a village in Uttarakhand was
12 when we first met when he visited Delhi for medical treatment, and 17 at
our next meeting. His beliefs and attitudes had changed enormously in the
intervening space and time. At 12, although his uncle had brought him to
the capital for treatment of a painful condition, he evinced excitement and
joy in relation to everything media-related. His encounter with Hindi films
was described as dazzling; he sang commercial songs loudly; he was thrilled
by mobile phones and the internet; he asserted that his school teachers
‘don’t know anything compared to what there is to know about the world,
about India’. He was determined to become the most technologically savvy
person in his village, and to bring ‘enlightenment’ about ‘modern’ things,
and to fight against corruption. Five years later, in much better health, and
having passed his school examinations, Pavan was disenchanted by media
and by some aspects of technology: ‘What nonsense, what can they [com-
puters] bring us here that we do not already know? My mother, my aunt,
everyday watching these stupid serials, my sisters also’. He held forth about
local knowledge, understanding the seasons, the forests, the animals, and
keeping the habitats alive. He was, in fact, about to leave for Dehradun to
begin studying science and veterinary science. When I pointed out to him
that much of the knowledge that he would learn at college might become
obsolete if he didn’t keep up with things via the internet, he was sceptical:
‘My grandparents, my father and mother, they have done this [farming, ani-
mal husbandry] for many years. They have knowledge because they talk to
each other, to our community, to the forestry officer, to the gods. What is
written in some notification is not what happens in reality. What the govern-
ment says should happen is not what does happen, or what should happen.
I want to have a phone to talk to everyone, but that is different’. Through-
out our conversation – in which I played devil’s advocate and told him posi-
tive stories about the internet – he seemed intent on framing it as something
which brought bad news, absurd stories, and unwanted notifications from
government. He was the same enthusiastic Pavan of five years previously;
it was just that the objects of his enthusiasm were now animals, agriculture
and his village rather than media and communication technologies which
had become a means to an end.
To illustrate how urban family lives, media technologies and friend-
ships in a middle class setting are not frozen at a particular age or time
but change, sometimes quite dramatically, over a short period, I draw on
excerpts from my field notes and return to the stories of Kajal and Suchi,
whom I worked with over many years. Saliently, media technologies in these
instances seem to play a particularly complex, sometimes liberating, but not
always salutary, role in these young women’s construction of self and desire
at different ages.
Excerpt 1 August 2009: Suchi and Kajal are aged 13 and 14. Kajal
tells me that she is always at Suchi’s house and vice versa. They are
inseparable (indicated by intertwined index fingers). Their mothers
work for the same company, which has housed them in a housing com-
plex near a busy intersection. Both girls have nuclear families, inhabit
identical one-bedroom flats albeit in different blocks, with spacious
kitchens where they spend a lot of time. In the enclosed balconies of
their living rooms, both families have unbranded PCs, built by local
tech shops. Both girls have old mobile phones (not smartphones) on
which they have lots of music; these are used primarily for SMS and
music. Kajal and Suchi’s leisure, which is limited as they have up to
three hours of after-school classes at least four days per week, is filled
with the following pass-times: mall, chess, cycling, shopping, mehndi
(henna), weddings, social events, relatives, make-up, football, carom,
cards, Bollywood movies, TV shows such as Raven, Hannah Mon-
tana, Ninja Hattori, Kenichi, neighbourhood friends, gossip, fighting
with their mothers about access and freedom, and dance (Kajal) and
championships in spelling and maths (Suchi). Suchi helps out a lot at
home, puts clothes in the top-loader, assists her mother in chopping
food, and moans about it. The families share a maid, who washes
dishes, sweeps and does the floors every day. Kajal’s mother is severely
diabetic. The girls recount how K came home from school one day and
found her passed out on the floor. K phoned her father and brother
using her mobile, then ran for Suchi, whose mother was home and
called an ambulance. K’s mother survived. We discuss at length how it
is important for all members of K’s extended family to have mobiles. If
K’s mother loses her job or dies, they will lose their home, so the family
are saving to buy a new flat. K worries about leaving the neighbour-
hood and Suchi. But both of them tell me that technology will keep
them connected forever if that move happens.
Four years later, both of them attend local (junior) colleges. K’s parents
moved out of the colony and into rental accommodation pending the build-
ing of a new flat. K and S still meet most days and travel to college together.
Sometimes they meet with older friends and group selfies are posted to
Instagram and Snapchat or to Facebook, though that is less frequent. K’s
brother is about to finish his medical placement and go abroad to the United
States for his specialism.
Excerpt 2: October 2013: Suchi and Kajal are 17 and 18. I interact on
Skype, they scroll through their Instagrams, laughing, telling me about
the pressures of studying. They say their pass-times are: Hanging out;
boys; WhatsApping; movies, malls, shopping. But when I speak alone
with Kajal, she tells me Suchi is depressed, struggling to cope with
her college course, younger than others in the class and shy. She also
recently suffered a break-up with her ‘secret’ boyfriend. His family
saw them together and put a stop to it. He agreed without fuss. Suchi
now cries a lot, according to K. K tells me that Suchi now drinks heav-
ily. K repeatedly warns me not to reveal this to her own mother, whom
I know. (Suchi’s mother already knows.) S drinks ‘with the boys, with
the chess club, the maths champions after tutorials. They visit ‘pubs’ or
buy alcohol and go to someone’s building terrace. Since this all started
K informs me, S is often late in the mornings and K is finding it a bur-
den waiting to travel with her to college ‘I WhatsApp her twenty times.
Even then she’s late’ ‘I even try her on Frendzter in case she doesn’t
want to show on WhatsApp’. In a separate Skype with Suchi, she dis-
cusses her ‘narrow-minded family’, her dissatisfaction with life, with
her ex-boyfriend. She has deleted him from her Facebook and Insta-
gram but unfortunately still sees his posts on mutual friends’ walls,
and on various WhatsApp groups, which she says ‘inflame her jeal-
ousy’ and won’t let her forget her loss. One glimpse of such an image
and her day is ruined. She also complains that K is always studying.
K complains that S is always on her phone, that there is no point meeting
now, since she is ‘so distracted’.
These interactions with the girls were draining as both sought guidance and
wanted solutions to a range of interpersonal problems including Suchi’s
abandonment by her boyfriend. Both girls were worryingly thin. Suchi is
always trying to find new creams to make herself fairer. She googles adver-
torials about skin care and sends me messages asking what I think about
particular products. Like Deepa, whom I introduced at the beginning of the
chapter, she decided that her ex left her because she is too dark-skinned.
When I talk to Suchi and Kajal about politics with a big P, the discussion
usually leads to a rant about why reservations are an evil practice and why
Modi will be ‘the best’ for India.
What struck me about Suchi and Kajal’s accounts of growing up, family
life and new media use was the way in which mobile phones, apps and
social media served in contradictory ways to assist, educate and hinder
them in constructing and maintaining friendships, relationships, privacy,
and pleasure, and in building self-esteem and aspiration. The initial joy of
private connection, of autonomy and independent social or sexual connec-
tions through online platforms and phones was not straightforward. Anxi-
eties about being ‘discovered’, of losing phones, and running out of battery
and credit multiplied and were dwarfed by a sense that attentiveness to life
lived via technology was derailing their friendships. The misery of staying
connected and online only to see the real-world subject of her passion joy-
fully gloating about his new sexual conquests (or so it seemed to Suchi) and
her inability to confide in her mother, or her best friend, perversely leads
Suchi to seek advice in online forums and advertorials. This advice fuels her
paranoia about her skin, her sexuality and her loss of status. In the context
of the view that social media and mobiles ‘empower’ girls, these complexi-
ties were disturbing and ripe for harvesting by dystopic narratives such as
Palmer’s Toxic Childhood. Some of the things Suchi and Kajal told me and
showed me, were things I had noticed in previous years with some of the
older children. In fact, even in 2013, some of the teenagers I met dropped
their eyes repeatedly to phones as they sat in groups in malls, checking to see
how many other people had commented on their photographs. But leaving
off here, with these kinds of experiences, would be to tell only a portion of
the story.
5.4 Diving in: the upper middle classes and media-life politics
I filled notebooks with days spent with middle class children doing media-
related activities or watching them use communication technologies in their
everyday lives. I heard about film stars and celebrity police and army per-
sonalities or politicians whose public personas inspired teenagers and appar-
ently motivated them to try for media careers or to engage with issues such
as ‘anti-reservation’, ‘water conservation’ or ‘child marriage’; and about the
ways in which journalists who reported on political scams were frequently
viewed as ‘anti-national’. Delving into children’s uncritical adoption of
phrases such as anti-national or corruption often revealed a shallow and
misconstrued idea of national politics, fixed ideological positions emanating
from parents and mainstream media, and phrases about ‘terrorists’, ‘terror-
ism’ and ‘development’ adopted from the rhetoric of major Hindu Right
political parties.
Watching Facebook and Instagram use was enlightening and frustrating
in equal measure. I scrutinised thousands of facile and clichéd selfies and
holiday photographs, often belonging to friends of friends of the children
and young people I was spending time with and discovered their longing to
go to places and do things they see other more upper middle class ‘friends’
doing. These included: ‘Safaris’, ‘Dubai’, ‘Religious visits’, ‘Parties’, ‘Swim-
ming with dolphins’, ‘Malls’, ‘Singapore’ and more. I watched middle class
children in the 14- to 17-year-old age group routinely scrolling and lik-
ing, sharing or emoticon-ing silly jokes, memes, vines, gifs, and supposedly
devout, or crude, racist, lewd, sexist and Islamophobic content.
The sharing of images of Mein Kampf and positive or jokey memes about
Hitler amongst some sections of older middle class Hindu boys gave me
pause for thought. It brought directly to mind William Corsaro’s argument
that ‘[c]hildren’s participation in cultural routines is a key element of inter-
pretive reproduction’ (2011: 21). Sinister and disingenuous explanations
such as, ‘People have ignored all the good things [Hitler] did’, ‘We [Indians]
need some of his determination to deal with Pakistani terrorists’, and ‘But
we studied about him in History: he was a very strong leader, and we need a
strong leader to promote India’, were matched with lame disavowals: ‘I just
thought that was funny because he looks funny’, ‘I clicked “like” without
thinking’ and ‘I shared it because I like to share all things by this friend, he’s
very clever’. In a couple of cases, boys said things like: ‘Take it up with my
dad, I shared this Hitler joke from his Facebook’ and ‘My father says Hitler
was just standing up for his religion’. Although they might seem random,
and incoherent, in a climate across India that legitimizes various forms of
disenfranchisement and violence towards the ‘minorities’ who comprise vast
swathes of the population, these naïve or considered expressions and mobili-
sations through social media on the part of these middle class teenagers can-
not but contribute to the social reproduction of discrimination and violence.
The younger girls and boys (under age 11) had lower usage of chat appli-
cations, were rarely unsupervised online, though they had a lot of unsu-
pervised television time, and also showed more interest in face-to-face
interactions with family. Sometimes groups of ‘building friends’ from the
same housing society would include 11 year olds and 14 year olds and, in
these instances, the 11 year olds might press their parents to allow them to
have a social media profile. But overall, the younger middleclass children,
particularly in towns and cities, spent most of their media time listening to
songs with older siblings, playing simple games on phones, Gameboys and
off-line, and interacting with family during television viewing.
With a minority of the boys from age 14 upwards, I noted dozens of
instances when pornography or lewd, misogynistic images and videos were
shared or modified into memes, gifs and vines or simply saved and watched
on phones or computers. I was shown rape jokes, memes and gifs sometimes
containing animations or animals. I always questioned the boys about how
these images made them feel and why they posted them or passed them on.
Most of them said they thought they were ‘funny’ or retracted and sug-
gested that other ‘dirty’ boys posted on their walls; but a few of the 16 to
17 year olds were vehement that some women deserved such treatment. One
recounted an implausible sequence of events in which a 23-year-old woman
had first made advances to him and then withdrawn her affections when she
found someone her own age: his rage was such that he felt all women were
cheats and bitches. Another divided the world into two camps: good girls
and whores. All his friends and relatives appeared to be good girls. Everyone
else, including some of his college lecturers, were whores who needed to be
raped so they did not become ‘feminists’. This boy, 16 at the time of our
interview, was nonplussed when I asked him whether I, the interviewer and
an ardent feminist, counted as a ‘good girl’ or a ‘whore’.5
Some of the older teenage boys, once they were comfortable enough with
me to talk about relationships, needed to ask basic questions about sexual-
ity and pleasure, suggesting a gulf between school learning on sexual health
and knowledge about sexuality. When I asked why they hadn’t thought to
search for the answers to their questions online, some of them were genu-
inely surprised that the internet could be used to gain useful information
rather than just providing images of porn or enabling photo sharing. Several
were aware of the internet as a repository for science projects, where to
get pizza, half-naked actresses, games, memes and cartoons, but completely
unaware that it had anything serious to give with regard to sex and relation-
ship advice. During the course of such discussions, three boys mentioned
what I immediately characterised as sexual abuse, one by a neighbour, one
by an older friend and one by his mother’s brother. They did not use the
words ‘sexual abuse’ but described incidents of touching and forced contact
with genitals that had left them ‘crying’, ‘doubtful about themselves’, ‘feeling
sick’ and ‘puzzled about humanity’6. Again, they were adamant that they
could not tell anyone and had not thought to use the internet as a means of
seeking advice or comfort. Dilip, one of the boys whom I had interviewed in
2010, later came out to me as gay. We were not doing a formal interview, but
recollecting my questions about the internet, he told me ‘now internet gives
me life, it gives me hope, I find others who think like me’.
Some of the middle class girls, on the other hand, spent hours searching
for advice on relationships on agony-aunt columns, on Facebook, or reading
people’s relationship posts and commenting on them to each other offline.
They spent a lot of time looking at the pictures of male film stars, and shar-
ing pinup posters of models. Several of the middle class girls I interviewed
discussed their wish for intimacy as they saw it depicted in Hollywood and
vernacular films, serials and soap operas, rarely, if ever, mentioning children’s
programmes. They talked hesitantly, and then angrily about experiences of
sexual harassment, particularly on the roads and public transport, with men
who had tried to stroke, hit, grope or stick fingers into them while they
stood in queues, boarded busses or shopped at market stalls. While older
girls (ages 15–17) also mentioned exploring the world of free porn, and I
observed them giggling and commenting to each other, egging each other
on, most were ambivalent, or cautious, speaking of anxieties about being
‘pushed into sex’, ‘not knowing what to do’, ‘not being sexy enough’ as well
as being ‘caught doing sex’.
When I heard them mocking and joking – offline and in private – about
the way in which boys of their acquaintance boasted or bragged online, and
about the ugliness and dirtiness of men who harassed them, I was reminded
forcefully of Scott’s (1987) ‘weapons’ of the weak and ‘hidden transcripts’
(1990) (discussed in Chapter 1); and of De Certeau’s (1984) notion of
‘tactics’, sets of actions embedded in the everyday, and used by ordinary
people, of which these children had seemingly developed a repertoire. The
girls tended to be more aware of and interested in issues of privacy than
the boys in this group. Several knew that their parents checked their social
media usage and some deleted sex-related internet search histories, replac-
ing them with random and acceptable searches such as ‘How to make garlic
parathas’, or ‘visa requirements for American universities’. Several also had
multiple Instagram accounts with different fake profiles and one truthful or
accurate one. Some of these were incidental, made and abandoned due to
a forgotten password. But some were also considered, a way of separating
bits of their personal archives and putting up walls against interference from
within the family and from strangers. The cases and excerpts elaborated
below represent some tropes from these observations and participant obser-
vations. However, I also focus on some engagements of children with an
unusually avid understanding of or engagement with media and/or politics.
5.4.1 Micro-politics, the self and contaminated agency

Tara is 16. Her father is dead and she and her mother live in a flat in a gated
community in Pune. Tara’s mother was a housewife until her father died,
but now works as an interior designer, a career for which she trained before
her daughter’s birth. Tara’s mother is careful to be home when her daughter
gets home from school. When she is late, Tara eats dinner with her father’s
parents in another part of Pune.
Tara: I’m careful online. I know how insensitive people’s words can
be, and I see a lot of abuse of people just for who they are. If you
write English badly, if you come from a poor household, if you
express liking for pictures of someone of the same sex, jokes and
bullying are severe. For some of my friends it is traditional to post
a selfie every time they go out. Then they are happy if they get good
comments, but also even one bad comment can spoil their day
fully. So, I don’t do that. I just watch what goes on. I don’t post.
Several of the girls I met spoke about this type of ‘lurking’. Later in the inter-
view, I discovered that Tara was beginning to think about her sexuality and
that she had sought advice online:
Tara: I found out I like girls. It is very simple. Last year, it happened to
me just like that. I was reading Harry Potter, I was reading about
Hermione, and I got this strange feeling: ‘I would like to be with
you’. That was it. There are words for this I know. I would never
tell this to my friends now, they wouldn’t hang out in mom’s place
any more. I don’t even like them like that, but it would end in fights,
they would call me names like they call other women who do that.
Tara was reluctant to say more about herself and moved to commenting
on the serious consequences of getting bullied online. She directed me to a
friend of hers who had been bullied badly by friends of her brothers, both
offline and online, and who had been sexually harassed through posts on
her ‘wall’ to the point where she left Facebook and Instagram. The harass-
ment had started when she was seen ‘taking an interest’ in a Muslim boy
in school and culminated in Tara’s friend’s father taking out a restraining
order against the boy she liked rather than against the Hindu boys who
were harassing her. Tara would not be drawn on the issue of religion and
romance, other than to say that she had noticed that it was more difficult to
be friends with ‘just anybody’ since ‘growing up’.
Some months after our interview, Tara sent me a link to an online news
story about two women in Orissa who had got married with the blessings
of their families7. There was no note, but I surmised that being able to surf
the web and to discover that people like her can live in circumstances of
their own choosing without being pilloried and disowned was a comfort.
Without the internet, Tara would hardly have stumbled across such an old
news item. In this sense, the anonymity or at least the belief that Tara had in
her own anonymity in online searches, as well as access to internet archives
through mobile phone, seemed to have given her a degree of privacy and
autonomy that she would not otherwise have had. As with Hindi film nar-
ratives (Banaji, 2006), so with internet narratives and experiences they can
provide raw materials for new and unconventional imaginaries of romance
and desire and they can emphasise the limits and punishments attendant
with transgression; sometimes in quick succession. Tara’s experience sug-
gests the ways in which some teenagers use media and the online sphere to
scaffold and bolster resistant or countercultural sexual agency and to resist
the judgmental gossip in their peer groups. This kind of agency – which is
most often recognised as agency by media scholars – is viewed as far more
threatening by many Indian families than that which fuels the sharing and
viewing of pornography by boys, or the creation and sharing of misogynist
jokes, memes and gifs. This begs the question of whether some social scien-
tists only recognise children’s behaviour as agentic when those in authority
dislike it intensely. I will return to this point in the book’s conclusion.
Bishnudas is 15. His father is a retired journalist. His mother is a working
journalist at a well-established English language publication. They live in
New Delhi in an upmarket housing colony with Bishnu’s sister Madhavi,
who is 21, a maid, and a gardener/handyman. Their home was built with
inherited wealth on his mother’s side.
Bishnu: For me, I would be at [a] loss without internet. All my knowl-
edge, I learn on here. I get up and check out news – my Ma sits
there drinking tea and reading newspapers [he indicates their
veranda] but I am more uptodate than she is, when she shouts out
‘This has happened’ I already know it, I knew it half hour back,
or even night before. I have already checked out opinions about
it, and read stories from both sides. I see how information travels,
and rumours.
Int: That’s very mature! And you do this on…?
Bishnu: My phone. IPhone, baba pays the bill and he never complains,
because he knows I am a topper at my school, and I will never give
him trouble if I have access to technology. If baba had internet
when he was starting as a journalist, he says he would be still work-
ing now. His job tired him too soon. He had to go everywhere. He
couldn’t tap on screens and find out the information. Using internet
is traditional for my friends: we don’t think of doing things the other
way. […] Example, our group – drummer, guitarist, vocals – we got
together and searched on Facebook and through Instagram and
we have a pianist. We are flexible. We play funky songs, we have
recorded our own album – [names it] and we put it first online, got
many hits – [laughs] mostly our friends at school and their parents,
but it’s the beginning. Do you want to hear it? […]
Int: What other things do you check out online? Are you interested
in politics?
Bishnu: What do you mean, politics? I am not interested in these
[swears] parties: Congress, AAP, BJP. I am interested in what is
happening in our country, in the education system – soon I’ll be
in uni, and my parents want me to go to US[A] for a year at least
since everything here is like corrupt, and rote learning, except at
the top places. Even those students get into problems, teachers
make politics. See the stories of [X and Y]… I’m interested in these
issues: corruption, jobs, freedom of press, environment, but I also
want to live my life: I want to be excellent in all my work and
choices, in the band. My sister, as you know, is very much involved
with what is going on. […]
Bishnu’s interest in non-institutional politics was explicit. His passionate

expositions on how new media enabled him to learn, to make and do stuff
and to know stuff, at first led me to think that his political interest might
have something to do with his use of new media. However, after several
meetings with him, and with his parents, it became apparent that the reverse
was more likely. His budding interest in the political with a small ‘p’ and in
musical creativity – which he at least partially derived from conversations
around the dinner table with his parents and his sister, his mother’s interest
in investigative journalism, and the various artists and activists who visited
their home – were shaping his use and interactions with communication
technologies and on social media platforms. I will return in Chapter 7 to his
assertion that ‘using the internet is traditional’ for his friends.
Amongst the middle class cohort, I met only one other interviewee who
had an equally explicit interest in liberal politics. Ruhi, 12, of Navi Mumbai
is extremely confident, and loves to talk. She lives in a joint family with
her father’s brother and his family. As economically upper-middle class
as Bishnu’s family, but with recently acquired property and a different sort
of educational background, Ruhi’s father and uncle own two apartments
with two bedrooms each which have been broken through to make a sin-
gle enormous apartment in Navi Mumbai (the very outskirts of Bombay,
now easily accessible from central Bombay by public transport). Her uncle
and her father are dentists, and they work together at a private practice on
the ground floor of another apartment block not too far from their family
home. Ruhi’s mother is also a dentist but works at a hospital as a maxil-
lofacial surgeon. Ruhi’s 30-year-old aunt – who wears a headscarf, rides a
moped and is quite fanatical about cricket – is a primary school teacher.
Ruhi’s two sisters and her two cousins attend the same primary school and
Ruhi moved to a nearby Convent secondary only a few years previously.
Their father’s parents, who speak Gujarati, also live with the family, as does
an old man who is a cook-come odd-job man and migrated with the family
from Gujarat when they moved in the 1990s.
Conversations with Ruhi’s mother and father reveal that they have lived
in the same apartment block since it was built eight years earlier. They spent
a long time looking for a more central place to stay, but had many unpleas-
ant experiences with regard to their religion, the size of their family unit, and
the fact that they cook non-vegetarian food. Now that they live amongst
‘meat-eating Maharashtrians’, they say they feel somewhat safer and there
have been no overt problems. ‘We accept prasad on poojas; we send sevai
kheer for Eid’. They are aware that people make comments about the size of
their family, but neighbouring children with a toothache, and even adults,
are also brought to them and discounts ensure a steady stream of gratitude.
Everyone’s aim seems to be to protect Ruhi and her cousins and siblings
from experiencing anything like the elders went through in 1992 and 2002.
Ruhi: ‘My abba and mummijaan [unclear] don’t like me to watch

television. They say it gives a bad impression [affects the mind
in a negative way], that I should study hard. But I think they are
old-fashioned in their thinking. I learn such a lot from television,
I learn cooking, I learn about foreign cities, I have also heard about
this thing, gang rape case, Nirbhaya didi. Did you hear about it?’
Int: [Cautiously] Yes, um. What did that make you feel?
Ruhi: I watched everything about that. I watched the talk shows. She
died. Did you know that? She was such a brave heroine. I watch
everything to do with the people protesting. I wanted to go and
shout and be on the India gate. I want to be a politician when I am
20 and resolve such problems. Women and girls should not have
to suffer like this. I think we must change the mindsets of whole
country.’
Int: Wow. I’m very impressed. […]
Ruhi: Mummy is old-fashioned. She doesn’t like it that I read many
novels, newspapers, watch many news: I want to understand what
people think, how they think, why is the India how it is, how can
we change? This is my great interest. [Int: “old-fashioned?” What
do you mean?] Example. I asked her to buy me a bra some days
back. All girls in my school is having them. We can’t do hockey
without the bra. Mummy was very shocked like ‘You are too
young, Ruhi’ and I explained her, ‘Mummy, we all grow differ-
ently. So what if you didn’t wear till you became fourteen? I am
different from you.’ In some days I will ask aunty, if she also will
not listen, I will ask abba. He is more modern.
Int: Did you learn about things like that at school?
Ruhi: School? No. They would never, my teachers are too shy, too
old-fashioned. I learnt it with my friends, we watch television. I
watch some funny serials. From there I learnt that it is okay to
ask for a bra. For one year now I was uncomfortable in my slip at
school. I was covering myself, embarrassed.
Ruhi, with little immediate access to the world of phones and the inter-
net, was nevertheless one of the most well-informed and alert amongst my
middle class interviewees, with television her primary medium of informa-
tion and engagement. She is openly passionate about social and political
issues, in this brief excerpt referencing the 2012 gang rape in Delhi, women’s
rights, protest and a reasoned argument about why she should be allowed
to wear a bra. The fact that reading novels, reading newspapers, and view-
ing television news in also not particularly approved of in her household
(primarily because it takes attention away from formal text-book studies
but also because it brings her into contact with troubling adult aspects of
social politics) means that for Ruhi these media activities have a slightly
subversive aura. Her uses of the phrases ‘old-fashioned thinking’ and ‘more
modern’ on several occasions were interesting and struck me as suggesting
how Ruhi positively or negatively classifies ideological and political stances:
given that Ruhi’s mother is a maxillofacial surgeon and specialising in all
the latest techniques, the term ‘old-fashioned’ connects to her mother’s social
and gender-related views, rather than to her use of technologies. One might
also recollect here, how mothers in families are often compelled to taken
on the role of ‘gatekeeper’ at least vis-à-vis their children: a role that, Tanya
Modleski argues identifies them more than their husbands with ‘the spe-
cious good’ (1986: 163), a form of bourgeois morality that values form over
substance and relays family authority to younger members, thus becoming
something which young people (and horror movies) generally resent. Here,
one cannot help but notice that many boys too, especially brothers, but even
sisters on occasion, through feeling invested with power over recalcitrant
siblings, embrace an identification with the specious good.
Illustrating some resilient gender differences within the upper middle
classes and particularly when it comes to technology is the case of Avinesh
who was 14 on the only occasion we meet in 2013. Avinesh’s family own a
computer and live in a two-bedroom flat with a roof-terrace in Delhi. Their
computer is located in a lockable desk alcove in their main family room.
Avinesh knows where the key is and likes to go online in the afternoons. His
family has three mobiles (each of his parents and his middle sister, Ananya,
who is 17) and his father pays for a connection for Meera, a married sis-
ter who lives in Uttar Pradesh with her in-laws. Avinesh says he has been
promised a phone for his 14th birthday. He has an IPod mini which he uses
all the time. The family own an old cassette deck with an integrated CD
player; his parents don’t listen to music online but on this machine. Avinesh
is self-congratulatory about their lack of technical knowhow when it comes
to downloading music: ‘I’m the techie in the family, auntie. No one can do
anything without asking me. Mom and dad, Meera, my friends, all come to
me for downloading and upgrades. I’ve been running to the shops for Mom
for top ups from when I was this high’.
Avinesh and his parents also praise the BJP and Narendra Modi, confi-
dent that he will be the next Prime Minister. Glimpses of Avinesh’s Facebook
newsfeed reveal hundreds of posts from tech companies, images of mobile
gadgets and memes extolling Modi’s virtues and degrading opposition pol-
iticians, particularly Rahul Gandhi and Arvind Kejriwal, suggesting that
both are lacking in masculinity. His parents subscribe to a popular blend of
authoritarian conservatism: they are looking forward to an ‘end to reserva-
tions’, the ‘fruits of development’ and an ‘end to corruption’. They charac-
terise caste-based reservations as the ‘worst form of corruption’ and reveal
that they make every effort to preserve their financial situation by declaring
a low taxable income. Avinesh’s father states that he has ‘nothing against the
Muslims if they just stop trying to turn us [India] into Saudi Arabia’, and
declares that someone called Ali is a ‘jolly good cricketer, despite the mullah
beard’. Much of Avinesh’s talk in the interview revolves around the need
to end reservations and the need to be constantly upgrading technology in
order to not ‘fall behind Westerners’, both at a personal and national level.
One incident which he recounted was telling of the role he sees himself as
being able to perform through technology.
Avinesh: Last year mom and dad suspected that my sis (Ananya) was
seeing some guy. Unsuitable guy. Every guy is unsuitable (laughs).
They asked me to be on the alert. I waited till she went for bathing
and I checked her phone – I know all her passwords – and I knew
at once there is this guy. Texts went back more than eight months.
She saves everything. Sis always tells me her troubles, so I waited
for her to say something, but she didn’t and she continued to sleep
with her phone. I felt very angry at how she was dishonouring us,
disobeying mom and dad. So I requested her one night: “let me play
Candy Crush” and when she did I took the evidence to mom and
dad. Next days were bad, but I had stopped the worst [trouble].
Int: Didn’t it worry you that you had spied on your sister and told her
secrets to your parents?
Avinesh: (Surprised) What do you mean? We all have duties to par-
ents, to our country. What she was doing was very dangerous for
her and for our family. She could be victim of gang rape if she
continues that kind of secret relationship. Anyways, the guy was a
total loser, lafanga [bum]. So black. She is lucky that I could crack
her password. Now parents have taken her phone. [pause]. No
one will be able to crack my password.
The ironic juxtaposition of the last few statements – his own assured sense
that his technological skills will enable him to construct an unbreakable
password and that the same skills saved his sister by invading her privacy to
bring her back to the parental fold – was lost on Avinesh, although I probed
to see if he was aware of any contradictions.
Having met the notorious Ananya on several occasions, I am sceptical
about whether she accepted this technology-enabled interference in her
romantic life without protest. Her mobile phone had been confiscated: yet I
saw her using one. What Ananya had learnt from the events, it seemed, was
that mobile or no mobile, secrecy still needed to be practiced around the
greatest threats to her privacy and in a more systematic and calculated man-
ner. What Avinesh learnt was a sense of his own superiority in being able to
use technology to ‘save’ his sister’s honour from a dark-skinned man of her
choice, and to serve his parents, while learning from everyone’s technological
weaknesses. His references to nation and duty suggest that family is indeed
a laboratory for the shaping of future civic and/or authoritarian values. His
complacent account of his actions suggests the strong likelihood of a form
of ‘contaminated agency’ that thrives through curtailing and restricting that
of others. I interviewed several other middle class boys in the 14 to 17 age
group and several middle class girls who demonstrated similar tendencies.
Unsurprisingly, Avinesh asserted a wish to join the information technology
sector. Wondering if close friends often share interests and values, I asked
him to find me someone ‘tech-savvy’ and ‘cutting edge’. He introduced me to
Feroz with whom he plays cricket. They could not have been more different.
Feroz, aged 13, is shy. He lives with his mother, father, grandfather and
two younger sisters (Mini and Honey) who share a room. Feroz shares with
his grandfather. His mother and father sleep in the living room. Feroz has
an old mobile with a limited data package. He spends much of his time
studying, playing carom, cards and cricket. He has many hobbies, including
drawing and reading. He is an athlete and loves to run. His phone has a
camera but he prefers to use his grandfather’s SLR camera since he is an
enthusiastic amateur photographer. The family owns a tablet and a high-
spec laptop which is used constantly by Feroz’s father who is a graphic
designer. He encourages his children to play with design. Feroz’s mother was
an architect before she married; she worked in her uncle’s firm till Feroz was
born. Now she is a full-time mother. We had several conversations about
how she does not want the children to be ‘corrupted’ by consumer culture,
online marketing; she is also worried about how they might be affected by
pollution since they all have asthma. Of all the parents I interviewed, she is
the most concerned about schools overworking her children. She spent six
years in Europe where her father was sent by his firm and is acutely aware
that the Indian education system puts phenomenal pressure on children.
Feroz is not enrolled in after-school classes: she “trusts him to find his level”.
According to her, he is always in the top five children in tests in his class
which is in an exclusive South Delhi school. If his grades drop, the family
will reconsider. Feroz’s father smokes heavily despite the children’s asthma.
He puts this down to the pressures of his job. Feroz’s worldview appears to
have been shaped by his family environment in a rather complex manner:
Feroz: I think I can be good at making apps. I’ve tried this with my
father. My father has shown me programming, web design. But I
have not much interest to do this as a career. If you give me any-
thing in the world I would choose that Mini and Honey do not
have asthma any more because this causes my mummy too much
tension. We have a nice life. They will never say no if I ask for
something like a phone, music system, gadgets. But I like to spend
my time reading books, drawing, sports, science experiments. […]
We don’t watch television too much, but on new years’ we go to
the pictures or Habitat centre.’
Technology was so normalised and integrated within Feroz’s life that it

was too mundane to merit much excitement and aspiration. Although he
attempts to please his father and to bond over technology, programming and
design, this is not where his heart lies. His interests lie in ensuring the health
of his sisters, and in pursuing cultural, scientific and artistic goals. His views
and values echo those of his mother and her highly educated liberal milieu.
5.5 Conclusion
When Narendra Modi swept to power in the 2014 polls, television head-
lines shrieked: We did it! The youth of India have spoken; This was a vote
for development! For new media! For democracy! Very swiftly, biographies
of Modi and comics depicting Modi as a saviour and hero circulated across
India. Less euphoric commentators (Ohm, 2015; Udupa, 2015) pondered
the outcome of the elections: How did this happen? What role did new
media play in spreading Modi’s message? How did religious demograph-
ics affect the outcome? And, what was it about Modi that ‘youth’ found
appealing? In this context, a small number of commentators asked ques-
tions about whether a younger demographic was more responsible for
Modi’s triumph than other age groups, whether voters who did support
Hindutva politics formed their opinions based primarily on contact with
new media, and how significant the deregulation of old media had been in
spreading stereotypes, propaganda and discriminatory worldviews in the
years prior to the elections.
I have highlighted discussions about routine, politics, citizenship, media
use and education which suggest that family politics, education environ-
ments and peers, as well as mainstream electronic news media, and televi-
sion are the primary arenas in which middle class Indian children and young
adults form their political opinions. I examined family configurations,
changing self-presentations and the social identifications of the children and
young people from middle class communities and the salience given to older
and newer forms of media in accounts of their civic and personal efficacy,
play and aspiration.
Economic and social factors play a role in distinguishing children’s lives
and daily routines within the middle classes. The children whom I inter-
viewed in lower middle class families frequently exhibited high levels of
personal anxiety and stress, usually about aspects of their everyday lives
from school work and familial expectations to lack of privacy and pressures
on their parents. Many of the girls contributed significantly to household
chores; and even boys ran errands and assisted with childcare. In several
cases they shared the same living spaces as working-class children and
youth, and their mothers tried to maintain a sense of ‘distinction’ by empha-
sising that they attended better schools or by preventing them from playing
with working-class neighbours.
Politics and civic participation take place on a number of levels in middle
class Indian children’s lives, particularly in their later teens. Most of these are
‘proto-political’ – showing some relationship to formal politics but no clear
pattern of mobilisation or collective participation. Their networks which
are often engaged in civic endeavours and may burgeon into either author-
itarian or liberal political endeavours are rather limited, but dominate their
daily lives. Families, relatives, friends, romantic dates and lovers, sport clubs
or groups, class-mates and teachers, gyms, dance classes, cooking circles,
film-going, television watching, fetes, religious functions, as well as other
‘neighbourhood’- or ‘community’-dominated events, jostle for position in
the schedules of many of the urban middle class children and teenagers I
interviewed. In Chapter 1, I asked whether, given children’s generally sub-
ordinate status within adult-run ‘technologies of power’ children’s agency
might emerge in ways which normative definitions of agency fail to recognise
and certainly do not celebrate? If we accept that agency can be expressed
and embodied through actions which have an instrumental but no necessary
normative value, such as surveillance, bullying, consumerism and self-harm,
then how can we move beyond a celebration of agency in and of itself? This
chapter has partially answered these questions by indicating that middle
class Indian children’s agency is often expressed in instrumental and con-
formist ways that might be regarded as being normatively lacking in certain
theories of resistance or empowerment. I suggest that these expressions of
contaminated and ephemeral agency are facilitated by media, both new and
old. In the next chapter I turn to working class Indian children’s narratives
of media and life to see whether these can answer such questions more fully.
Notes
1. http://www.huffingtonpost.in/2016/02/19/modi-gujarat-village-bans_n_9272882.
html.
2. Of course, many middle class adults insist that domestic workers now charge
‘exorbitant rates’ and are lazy, and not as loyal as they used to be. Complaints
about the wages of ‘maids’ are common and resentment of those who push
wages up to ‘steal maids’ away is high.
3. While these stories are also a form of hype, the changes which occur are swift
and trends quite definite across dozens of reports. At the end of 2014, WhatsApp
claimed to have 70 million active monthly users in India and has grown further
since then. Acquired in February 2014 by the owners of Facebook, WhatsApp
is currently the most-used messaging service in India, according to a survey of
60,000 in 2015 http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/WhatsApp-
is-the-most-popular-messaging-app-in-India-Survey/articleshow/49242341.
cms, this is also supported by my observations and interviews. Snapchat is
growing fast, and could soon rival Facebook amongst the 15–30 year olds who
have access to smartphones and fast wireless connections: http://www.exchange
4media.com/digital/snapchat-fastest-growing-app-holds-9-market-share-in-
india_58389.html.
4. http://www.thescriptmusic.com/gb/home.
5. Our discussion on this topic lasted some time, and gradually revealed the com-
plicated under-layers of casual misogynist statements. I took on the role of
‘active’ interviewer, gently but firmly challenging taken for granted assumptions.
6. In line with my ethical commitment to the children not to reveal what they told
me, I gave them numbers for helplines, for rape advice centres, as well as per-
sonal telephone numbers of a woman psychologist who counsels such cases. In
all three cases, the abuse appeared to be in the past or a one-off, but I did not
feel confident that this was necessarily the whole story, and given the proximity
of the other people involved, I warned my psychologist friend that she might get
a call from boys unable to pay her, and in need of advice and support.
7. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Two-Orissa-girls-defy-norms-get-
married/articleshow/322874.cms; see also: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/
south_asia/6212756.stm.
6 ‘Media poor’ in India
Deprivation, responsibility, resourceful
conservation
This chapter considers children typical of the lower income 70 percent of

India: the working-classes – some poor, some very poor – urban, small town,
rural-to-urban migrants and rural labourers. It relies on extended ethno-
graphic descriptions and excerpts from interviews to allow readers and the
child participants some measure of autonomy in communicating and fram-
ing the details of their lives in connection to the latter’s experiences, wants
and needs, family, employers, paid and unpaid labour, media tools and tech-
nologies, agency and social reproduction. Two quotes are relevant in framing
the ideas and values in this chapter. The first from Daniel Solozano’s work
on critical race scholarship, draws attention to racial microaggressions,
encompassed in the fact that ‘[a]lmost all black-white racial interactions
are characterized by white put-downs, done in automatic, preconscious, or
unconscious fashion.’ (1998: 121–126). The second is from the work of
educationist Dwayne Donald:
Indigenous Métissage is a research sensibility that imagines curriculum

and pedagogy together as a relational, interreferential, and hermeneutic
endeavour. Doing Indigenous Métissage involves the purposeful juxta-
position of mythic historical perspectives (often framed as common-
sense) with Aboriginal historical perspectives. The ethical desire is to
reread and reframe historical understanding in ways that cause readers
to question their own assumptions and prejudices as limited and lim-
iting, and thus foster a renewed openness to the possibility of broader
and deeper understandings that can transverse perceived cultural, civi-
lizational, and temporal divides. One central goal of doing Indigenous
Métissage is to promote ethical relationality as a curricular and peda-
gogical standpoint. Ethical relationality is an ecological understanding
of human relationality that does not deny difference, but rather seeks
to more deeply understand how our different histories and experiences
position us in relation to each other. This form of relationality is ethical
because it does not overlook or invisibilise the particular historical, cul-
tural, and social contexts from which a particular person understands
and experiences living in the world. It puts these considerations at the
forefront of engagements across frontiers of difference.
(Donald, 2009: 5–6)
Solorzano and fellow critical race scholars (Delgado, 2002; Ladson-Billings,
1998) have theorised and elaborated the cumulative effects of micro-
aggressions faced by people of colour on college campuses across the United
States. This concept directs readers to the intersecting age, gender, class
and caste micro-aggressions experienced by children from working class,
lower caste and/or Dalit backgrounds and expressed in the stories they tell
and which I excerpt in this chapter. Donald’s (2009) concepts – ‘Indige-
nous Métissage’ and ‘ethical relationality’ – are invaluable in interpreting
the experiences that children recount and in analysing how adult narratives,
media narratives, economic structures, and moral structures, for instance,
can suffuse children’s orientations to their worlds. In Donald’s formulation,
scholarship which pursues Indigenous Métissage offers ‘an ecological under-
standing of human relationality that does not deny difference, but rather
seeks to understand more deeply how our different histories and experiences
position us in relation to each other. This form of relationality is ethical
because it does not overlook or invisibilize the particular historical, cul-
tural, and social contexts from which a particular person understands and
experiences living in the world’ (2005: 6). Ethical relationality might be a
difficult concept for those of us trained to ‘discover’ transcendent theoretical
positions that involve the stories of others only as data. However, ethical
relationality turned out to be a commonplace affective position for working
class children and teenagers in India and so it was they who brought it alive
for me.
6.2 Agency and daily routines

Canella and Viruru, Corsaro, Scott and Mahmoud’s work discussed in
Chapters 1 and 2 suggested questions that have guided my analysis of chil-
dren’s everyday labour and media use in India. To what extent do theorisa-
tions of subalternity take children’s classed and embodied circumstances
into account? Does agency – or lack thereof – manifest itself as an absolute
quality or does it appear contextually and differentially in the lives of chil-
dren in contrasting class, religious, gender and caste positions? In this sec-
tion, I bring in the notion of routine, and link it to a normative theorisation
of agency as action which cuts against, rather than being imbricated with,
routine. In this sense, the discussion which follows is as relevant to the lives
and routines of the children and youth in middle class families as it is to the
working class children in the rest of this chapter.
In a chapter entitled, ‘The ethics of routine: consciousness, tedium and
value’, Don Slater argues that ‘notions of “routine” and its cognates are
labels that accord particular social status and value to forms of action and
practice, and that strategically stabilize them in certain ways’ (2009: 217).
This is a Foucaultian idea as he acknowledges. Discourses about objects
in the world are partially responsible for constructing those objects. He
suggests that the ethical framing of routine in discourse is, in this sense,
‘Media poor’ in India 153
a performance that is consequential. How people perform their routines
might lead them to question their routines, to step outside them, or to vali-
date and legitimize such performance by others like themselves. The concept
of ‘alienation’ in the Marxist tradition performs the moral role of identify-
ing routines which divide human beings from their own supposedly agentic
labour. I would go further and suggest that in circumstances, particularly
when it comes to children and childhood, it is their routines that are used to
delineate and differentiate their status or personhood as inhabitants of the
so-called ‘modern’ and the so-called ‘traditional’ spheres. The designation
of children using the nomenclature of school children and street children,
child soldiers, child beggars and child labourers tends to entangle position
and routine, identity and performance. But, as Slater argues, nomenclature
in relation to routine also bestows value within any system. While it is not
surprising that the routine and everyday, including care given to babies, the
sick and those too old to care for themselves, for centuries designated as
the domain of women and children and in particular of agricultural and
industrial workers, should carry with it a stigma in both colonial enlighten-
ment thinking and even some critical Marxist theory. Yoked to the idea of
lack of control, the notion of routine can become monstrous. It appears to
be antithetical to agency. Yet, if one recollects that children’s routines, like
those of adults, also include the hidden spaces, tactics, and transcripts with
which they negotiate these routines, make them bearable, or survive them,
then it becomes clear that while one may not control routine itself, there
are different layers of control built into routines. In this sense, the way in
which I invoke the notion of routine in previous and coming sections draws
attention to a stratified (according to positionings within structures such
as caste, class and gender) but nevertheless dialectical relationship between
structuration and agency.
My analysis of children’s accounts of their daily lives provides empirical
evidence of the ways in which routines may be stigmatised or stripped of
negative connotations when they are valorised within capitalist society –
for instance, consumption, romance or creative pursuits such as those of
Bishnu, Avinesh and Feroz in Chapter 5. The analysis in this chapter also
offers insight into the ways in which children’s routines are agentic, allowing
them to perfect and display skills that are useful for survival and for building
self-worth, giving them control within working class families where external
factors related to poverty may otherwise seem to reduce their choices to
a bare minimum. It is important not to romanticize the circumstances of
working children’s routines in the global south. It is also important to try
to distinguish between what children do with their time and the structural
and material forces that put them in a position to be or to have to be doing
those things.
Children’s daily routines in all classes often seem tedious. Accounts of
these routines can seem hackneyed or redundant. Agency, resistance and
creativity may appear only in the minutia or in the exceptional. It is crucial
to listen to these monotonous descriptions of repetitive tasks and accounts
of temporal structuring. In so doing it is possible to elicit insight into the
ways children at the intersections of class, religion, gender and caste in India
assert, practice, and articulate various types and levels of agency: via snip-
pets about friendship, media-use, humour and time-out, interwoven with
arduous chores, creative solutions, demanding labour, boring studies and/or
intimidating encounters with adults. Routines involve choices on the part of
children, and in line with my account of routine, children are presumed to
have reflexive consciousness about and responsibility for how they inhabit
their everyday lives.
Recalling the routines and lives of middle class children discussed
in another chapter, and especially the cushioned and pedagogised life of
10-year-old Haroon or 14-year-old Avinesh, I open with the account of
nine-year-old Shiv whose mother is a domestic servant. His father, a recov-
ering alcoholic, is unemployed. Shiv is an only child studying in a local
municipal school. His family lives in a Bombay slum.
Shiv: I woke up at 7.00am today, bathed, had breakfast and watched

TV for a while. I went for my Hindi tuitions at 9.00am for an hour,
then came home and got ready for school and went to school at
11.00. I don’t like school. I came back home at 3.30pm. Watched
TV for a bit and had lunch. I took a nap from 4–5pm. Had snacks.
Went for English tuition classes at 18.00. I hate English. I don’t get
it at all. At 7.15pm I went straight off to my aunt’s place because
she has an old computer. I played a few car racing games on that.
Then I came home at 9.30pm. Had dinner, then went into the road
to play with my friends. We jumped stairs today. The one who
could jump from the highest step would be the winner. I couldn’t.
I came home at 11.00. Played snake on my father’s phone. It’s not
a smart phone. And finally went to sleep.
The emotional phrases about boredom and dislike of school in Shiv’s account
were repeated in other children’s narratives, particularly the working class
children. Playing in the road at 9.30 at night meant dodging between cars
and buses that pass on the road above the slum lanes and jumping down the
crumbling steps. Shiv did not complain about this, but as the commentary
by Ruksana at the end of this chapter indicates, children like Shiv who live in
slums have dozens of hardships to contend with in their daily routines, traf-
fic in their play area being only one. When Shiv was eight, he was bitten by
mosquitoes in the slum lanes and nearly died of malaria: for several weeks,
he was alone at home shivering with fever while his mother worked and his
father drank in local bars. One of his mother’s employers came to the slum,
diagnosed him and paid for some of his treatment. He recovered and shrugs
off the experience, though the stress left its mark on his mother. This sug-
gests that longer temporal rhythms underpin ‘average’ days in working class
children’s lives. Seasons, illness, parental employment and unforeseen disas-
ters play a major role in working class children’s lives all over India. One
could potentially catalogue many different types of ‘average’ daily routines,
in which labour or school or friendship or media play differential roles.
Age also plays a role in how children perceive routines. Younger and
older children position themselves in different ways with regard to routines
of work, media, family and school. Parvati, aged 15, lives with her mother
who is also a domestic servant, and her father, who drives a rented taxi.
Her older brother is at junior college. They live in a sublet slum room with
their grandmother. Parvati says she wants to be an air-hostess and her favou-
rite hobby is dancing. She studies in a Marathi medium government school.
Parvati: I woke up at 6, prepared breakfast and got ready for school

by 6.45. Got my sisters ready, had breakfast and walked to school,
reaching at 7.00. School is really boring. I only go to school because
I have a lot of friends there. I’ve started liking English because I
have a good teacher. So I got back home at 12.35 as school ended
at 12:30 and I cooked lunch, washed dishes. Slept for an hour.
Then studied for my Algebra tuition test. Went to tuitions and gave
the test. Got back home and watched TV for a while. I love watch-
ing Hindi movies but I couldn’t find a good one, so I just ended up
scrolling channels. Later in the evening, I went out with my friends
and strolled through the neighbourhood (along the lanes of the
slum). I got back and ate my dinner and was surprised to see my
father was home – he usually works very late hours. So I played
Mario in his phone for 20 minutes. Then I borrowed my mum’s
phone (not a smartphone) to listen to some music. I fell asleep at
11.30pm, listening to music on the phone radio.
The italicised parts of Parvati’s account suggest the intimate connections

between work and boredom and learning and pleasure within routines.
Scrolling channels is a moment of leisure which comes across as boring and
disappointing, while the boredom of school is challenged by a liking for
English and the good English teacher. Older non-smart phones can be used
to enhance favourite activities like listening to music, while the space that
is a just a cramped and dirty slum to outsiders who may ‘other’ it through
their gaze, is also a ‘neighbourhood’ to be strolled through with friends.
Father being home early is a break in the routine which is bracketed here by
surprise and the playing of 20 minutes of Mario. Food preparation, cooking
and domestic chores are barely worthy of mention.
The taken-for-granted nature of household responsibilities grows for
most of the working class girls I observed and interviewed. Older boys at
the intersection of working and lower middle class households who have
sisters do fewer domestic chores and have more spare time for leisure. Vasant
was 17 in 2014 and has a 15-year-old sister. Their mother is a maid servant
and their father drives a rickshaw. Vasant has a black-belt in karate, which
he teaches to supplement their income. He studies an A-level equivalent at a
local college. The family live in a medium-sized Bombay slum.
Vasant: I woke up at 10am today as I didn’t feel like attending college.

I watched TV for 2 hours. Took a bath. Had lunch. Then I went
online on Facebook on father’s second phone which we all use and
liked a few pages of Jackie Chan movies. Followed up on them.
Meanwhile I was online on WhatsApp too. I finally went offline at
4pm because I had to go teach karate class to the junior students.
I do that everyday. I left from karate at 7. Hung out with a few
friends. Went home at 9pm. Had dinner prepared by my sister.
Went online on WhatsApp again. Texted my girlfriend till 1am
and then I went to bed.
Vasant’s account is reminiscent of working class, live-at-home, teenagers in

other world cities – Mexico City, or Cape Town, or Beijing. His sister gets
barely a moment’s leisure because her routine includes sweeping, putting
away utensils, filling water, hand-washing the family clothes, tutoring eight
and nine year olds, cooking both meals on days when her mother works
early and late and studying for her board examinations. She is dismissive of
WhatsApp and of phones in general, suggesting that since her brother bought
one, he never watches television with her (‘his heart is elsewhere’) and that
her father’s phone has destroyed family leisure even further since he is now
at the 24/7 beck and call of customers (‘They ring in the night; they ring
on festivals; they give us no peace’). Vasant argues with his sister, criticising
her cooking, accusing her of moving his things, warning her never to touch
his phone and yelling at her if he sees her sitting in the doorway talking to
women in the neighbourhood. When she was younger, he taught her some
karate and chopped vegetables when she cooked; but lately, he laughingly
agrees, he has started acting like a ‘sahib’ in his own home and she is lonely.
He, on the other hand, has a wide and close-knit circle of friends, consisting
mainly of boys, but also a few girls. Although monotonous, teenage working
class children’s routines are not fixed when they live at home, they change as
children get older and change particularly so for girls. I have watched male
siblings begin to act as enforcers for parents and I have seen them form pacts
of solidarity with their sisters, hiding apparent transgressions.
Jaydeep, age 17, lives in a small bedsit in a Bombay suburb with his alco-
holic father. He washes cars for a living. After failing his examinations twice,
he dropped out of school and started working full-time. His father is unem-
ployed and his mother works as a domestic servant and supports the family.
Jaydeep: I woke up at 6 as usual, went to many different places to wash

cars. I came home at nine and slept for a couple of hours. After wak-
ing I bathed while listening to music on my phone and helped my
mother to prepare lunch – she comes home for an hour between her
jobs. After lunch, I went to a friend’s house to help him with some
physical labour, plastering, I earn extra cash that way; we encoun-
tered a difficulty with one wall where it was breaking so we had
to find a way to repair it using local sand and Fevicol (glue). That
consumed my afternoon; I came home and watched television for
about three hours, my mother finished her jobs and came home and
I helped her make dinner and I also washed up. At night, around
10pm, I went out with friends to play carom and we also were
showing each other funny videos and photos on our phones, and
playing music on the loud speaker. I went home at 12am and slept.
Having lost his job several years previously, his father appeared to play no
role in earning or housework. More than a decade older than Jaydeep’s
mother, he often sat in the doorway of their home and occasionally seemed
to cry. He seemed to have severe depression, compounded by the humilia-
tion of being dependent on his son and wife. Jaydeep did not refer to his
father at all unless asked, and appeared to be ashamed of him. He did not
talk to his father, using the television as a way of blocking out his presence.
When I raised the issue of mental illness [man ke rog] with the family, I was
told: ‘People like us have no money for doctors’.
Jaydeep seemed a deeply responsible boy, far more so than many adults.
He shared the family burdens with his mother. He could be ‘laddish’ with
his friends on occasion, sharing amusing, silly and sexist videos on phones.
Having failed his examinations, he had little to do with formal education
and, although he had an internet connection on his phone, he never used it
to find information about his father’s health or any other practical aspect
of their everyday lives. This non-use of the internet for information-seeking
might be interpreted as a peculiarity of the family as a lack of media and
information literacy, but such explanations are very probably misleading.
Despite having dropped out of school, Jaydeep can read and speak a bit
of English. Most of the resources advertising clinics for depression online in
the Mumbai area are in English and use words like ‘Psychotherapy’ or ‘Psy-
choanalysis’ which he does not know. Their prices are unlisted. However,
when I read the addresses of clinics to her, his mother thinks they will be
unaffordable. In fact, Jaydeep and his mother were aware that the internet
could be used to find out about health-related issues since Jaydeep’s middle
class, college-going friends had used it for such things. Jaydeep defied me to
find anything on ‘the net’ which was relevant to their circumstances: namely,
which required no money. ‘If we want to beg, we can go and sit in the hospi-
tal but I don’t think they will care for him better than we do’.
Given their paucity of resources and the unregulated nature of private
health provision, looking for mental health support in India is difficult.
A report by Human Rights Watch (2014) suggests that outside the upper
middle classes, children, women and older people with mental illnesses or
learning difficulties are often ‘treated worse than animals’1. I looked for
public health facilities, charitable institutions, NGOs and other possibilities
for Jaydeep’s father and drew a blank. One hospital in Thane, which does
treat poorer families, has a tiny number of psychiatric practitioners to meet
demand. I found a facility which claimed it treated ‘labourers’ on ‘any level’,
but after hearing stories about patients with depression strapped down to
beds, I did not suggest it. This experience undermines the claim that the
information available online is equally geared towards and meaningful to
people from different socioeconomic classes. This is a myth that has sur-
vived stubbornly despite observations to the contrary in literature about
exclusion in the global north.
Fareeda was 10 in 2014 and studied in a local municipal school in Pune,
Maharashtra. Her father is a skilled metalworker and her mother is a domestic
cook, occupations placing them on the border of upper-working and lower-
middle class in monetary terms. Fareeda lives in a suburb in one room in a
joint family chawl with her two sisters and two brothers and likes to play on
her aunt’s phone. She aspires to become a tuition teacher when she grows up.
Fareeda: I woke up before light and helped prepare breakfast for broth-
ers and sisters. I got ready and my mother dropped me to school [by
moped]. I came back at 1pm, ate lunch prepared by my aunt. Did
washing up, and my school homework; also saw some TV, after
which I went to tuitions at 3pm came back at 5pm and went to
play kho-kho with my friends; I went to a friend’s place to teach her
sums in which she has some difficulty. I had dinner while watching
C.I.D. on television with aunt and granny and helped aunt clean
up; then I slept at 11.00pm when my parents returned home.
The woman whom Fareeda refers to as ‘aunt’ is her neighbour, a fixture in

the family, who fetches Fareeda’s twin brothers from school and keeps an eye
on Fareeda’s paternal grandmother who has dementia. Fareeda’s father does
shift work. On days when shift-work allows, he takes the twins to school on
the back of his bicycle. Fareeda’s older sister is eighteen and employed at a
local bakery. Fareeda’s middle sister attends a local college. Shift work, and
the fact that their mother’s job also involves cooking for late dinner parties
in an employer’s house which is an hour’s journey from home, providing
hot rotis, kebabs and other delicacies that cannot be prepared in advance,
means that the children spend much of their time alone, often falling asleep
before their parents return. Television is often on in the background, some-
times even when the children are gone to ‘comfort granny’ and Fareeda has
favourite programmes which she will drop other things to watch. When the
children are in the room at the same time, they get on with some activity –
the older sisters stitch and mend clothes, massage their grandmother’s head
with oil, plait her hair, or do school work; the twins sing, jump, roughhouse
with each other and play marbles in the corridor; playing cards and the
carom board are family fixtures. Computers, the internet and mobile phones
are notably absent in their daily routines: only the parents have mobiles and
the family has no landline.
In 2012, Kadam, is 12 years old. He lives in a village in Uttarakhand
with his mother, grandfather, uncle and three brothers. The family seems to
work in other people’s fields and they have a few goats. His mother looks
exhausted all the time.
Kadam: My mother woke me up at 5am. We prepared tea, then I walked

to (school as the school is several kilometres away). We sang songs
on the way to school. I sat in the school. I didn’t learn anything
because teacher gave writing and was smoking and chatting out-
side. I came back by one with my friends from the village, we lis-
tened to a match on the radio while walking; then I went to collect
wood and leaves and help my mother. Then I went to play with my
friends: we built a big pile out of stones, and played a battle, to see
who could destroy it with throwing stones, then I came home and
finished my homework; and I filled water. I had some snacks and
saw some television with my brothers. Then I helped my mother
with making dinner, we ate dinner, then I fell asleep around 11.
Rural children’s routines are quite different. Kadam lives in the village
where he was born and knows the hill sides and village lanes intimately.
He has friends and they make time within work routines for peer-play and
television viewing.
Figure 6.1 Off to work in the fields.

Durga was 12 in 2012 and lives in a migrant labourers’ camp in Amreli
district of Gujarat with her parents and sisters, aged nine and 11. They are
from Madhya Pradesh and make a living picking cotton in Gujarat for half
of each year, travelling back to their village for the second half. They have a
small kerosene stove for cooking which is set up in the dust outside the hut
they have assembled from scrap metal and plastic.
Durga: I got up before the light and made tea for the family. We walked
to the fields, I don’t know how long it takes, but it is far. Then we
were there all day working. We – the children came back when the
sun was setting – again walking, and I went to fill water – that is
a long walk. Then I helped my sisters to prepare dinner which is
rice, we chatted while we were cooking. My parents returned later
and we ate together. There is no electricity in our place. We were
very tired, so we went to sleep.
Durga’s walk to the fields lasts over an hour. Vimla, also in rural Gujarat
and who was interviewed in 2013, but whose small hutment was electrified,
had a similar walk. Both these girls contribute to family survival. In their
economic conditions, the families often go hungry; without the labour of
these girls, the families might starve. Being in school or not in school, or pro-
viding these girls with leisure time, seems not so much like choices that par-
ents make without consideration for their daughters’ futures as like choices
made to ensure a liveable present. Neither family owns anything that might
be considered a ‘luxury’ item.
Durga’s family live in little more than a box which they have constructed
themselves. Of course, electricity makes a big difference to the availability
of media. In its absence, the families appear to have no access to television,
though Vimla says that when she is in her home village she watches a lot of
television. Durga has severe asthma as do her sisters, possibly exacerbated
by chemicals sprayed in the fields where they work. They have no money
for a doctor, do not go to school and explain that there are children much
younger than themselves working in the fields, some without accompany-
ing parents. ‘We are lucky, our parents are here, we don’t get beaten by the
men who come to the fields’, was one of Durga’s comments. Educational
NGOs do try to work with seasonal migrant labourer children like Durga
and her sisters and some have been successful at getting children to attend
informal literacy centres for one or two afternoons per week. However,
sometimes their focus on basic literacy and on helping the children tran-
sition to formal schooling appears to be a weakness in their model, since
most of the children and their parents cannot envisage a time when the
children’s contributions would be economically unnecessary or when their
skills in literacy would enable an income equal to that achieved by contri-
butions to family labour.
6.3 The meanings and the salience of old media
Even when all children and teenagers are depicted as being ‘born digital’, old
media retains and has strengthened its salience for the Indian working class
children who can access it. Films and television programmes, phone-based
games which do not require the internet, and radio or songs were referenced
repeatedly by children in urban areas and television and radio by some of
the children from rural areas.
Ashmita, 13, lives in Behrampura in Ahmedabad district in Gujarat. She
has three brothers and a sister and is not in school. However, she occasion-
ally attends a local NGO-run educational club which she says she likes.
Much of her time is spent doing housework like filling water, cleaning their
semi-pukka dwelling, washing clothes, helping out with the family profes-
sion: catering. When her family has a commission for a religious event or
wedding party, Ashmita and her sister spend the day in makeshift tents peel-
ing and chopping vegetables, washing and cleaning rice, flour and dal, and
helping out with the preparations.
Int: Do you have a TV at home? What do you watch?

Ashmita: Yes. I watch Saraswatichandra [a Hindi soap opera].
Int: Oh!! So what do you like about this soap?
Ashmita: That her husband harasses her a lot and how she is, [how
she] just cries all the time. [How] We have to be brave. [… I also]
like to watch my favourite films.… Hum Aapke Hai Kaun? I like
family oriented films. Another one that I like is Hum Saath Saath
Hain. And also, Maine Pyaa Kiya [rather surprisingly, all three are
Sooraj Barjatya films from the 1980s and 90s]. All these films I
like a lot.
Int: So, don’t you like the new films that come out these days?
Ashmita: Nope. I only like the songs of the new movies.
Int: Oh. So which is your favourite song these days?
Ashmita: Chikni Chameli (It is a popular ‘item song’ starring Katrina
Kaif from the remake of the film Agneepath starring Hrithik
Roshan. The song was at the top of the charts for many months].
Int: Accha. So do you dance to the song with your other girlfriends?
Ashmita: No, I only like to sing. Not dance. Whenever one of my
favourite film songs come on TV, I leave my work to watch it.
Int: Oh. So have you ever been to the cinema hall to see a film?
Ashmita: Yes. I have been once. Our teacher [from the education
NGO] had only taken us. To watch Policegirl [a cop movie where
the cop is played by superstar Sanjay Dutt].
Int: But you don’t like such action films, right?
Ashmita: But I liked this one a lot. I liked how the hero bashes up the
villain.
Ashmita’s media pleasures lie with music and fictional family centred nar-
ratives. Her viewing and listening and the generally moralistic meanings she
ascribes to what she engages with are interesting because they were typical
of the small town girls in this study. For someone who has not watched the
‘item’ songs she refers to, she might seem rather tame and compliant, shap-
ing herself to the patriarchal circumstances which she envisages as being her
future. However, her liking for raunchy songs and for an aggressive hero who
fights for justice, like her assimilation of ideas about having to be patient and
bear the insults of husbands and in-laws, does not encompass all she might
learn from films. The circumscribed nature of her viewing, rather than repre-
senting her tastes in a fixed way, suggests that she might be able to use a wider
range of fictional narratives in her daily life. This suggests that, rather than
teaching basic written literacy, educational NGOs might consider broadening
the range of media that children view and initiating discussions and debates,
as Ruchi Anand (in Chapter 4) recounts doing in her role as project officer for
a film education project. Rather than checking to see whether children have
‘decoded’ the messages of films ‘successfully’, media educators might consider
using media texts as stimuli for discussing historical and contemporary issues
or social justice and for offering alternative imaginaries in relation to gender,
class and power. As I discussed in my studies of Hindi film-viewing (Banaji
2006, 2008, 2012), some children use fiction films as learning tools with no
prompting from adults. Discussions with Gaffar re-emphasise this point.
Gaffar was 14 in 2012 and worked at a mechanical repair shop for air con-
ditioners, fridges and other electronic goods where I interviewed him. While
we talk, he assists the main mechanic and seems to be a skilled mechanic him-
self: I watched him on several occasions. He sleeps in the repair shop since
his family lives in another suburb in a mainly Muslim ‘colony’ which sounds
like a slum redevelopment but is perhaps built autonomously. He works long
hours and goes home on Muslim festivals. It is difficult for me to hear Gaffar
because he speaks softly, but he does seem to want to talk. He describes his
duties and his routine, how he has learnt to identify parts of the machines he
works with: coils, resistors, compressors, fans, filters; and how often he just
has to clean the fan and the machine will work properly, and so on.
Gaffar: Radio, songs. Films. Not much time – you can see the work
here is very much, very hard, didi [older sister], never any breaks,
but whatever I get goes in films.
Int: What was the last film you watched?
Gaffar: (animatedly) – Housefull 2, Gangs of Wasseypur.
Int: So you like very different types of films? Did you watch these
films with your family?
Gaffar: I could only start watching films when I came to stay here (indi-
cating the shop). My family don’t like to watch films. My father is
very strict. But I like to watch everything and these were the films I
was free to watch when our malik [boss] was out of station.
Int: So tell me something you like about these films.
Gaffar: I like to laugh and Housefull 2 was very funny, good charac-
ters, lots of jokes. They the other guys here listen to me when I tell
the jokes [I’m surprised, because he seems so serious every time
I have met him and mostly the other two young men who work
in the shop seem to ignore him]. Chintoo and Dabboo – they are
always out to get each other, it is how I see it with the bosses [low-
ers voice, laughs]. I like the songs. But I had a different reaction
seeing Gangs, I’ve seen it in theatre, I’ve seen it in my dreams.
Int: Tell me more.
Gaffar: That film was like the story of India. It was like listening to
somebody tell a story in the mosque, or like listening to my mother
tell me stories. When a person is killed, is killed with a gun, the
camera does these things [he moves his hands], I could watch again
and again. When something is happening here in the galli [lane]-
Int: You mean in real life [asliyat mein]?
Gaffar: Yes, here in front of the shop. I keep my face down. I stay
out of trouble. My mother and father have told me to stay out of
trouble. You know how it is. “Don’t look, don’t see. You will get
into bad ways. You will bring more trouble”. Sometimes my neck
hurts from looking down (muh jhukane-se) [laughs]. In theatres,
no one can see me looking at the big people doing wrong things on
screen: politicians, gangsters, film stars, making mistakes, stealing,
crying, killing: I can cry, I can make faces and no one can see me,
because everyone is laughing and everyone is crying [long pause]
of course some of the films are falthu [a waste of time] and dirty
but I still want to see, to judge for myself.
[.…]
Int: Do you find the tickets expensive?
Gaffar: My friend takes me. [I ask twice but he is very evasive about
who his friend is.]
Int: So your family would not like you to be watching the films?
Gaffar: [shakes head] my father would beat me. He would ask my
teacher to beat me a lot.
Int: Teacher?
Gaffar: My brothers have a teacher-uncle who teaches us Koran,
counting, reading, geography. He used to teach me too.
As a teacher myself, I found this narrative about ‘Teacher-uncle’ dispiriting

and sinister. The fact that the man could be persuaded by Gaffar’s father
to beat the children for no reason other than that he saw them as having
transgressed rules about media use, and the fact that Gaffar had come to
associate all formal learning with this violent man, did not bode well for his
relationship to formal education. Yet our conversations – in particular about
politics – suggested a quick, sociological imagination, and a fine ability to
grasp abstract ideas as well as complex material skills. The tension between
what Gaffar observed and disapproved of in contemporary social relation-
ships and the way in which he prided himself on his ‘good work’ sometimes
felt as if it might give rise to a crisis. But at 14, this was not yet upon him.
Parimala (Pari), a 14-year-old school girl, lives in a slum in close prox-
imity to Gaffar’s place of work and works as a domestic servant. I have
known Pari’s father for many years through neighbourhood networks, since
we were both teenagers. He belongs to a local garbage collection family.
I was introduced to Pari’s mother when she first moved to Bombay on her
marriage. Pari’s mother has a very good reputation as a maid (I know this
not only from what she has told me, but also from what the various women
who employ her say). She has too many jobs to do and keeps being offered
new work so she has started taking Pari with her when she goes for after-
noon jobs. (In the morning, Pari goes to a government municipal school; she
is very good at Marathi and works very hard, according to her mother.) Pari
has two older brothers who are both married. One of them lives in Pune.
The other one lives with his wife and 6-month-old baby in the slum and
Pari’s sister-in-law does the domestic cooking, allowing her and her mother
to do more paid work. Her time-poverty meant that our first interview was
conducted in a building compound under the entrance shelter and with very
poor sound due to the rain. Our second interview was conducted in a stair-
well sitting on the stairs after Pari finished the chores in the house where
her mother left her: We were waiting for her mother to finish the other two
flats and join us.
Pari: [in a monotone] as you can see, aunty, the roads are wet. We
walk in the house tippi tippi, holding up our clothes, floor is wet,
everything is smelling like the road, dirty, no use cleaning, always
more water, more mud, can’t put baby down, water even comes
through the plastic mats. Puppy from next door [a real puppy, not
a person] drowned in the sea, we don’t know how. […] No, there
is no electricity now, though we have a tube-light and radio. I miss
radio very much when doing my homework, the bhajans [devo-
tional music], film songs, news, helps me.
Int: How does the radio help you to think and to study?
Pari: Our neighbours … [long pause] Everyone has neighbours. I don’t
want to speak bad about them [long pause].
Int: They are noisy?
Pari: [very soft, slow] not deliberately, and they can say the same thing
about us, ‘Chuki’ [the baby, I assume] cries a lot in the night, she
wakes up them all, then they shout and wake us up all. In the eve-
ning when I am doing my studies, in their house talking is loud,
sometimes shouting, banging pots – dhar dhak dhar [louder, more
confident]. Radio gives me sursur noise, same same same all the
time, easier to think, to study […] I like the voices of Marathi
news, Hindi news, news-people [pause] it is peaceful, I like the
poetry, songs. I wear the headphones [tiny little black earbud
things] so my sister-in-law can keep hearing the baby.
Int: What about TV? Do you watch TV?
Pari: Sometimes yes, but not that one. My friend B has a TV in her
home (referring to a slightly drier, higher ground and more pukka
home in the same slum; her friend’s father works as an assistant to
a kiosk photographer who takes passport photos). I watch Indian
Idol, MTV, but there is no time. No one has to tell me there is
no time, I know there is no time, I’m always by-hearting, doing
maths, as you know [While her Hindi and Marathi far surpasses
mine, I have helped Pari with Maths and English]. Want to pass
my English test and Hindi test. Want to get good marks. Marathi I
don’t need to do so much studying I am very good in it. […]
Int: And what do you think about the places where your mother
works, and you go to help?
Pari: Good people. Good families.
Int: Really. Okay. [long pause]. Let’s talk about something else, tell me
about what you would like to do later in life.
Pari: Get married, like my parents want. I would like to have a com-
puter. I would like to do a job like [B’s] father, but I don’t think
that any girls can do that job. Do you know any girls that do that
job madam?
Int: In some countries, I do. I know a woman who has been doing
that job [working in a photography shop] for 10 years. She can
put a small photo taken on a mobile phone onto a huge canvas [I
indicate the wall].
Pari: [very excited, cutting me off] That. That is what I want to do. I
want to make the drawings and sets. I looove to draw. You saw
my notebook [I nod, she draws very precise, hyperreal and also
stylised pictures of faces]. I want to take photographs for sets, not
just draw them but draw on the photo. Same as in films. Bolly-
wood? B’s family have a picture, it is printed with plastic, moun-
tains, it stretches in the wall, I want to make the billboards.
Int: I hope you will be able to do that one day. Would you like me to
talk to your mother? […]
Nominally, Pari’s mother is the one employed by the families and she says
to them that she is bringing her daughter to ‘train her’. She then leaves her
there and goes to another house. The employers know what is going on, but
the decent ones don’t want to make trouble for Pari’s mother and the nasty
ones get Pari to do as much work or the same work as her mother would:
that way Pari’s mother is ‘over-employed’ while others are unemployed.
On the day of our interview, there had been heavy rain for several weeks
and the sea had encroached into the slum, causing their place to be muddied
and many outside things to be wet and flooded. It was dank and impossible
to find dry space. The slum seems partially demolished by the municipal
corporation in preparation for rehousing that is promised but only for
about one-quarter of the residents and this has not materialised; it is rebuilt
by the slum-dwellers, ever closer to the encroaching tide which is being
pushed by land reclamation schemes at the other posher side of the bay.
Many slum dwellers in the neighbourhood have started baby methi (baby
fenugreek) plots on the beach as a means of having something to supple-
ment their food intake or sell and because it reduces soil erosion2. In this
context, 14-year-old Pari’s studious determination, her thirst for knowl-
edge, her artistic endeavours, her delight at the thought of the possibility of
becoming a photographer or graphic designer, are all tropes that can have
the mainstream media cooing with delight about the entrepreneurial spirit
of India’s poor and which lead some childhood scholars to characterise
them as ‘resilient’.
I started primary school with people like her; not many made it to the
end, but some did. Pari did seem admirable to me for sentimental and
romantic reasons. But something else about Pari’s narratives interested me:
the ways she fought to carve out bits of privacy and quiet in the jagged
chaos of her spatial and temporal routine was a never-ending battle. She
perceived it as such, with allies and enemies. A medium could be an ally,
technology could be an ally: headphones and radio, paper and pencils;
and text books. Employers could be allies, paying well and on time – or
they could be demonic enemies, destroying careers and besmirching virtue.
Neighbours could be allies: supportive, showing solidarity and caring; or
enemies: noisy, angry, interfering (and in some instances aggressive and abu-
sive). The weather was usually an enemy: incessant rain, the fragile coastal
ecosystem with repeated flooding. The use of music and (cheap) headphones
to filter out the noise and random demands, and to enable Pari to concen-
trate on school work – a tactic so familiar to parents of teenagers in the
global north – emphasises again the ways in which aspects of routines are
negotiated by many children, and agency and technologies are deployed to
carve out semi-private space within structures.
As indicated by these daily routines, there are patterns that recur across
my transcripts with working class children and youth: short nights and
long days; regular contributions to the household economy through paid
employment or through family centred employment, and through house-
hold labour; a stringent deficit of time, particularly for children who try
to attend school and to hold jobs, and more so for girls as they enter the
second half of their teens. School, which ought to be a respite from work, is
often experienced as more work, both at home and at school: ‘by-hearting’
refers to the practice of learning passages from text books or the black-
board and reproducing them in tests without understanding their content
and implications. A sense of barely concealed anger at injustice and of
fragility and anxiety was the undertow to Pari’s descriptions of her life.
These affective filters influenced my interpretation and pushed me to see her
hard-won resilience and her fierceness as agency, but also the by-product
of social-structural abuse, a concept that seems apt in recognition of lives
such as Pari’s.
6.4 Employers, risks, new technology

Different forms of labour – paid and unpaid – were central to the narra-
tives of my working class interviewees in rural small-town and urban set-
tings in India. Across the transcripts, children described household chores:
collecting wood and water, starting stoves and fires, waiting in lines for
rations, cooking, cleaning, making tea, sweeping floors, looking after babies
and older relatives; domestic service, including: looking after old or dis-
abled employers; child minding, looking after babies, meal preparation,
cooking, doing laundry, washing dishes, shopping, floor-washing, dusting,
polishing, ironing, mending, running errands and giving massages. Employ-
ment, paid directly or unpaid when in family groups, involved: collecting
leaves, grass and logs, collecting herbs, shell fish, drying prawns, sorting
and finding scrap metal, plastic, paper, glass and other recyclable materials;
making dolls, costume jewellery, knickknacks and cards; rolling cigarettes;
selling trinkets, working in fields planting and harvesting, carrying stones
in quarries and for road-building, climbing scaffolding to hold tools and
secure ropes, painting, plastering, carrying bricks and mixing cement, clean-
ing sewers, washing cars, mending bodywork on cars, fixing broken motors
and electrical appliances, stitching, knitting, weaving, mincing meat, pack-
aging groceries, catering, cooking and waiting tables in canteens and small
restaurants; vegetable and fruit vending, roadside stalls, running errands for
employers on bicycles and on foot and doing deliveries.
In the course of all work, children described multiple instances of hazard
and exploitation, many of which they took for granted when they experi-
enced it, but commented on when friends or younger siblings experienced it:
lack of sleep, lack of food and water-breaks, frequent slaps and abusive lan-
guage, lack of time to urinate or clean oneself when menstruating, untreated
infections and cuts, exposure to mild chemicals, wood smoke, and cigarette
smoke and being spoken about and to in a humiliating manner. Most of the
children were so inured to these hazards that they seemed to think of them
as unavoidable. I was told on more than one occasion ‘Don’t get upset, that
is normal’ or ‘It doesn’t even hurt’, or I was also told, self-deprecatingly
‘I deserved that’, ‘it was my mistake’, ‘I was lucky that time’ and fatalis-
tically ‘this is our fate, this is what poor people can expect’. Lack of sleep
was often blamed for minor household accidents or mistakes which led to
yelling or slapping. In some cases, the need to rush things because a child
also had to go to school exacerbated lack of sleep and caused carelessness
and accidents. However, some of the children spoke with more angst and
frustration at the injustice of their circumstances. Moyesh, 13, is a migrant
worker who lives in a temporary shanty on a building site with his aunt’s
family and assists with construction. As he described:
Moyesh: Everything is good here [in Bombay], but it is hard to work

for [names contractor]. If we [fuck up] make mistakes, then the job
is gone [snaps fingers] just like that. I have to be careful all the time.
Things go missing. They blame us. They hit us. Look – [shows dark
bruise in his shoulder]. Sahib is putting more pressure. We must
work faster. We must not sleep. It is always our fault. We are not
lazy, but from how they talk you think we are sleeping all day and
eating his [the contractor’s] food and drinking his water for free.
There were, however, some hazards which children recounted with open
trepidation and often with sorrow or anger: sexual harassment or sexual
molestation by employers and family ‘friends’, extreme beatings for disobe-
dience, broken bones, being robbed, being run over in traffic or getting a
serious laceration while using equipment, extreme reactions to chemicals
which required hospitalisation or left them listless for days, false accusa-
tions of theft and being reported to the police, followed by insomnia and
nightmares, were all recounted by several of the children. Some of these chil-
dren appeared to be suffering from cumulative and untreated post-traumatic
stress. I often asked what or whom they felt could help them. I listed parents,
teachers, police, laws, the mass media, NGO workers and doctors. Some
children said that they could count on older brothers or sisters, aunts or
friends to help them in some of these circumstances, but most either wanted
to protect their parents from becoming involved or were frightened of how
their parents would react. A small number of children who had contact
with informal educators, teachers or NGO workers said that these were
the people they could go to but they were somewhat sceptical that any-
thing would change. Generally, the reactions evoked by mention of police,
news media and teachers as possible defenders were blank looks, disgust
or hilarity. Other than shrugs and contemptuous looks with regard to the
police, I had responses like: ‘Those bastards/motherfuckers’, ‘They are there
to serve only the rich’, ‘They hate us’, ‘They are the ones who treat us like
dirt’ ‘They would not be interested’, ‘They are only interested in rich peo-
ple’s problems’. Ruksana, a young child rights’ campaigner from a slum in
Bhubaneshwar who worked closely with an NGO was an exception. Her
view indicates that her sense of the possible in relation to powerful people
has increased after having her voice amplified through the NGO:
Ruksana: As a matter of course, most of the girls don’t really get to go

to school; they just don’t go. Because let me give you an example.
I have a friend who wanted to go to school, but she first did not go
because she had with her a little brother, a baby, and her mother
and father both had to go out to work; and she used to look after
the little brother. And all of the girls out here have some story like
this about why they cannot study. Here, … there was another issue
about electricity. [giggling] Open wires, live wires. Mostly we have
no space to play, so we mostly used to go out to the local rubbish
area where there is an electricity thing [pylon], where there was
one boy playing badminton in a place where there were wires dan-
gling, and the poor boy put his arm up and got fully electrocuted,
his whole body was burned … my mother has now told us not
to play there. We immediately took him to hospital in an ambu-
lance, but now we from the [child rights club] have said to the
“mayor this has happened because you don’t care about us. You
have allowed this to happen”. The mayor has agreed that there is
quite a lot of problems in our area, in our slum.
Enabled by training and confidence building with NGO workers with a com-
mitment to urban environments for children, Ruksana sees collective value in
challenging authorities such as the local mayor. However, the working chil-
dren I interviewed are unlikely to have access to powerful people governing
cities except via adult-led organisations. Just having a phone without the net-
works that go with social class and age gives no guarantee of access to power.
I initially wanted to know whether having mobile phone connections
to friends or relatives might serve in lieu of media, authorities and adult
social services. In analysing the ways in which working class children, and
especially teenagers, discussed new technologies in their working lives, how-
ever, I found myself engaging in new and disturbing ways of viewing – or
being pushed to think about – digital tools like mobile phones. In several
instances, references to ‘distraction’ related to mobile phones were linked
not to leisure communication, enjoyment and creativity, as was often the
case of the middle class children discussed in the previous chapter, but to
accidents and danger or to allegations of dishonesty that cost jobs and
ruined lives. Khalil, a skilled 16-year-old painter who works with Moyesh
on the construction site, recounted how, in his line of work, he has seen
accidents happen because of mobile phones:
Khalil: Moyesh can tell you, some of them bring mobiles on the job and
it is not safe. This fellow tried to open his mobile and call his wife …
Int: Did he try to call his wife?
Khalil: No, his phone was ringing and his wife was calling him. He
was on scaffolding, maybe somewhere like sixteenth floor. [Above
the ground, on bamboo scaffolding erected to help paint build-
ings.] So he had his paint brush and was standing on the jula
doing his work [swing, a small wooden platform with ropes on
which workmen descend to do particularly tricky bits of painting,
which cannot be reached from scaffolding].
Int: And? Don’t tell me he fell? [Hand to mouth, fearful.]
Khalil: [Laughs] No. He didn’t fall. The phone fell. … So I don’t take
the phone on the job, and father doesn’t also. My brother some-
times… It is too costly. Getting coupons for the phone. Recharge,
too much cost.
Hemant, 15, sells street food – mainly tea, vada pav (potato dumplings) –
from a stall near a busy train station in Bombay. He attends a Marathi
medium school in the afternoon. He had failed some classes lower down
in school and been made to redo a year, but he tells me his parents are
determined that he will make it through to the board examinations [Gen-
eral Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) equivalents]. Around six
every morning, Hemant helps to set up the food stall run by his father. His
ambitions and affectionate account of family is discussed (in section 6.5),
but I bring him in here because, though he was generally positive about the
future, he gave away more in the course of conversation about the job:
Hemant: [T]he building works (for the local metro-rail) have taken away
customers, everything gets dirty, I have to wash again and again, the
workers want free tea, sometimes there are fights, sometimes police
comes, the cost of onions is high, we worry if the oil is spoilt, I also
get tired. But it is fun to be here with my father in the morning,
talking and making food, I like to spend time learning from him.
But once I didn’t pay attention, this guy was showing something on
mobile, and I burnt my hand very much (he shows me scarring) –
from then my father does the frying or some friend does the frying.
My father says “an engineer needs his brains and his hands”.
Mansi and Dheeraj encounter plenty of hazards in the course of garbage

sorting and scavenging. Dheeraj shows me a burn on his hand from a leak-
ing battery. Mansi has sores on her feet and legs from insect bites that have
become infected as she climbs across garbage heaps. Both of them warn me
about broken bulbs, other random glass and leaking batteries, including
mobile phone batteries which middle class people throw away thoughtlessly.
There is no safe disposal in the neighbourhoods that these children frequent.
In addition, bigger, stronger children and even some adults threaten them
and take their day’s scavenged goods, leaving them bruised and hungry.
Gaffar recounts his reasons for not being so interested in mobile phones
in relation to the dangers of distraction on the job:
Gaffar: Never had a mobile, didi [big sister]. Not so interested. I’ve
seen that when they get a mobile the boys stop working so well,
they don’t listen, they are always checking this and checking that
[he makes a face, so I surmise it is porn or something similar]
sahib is very pleased with me that I listen well, I pay attention, I
am always ready to work day and night, my work is very good
and very exact. Only I am so precise. Also if I had one then my
family would call me; my mother would ask for this that. I am
happy that I can see them on some days in the year; but I am also
happy that they can’t see me all the time, tell me what to do. It is
hard enough doing what sahib wants all the time.
Gaffar was one of several working class interviewees who cited distraction
by his family or others trying to ascertain his whereabouts as one reason
why a mobile phone was a bad idea. He needed all his attention for the
fine motor skills required by his repair job and he was aware that he would
have demands placed on him by his family if they could easily contact him.
Some of my older interviewees who were in-between the working and lower
middle classes and who had jobs mentioned that thing they feared was to see
a missed call on their phone from an impoverished aunt or indigent friend.
This was because they knew that it would lead them to be called upon to
give money or to spend an inordinate amount of their talk-time calling back.
These vignettes outline several ways in which new and mobile technolo-
gies come to be integrated into working children’s lives as distractions and
hazards. Parimala, introduced in the previous section, spends most of her
afternoons and evenings doing domestic work, often alone, for middle class
families; and the child labour act is not breached because she is ‘not employed’.
Parimala’s story is complex and compelling because she told it with so much
detail and finesse that the interview took on therapeutic overtones.
Int: Pari, do you have a mobile phone?

Pari: No. My older brother has one, but it is not a smartphone. It’s
regular, for calls. I don’t use it.
Int: Computer? You said you wanted one. Because it sounds as if you
would be really good at computer design.
Pari: No.
Int: Have you used one?
Pari: No. (Shakes head vehemently). I see the sir (in the household
where she cleans on Tuesday) using his computer. He types, he
does pictures, he phone calls.
Int: Do you mean with the computer – the laptop – he does those
things?
Pari: Yes. One time I wanted to touch it to see the screen light up, but
my mother says no, it is their things. “Just clean, place everything
back, don’t touch”. I don’t ever touch it. It is not safe. That is how
I feel [Asē malā vāṭatē].
Int: Why? What makes you say that? Are you afraid of the technol-
ogy, of the computer? Is your mother afraid that touching it will
hurt you?
Pari: (long pause). My mother, some years back, her older brother’s
wife, my uncle’s wife, was accused of stealing something from one
of the families back there (she points to another building). She was
accused for a mobile. They slapped her. They pushed her out. They
spat on her and threatened to call police. Everyone was crying.
My brother went to the family to pray them to not call police; but
watchman stopped him going in, my father and my uncle went
and they could not say no to them from going in the gate, but
sahib [the master] and madam were shouting, everyone was shout-
ing, then watchman of the building beat my father. That sahib
in that house came out and slapped my father thad thad thad [P
very upset; I’m feeling very upset too, my heart is racing]. Then
he took off his boot and he beat my father, even though my uncle
was touching his feet. [Deep breath.] It was a mobile phone. The
madam’s mobile phone. [Deep breaths, tears in eyes.] Everyone
here knew that my aunty would never do that. Everyone knew.
Still, everyone there in the building they said she was bad, a thief.
She lost her name, she became a maid with bad name. She lost her
other work also. My mother and her friend had to do all of those
jobs, my mother was getting sick from doing all of the work alone.
My mother wanted to refuse the work, but my uncle said that she
should otherwise some other family will take it. Those lying peo-
ple [Khōṭē lōka] in that building. I don’t even walk that way now.
Int: … Ignorant people. Shameless. [Silence, Pari looks away.] So these
are the kind of people you have to work for. …And where is your
aunt now?
Pari: Here – all of my family are here, she is with my cousins and
everyone. Where would she be? She grows methi (like cress, a
regional vegetable that manages in the sandy soil), sells in the local
market; she collects garbage with my uncle and my father some-
times. But they have very little money, so my cousins will not have
a marriage as good as mine will be. Please don’t tell my mother I
told you this. She still cries when she talks about it. And my aunt
also cries. So when I ask for mobile phone, I know they will cry.
I don’t ask. Anyway, it is [moork] stupid. A stupid thing. Why do
those people [thya lokkanna] make things which cannot be locked
up? My father says: “If you have something like a mobile phone,
of course it will get taken, it will get lost”, my father says. The
old telephone could not get lost. And you could not accuse maid
of taking it in her sari and cause her bad name. It was connected
to wall, or in cupboard, my father says. Do people leave their
jewels lying around? No. But they put their mobiles like that. Do
police catch the boys who take bags from outside? No, because
they cannot catch them. Then they blame the ladies, “you did not
hold your purse correctly”. So why only blame my aunt for mobile
phone lost? Anyone can take it. My brother has seen this. I have
seen this. And, one time, in X’s home [a woman whom her mother
and she clean for, whom I also know], she is allowing her children
to play on her phone and take photos and listen music while she
talks on other mobile to her friends all morning. Then Anu [who
is approximately seven years old, by my estimation] dropped it
on the floor. Phadak! Broken. Pieces of glass and all that which
we have to clean again. And that madam starts screaming at them
“Bad girls! You have cost me so much money? Father will beat
you! I will punish you!” Truly, she was hitting them, chasing them,
they were crying, Anu was asking her “Mummee, don’t hit, I’ll not
do it again”. My mother says to me “Arre! Who gives a baby a
truck and blames him when he crashes it?”
Int: So you will never touch those people’s things, the employer’s
phones, the employer’s computers. But you would like to see what
these things can do, what you can do with them with your draw-
ing and painting skills?
Pari: Yes! But I don’t think this can ever happen.
Int: Why not? You are clever, studying hard. Your drawing is amazing.
Pari: Everything costs money. We have to eat. My nephew has to eat.
Medicine costs money. Look at the water everywhere. We get sick.
My father gets sick all the time. So what is the use with the com-
puter, the mobile? It will never be cheap enough. Never. And if we
get it then it will get spoiled by the rain. And my husband will not
like it. And also my employers will just use mobile to make me
work. Mostly I think when you come back again to see me, I will
still be here working like this. Or I will be married and with my
in-laws so aunty I will not see you again.
Many middle class adults may be pleasant to domestic workers within the
parameters of India’s social structures and some are sympathetic or gener-
ous at times of hardship, but abuse and exploitation of domestic workers of
all ages and both genders is ubiquitous3. The episode narrated by Parimala
was not the only time interviewees revealed the danger and difficulty of their
jobs. Fifteen-year-old Dhanish was beaten on a regular basis by an elderly
employer; 14-year-old Prerna negotiates constant beating and humiliation
at the hands of her employer as well as potential sexual harassment from her
employer’s son; and 14-year-old Varsha’s employer used to beat her when
she arrived from her village. These stories have appeared in other sections
and chapters (cf. Chapter 2, Chapter 3 and section 6.5). In Varsha’s case,
while she was allowed to use technologies such as the iron, the toaster, the
stove, to change the gas cylinder and to look after the children, she discov-
ered quickly that media and communications technologies were forbidden
her: ‘There are many things she has told me “don’t touch” because I will
break. Computer, TV remote, mobile phone.’ While Varsha’s and Pari’s
narratives are disturbing, these are not the worst things that happen to
working-class Indian children.
Several accounts of technology and media emerge from Pari’s stories. One
was her early descriptions of her love of art and design and her assertion that
she wishes to be a photographic designer when she is grown up. The second
is her insistence on never touching any of the media tools in her employers’
houses because, as her mother has warned her and as her aunt learnt through
bitter experience, being accused of stealing can ruin one’s reputation and life. So
upset and angry is Pari during this second account that she asks rhetorical ques-
tions about the implications of the mobileness of mobile digital technologies for
domestic workers. As noted in the longer excerpt previously, Pari emphasises:
‘Why do those people make things which cannot be locked up? … The old tele-
phone could not get lost. And you could not accuse maid of taking it in her sari
and cause her bad name. It was connected to wall, or in cupboard, my father
says. Do people leave their jewels lying around? No.” Here, the emotional con-
tent of her narration and of these questions should not prevent us from seeing
the way in which her account is ‘felt theory’ (Million, 2009), an articulation
of how her theorising about communication technologies is intricately linked
to social, embodied and emotional experiences of such technologies. In the
domestic sphere where those who work are having to prove their integrity with
respect to the belongings of those they work for, having extremely expensive
objects lying around or easily misplaced, makes their work more fraught with
difficulty and makes them more vulnerable as workers.
The monetary value of emerging technologies can endanger children in
other ways. Middle class Indian children who own gadgets and children in
European countries who do, are often walking home from school or hanging
out in parks and shopping centres with phones worth hundreds of dollars in
their hands or pockets. The number of thefts and muggings of teenagers in
the global north is high, and rising, with mobile phones the number one item
taken off them4. Through the lens of the vulnerability that comes with being
employed in hazardous jobs which expose children to material dangers and
social discrimination or violence, or to using and carrying objects which
have higher economic value than almost anything else a child might be
given, new and emergent technologies can be conceptualised as potentially
challenging these children’s wellbeing outside the meanings they can be used
to create but through their fetishized materiality, ubiquity and ‘mobileness’.
As the foregoing discussion of the agglomerated meanings and contested
connotations of technological artifacts suggests, it is important to consider
media and communication tools both as objects with pre-assigned meanings
and as things-in-themselves which might have radically different meanings
for children working in middle class families that own such objects. Like-
wise, the useless mechanical overspill of middle class life, the detritus, so to
speak, may well have meaning in working class children’s lives that it does
not hold for those who throw it away. To analyse how children of differ-
ent classes insert media and communications technologies as well as other
technological tools into quite different existential contexts of use, need and
risk, or entangle them materially and symbolically with other objects in
agentic ways, the following section considers assemblage theory at some
length before proceeding with the discussion.
6.5 Communicative assemblages of work and leisure

An assemblage suggests a conglomeration of objects or signs that is yoked
together deliberately or arbitrarily in a historical context or t emporal
moment. Despite the coming together constructing a whole which is differ-
ent from any constituent part, the distinct uses and meanings of individual
objects or signs remain immanent even while the new whole expands and
inflects their meaning or capacities. Organisations may be seen as assem-
blages which bring together units of meaning, repertoires of action, material
practices, human intentions and contingency; at a textual level, genres can
be defined as assemblages which rely on a host of intertextual c onnections
(Spinuzzi, 2003; 2004). Bollywood films – and their tropes – are often dis-
cussed using the metaphor of assemblage (Basu, 2010; Rai, 2009). While
Spinuzzi draws attention to the ways in which a given genre mediates an
activity – sometimes in a complex way as in a ‘compound mediation’ – his
work is potentially techno-centric when he ascribes power to the mediating
technology, genre or ecology, thereby seeming to reduce human agency by
positing assemblages as actors in and of themselves. N evertheless, the notion
of an assemblage is compelling because it suggests a p
henomenology of seeing
things in and of themselves, rather assuming what they can and should do.
A phenomenological perspective pushes us to look at things-in-themselves,
to question what has been said about them, and to give rise to further clus-
ters of material and immaterial meanings. D rawing on Deleuze and Guat-
tari’s (1987) work, DeLanda (2006) argues that assemblages are not only
conglomerations of things and meanings in and for themselves, but also
claims about those things. In this view, a ‘territorial assemblage’ such as a
nation-state would consist of land and peoples, functionaries and institu-
tions, borders, memories and photographs, as well as the valorisation of
these things through discourses of nationalism, and the possibility that all
these things change shape or consequence over time. Mobile phones and
apps as discussed by children in Chapter 5 could be seen in this sense as
assemblages which include ownership, (some notion of) privacy, surveil-
lance, status, and communicative, informational or entertainment tool.
While the mobiles now seem uniquely layered in respect of their many dif-
ferent symbolic and actual uses and meanings, Slater (2013) refers to ‘com-
municative assemblages’ such as loudspeakers and automobiles encountered
in work with ICT4D organisations in global south countries such as Ghana
and Sri Lanka. This resonates with the second notion of assemblage which
is that objects with divergent functions can be wrenched into new config-
urations and that mobile phones themselves are always part of a process
in which this is happening. Other objects can be inserted into narratives
for which they were not originally intended as, for instance, in the way
disposable plastic mineral water bottles are by being ‘conserved’, cleaned
and used for storage of oil and rice; used to create art; or refilled, resealed
and resold by entrepreneurial (or fraudulent) persons across major global
south cities. In my study, at the heart of many children’s fascination with
details of material assemblages, both existing and emergent, lies an interest
in the multiple meanings and uses of constituent parts. Many working class
children are additionally attentive to the social and economic possibilities
of aspects of material technologies that middle class children might ignore
or find redundant.
In August 2013, I met Mansi and Dheeraj, brother and sister, eight and
12 years old, both garbage sorters in a rundown suburban area of Bombay.
Mansi and Dheeraj’s parents, working class contributors to the Indian infor-
mal economy, come from Bihar; but Mansi and Dheeraj had never been
there. On the day we meet, neither of them has footwear. They live on the
pavement (I never met their parents or carers and did not visit their home).
They explain that there is no electricity in their pavement dwelling. They
have a kerosene stove and their mother is a rag picker. Their father, who
is said to fix tractors, helps an official municipal garbage collection team
by ‘fixing’ the machine when it breaks down, but it seems that he is not
officially employed by the municipality. They live on the pavements even
though both their parents work. They inform me that they have tried living
in a slum and it did not work out as they were thrown out when their father
was ill and they could not pay the rent. There are about two dozen people
from their area of Bihar living on the pavements not too far from them.
Dheeraj has been to the cinema to see a film; Mansi has not and desperately
wants to go. Dheeraj asks to see my phone and seems disappointed that it is
very old, not a smartphone and has no camera.
Dheeraj is responsible for collecting bits of metal from garbage and he
also collects batteries for their mother to dispose of or sell. While doing
this, he has come across broken but coveted objects including tube lights
and phones which he has disaggregated and given to his mother to be
sold as scrap or re-assembled to make tiny non-mechanised objects for
his younger siblings to play with. I did not tape a conversation with these
children, but one of Dheeraj’s sayings was, ‘we can live because they [the
rich] throw things away. Everything can be used somehow, you just have
to work it out’. In Dheeraj’s life, disaggregation and disassembly plays as
central a role as assemblages and his ability to disassemble, to figure out
how to use stuff, works as an aspect of his agency. In DeLanda’s terms,
then, the creative conservation of stuff which is intrinsic to Dheeraj and
Mansi’s everyday life can be seen as inseparable from claims made about
that stuff.
Varsha is 14 in 2012 and extremely shy. She works and apparently attends
a school, though it transpires that she is not often at school because mostly
she works as a live-in domestic servant for a middle class family. It takes
several weeks to get her to talk to me. We first met when her employers sent
Figure 6.2 Boys and their stick toys.
Figure 6.3 Creative assemblage – bottle car.
her round the apartment block with religious Prasad (sweets handed round
at festivals). This happened a few times. We joked. I sent things in return. I
gave her small gifts of food which she meticulously saved to share with her
employers’ nine-year-old children. During our brief, interrupted interviews,
Figure 6.4 The affordances of containers.
she described her daily roles and routines and the habits and values of her
fellow domestic workers and employers:
Varsha: They [her preferred manner of referring to her employers] are

like Gods. Meaning, they think they are like Gods. Everything is
always “Do this, do that, run, why are you so slow, why are you so
lazy?” … I get up at 6.00. But then I am usually not allowed to sleep
till 1.00am. Master [Sahib] needs me to stay awake and pour drinks.
Yes, I have to do that. His business friends come over and they play
cards. Mistress [Memsahib] goes to sleep 12.00 every night.
Int: Where do you sleep?
Varsha: I sleep in their hallway floor: I can’t sleep till guests leave.
I have a small mattress which we keep on balcony. I get up and
clean whole house except bedrooms, clean myself, sometimes I go
to temple but mostly there is no time. I get breakfast and snacks
for everyone. Only Mistress likes to make Nescafe, so I don’t touch
that. [laughs]. There are many things she has told me “don’t touch”
because I will break them. Computer, TV remote, mobile phone.
[laughs]. I wash and iron uniforms for Minnie and Mickie (the chil-
dren). I help mistress with chores, Mickie and Minnie go to school
with driver uncle. There is a bus, but they like to go in AC Car.
Int: Do you know what your master does?
Varsha: Something with contractors. Buildings.
Several conversations reveal new aspects of Varsha’s daily routine, suggest-

ing that she does not go to school as her employer claimed. Varsha main-
tained that she has no family – ‘I don’t have family – not proper [sagga]
family. I don’t want to talk about that. It makes me cry’; I did not press her
about her native place or what life was like before coming to live with her
employers. She mentions however that her current life is curtailed by the
fact that she doesn’t earn wages in cash and in speaking about how this
circumstance came about, she reveals that her grandfather reached some
understanding with her employers.
Varsha: I would like to learn computers. I like the pictures. I see Mickie
and Minnie on phones, doing things, I would like to have a phone.
But I don’t get paid any money. They say it is good enough that
I can sleep here in their house. They say I am too lucky. […] I can’t
remember how I met them. They came and took me from my grand-
father’s house in our village. Maybe two years back? I used to go to
school there. I can write […] Micky and Minnie sometimes beat me.
Mistress used to beat me a lot when I first came, but now I learnt
well and I don’t touch things. Now Mistress is tired all the time. She
lies on the sofa. Didi does some of the shopping and big cooking for
lunch, dinner [referring to another maid who is not live-in].
Int: So they have a chauffeur, a cook and yourself?
Varsha: And Dhavan. He has to look after the dogs. Dogs is the reason
I have to do so much cleaning. First they want me to look after dogs
also. But Mickie and Minnie got jealous. They wanted to go for walk
with dogs and Mistress did not trust me with children and dogs.
Master loves dogs more than he loves Mickie and Minnie [snigger-
ing, laughing]. He never shouts at dogs. That is how Gods behave.
Of the wry and sardonic comments working children made about their
employers (‘commandment’ in the words of Mbembe (2001)), Varsha’s
‘Master loves dogs… That is how Gods behave’ was one I found most
subversive. Her lack of wages, the beatings she endured and her aware-
ness of her employer’s lack of trust were catalogued and used as fodder
for witty critique. Similarly, their use of symbols of modernity such as
‘Nescafe, air conditioned cars, computer, TV remote, mobile…’ conveyed
this impression. Her conversations with the other domestic workers,
Didi and Dhavan, often reflected a shared perception of their employers
as incorrigible bullies, lazy and monetarily mean. None belonged to, or
could imagine belonging to, a trade union, although Dhavan, who was
much older, agreed that this was the only way to make people like their
employers behave better. At no point was Varsha subservient and in none
of our interviews did Varsha submit herself to her employer’s discursive
regime or to their sentimental lie that they treated her like a daughter:
she was clear that their characterisation of her as ‘lazy’ was disgraceful.
She resisted tasks piled on her by the children and got slapped by them
as a result.
Nor, however, was Varsha lacking in empathy for the ‘spoilt’ children she
was forced to look after. On one occasion I was playing with the children
and Mickey broke a toy helicopter that he had just been given by some
‘foreign’ guests. Dhavan guffawed, saying ‘now he’ll get what he deserves’;
Mickey started to cry. I did not intervene. Varsha was aware that he would
be punished by his father for this transgression: she spent half an hour care-
fully repairing the mechanism, connecting wires and gluing the plastic so
that no adult would know the toy had been damaged even if it did not work.
On another occasion, Minnie was throwing a tantrum and managed to fling
her mother’s silk shawl off the balcony of their penthouse and it lodged
precariously on a metal outcrop used for hanging flower pots and trailing
plants. Dhavan was a witness, as was I, so Varsha could not be blamed.
However, she took pity on Minnie, rigged up an elaborate mechanism – an
assemblage – consisting of rope, a curved cooking utensil, and sticky tape,
to reach out and dislodge the shawl. She took time out of her busy routine –
exposing herself to the risk of being beaten for time-wasting – to descend to
the courtyard of the building to collect the shawl and rewash it.
When it became clear that her employer was expecting another child,
Varsha confided to me her desire to ‘leave these people’. Having watched
her ingenious contraptions and mechanical conservation efforts with lost
and broken things, I was convinced that Varsha’s assertion that she ‘would
like to learn computers’ and ‘like to have a mobile phone’ had a good chance
of being fulfilled in the right circumstances. But what might those circum-
stances be? The right to education act, and the various rights in the United
Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, cannot be guaranteed
in India except as a result of a push for an unconditional universal basic
income and punitive actions against middle class adults who infringe on
these protections.
Hemant’s work on the fried food stall where he works for his father includes
chopping onions and other foods for the fried snacks, making tea, making up
batches of batter, embedding green chillies in round potato balls, and serv-
ing customers. A younger boy who is too shy to talk squats behind the stall
washing glasses and teaspoons in a bucket and handing them to Hemant. A
morose man works at the stall, but I am not certain if he is Hemant’s father. I
am never introduced. Before noon, Hemant goes home to change into his uni-
form and go to school. The routine varies on Sundays when he has no school,
or public holidays, when he stays at the stall all day ‘giving support’ by doing
his full-time job. It is easy getting Hemant to talk about media:
Hemant: [I watch] everything, mostly cricket, football matches, films.

I like cricket. If my parents allow, I lie down and watch cricket
every day. [I watch] everything, cartoons, Tom and Jerry, Bolly-
wood, Marathi serials, depends what my sisters want to see, what
film’s on cable.
Int: Do you have a mobile?
Hemant: I really like mobiles, my father has a mobile. He takes orders
on his mobile. He gave me his old one, but it is useless, the screen
is black.
Int: How do you listen to music?
Hemant: We have a radio. It is on all the time. The TV can be on too
when my mother is stitching. She likes to listen also. She says “put
it off”, but she likes.
Hemant’s account is full of detail, laughter and enthusiasm for all types of
media, old and new. Nevertheless, sometimes his answers construct a ver-
sion of himself as a happy-go-lucky schoolboy which jars with the version
of his life that I witness. He is cuffed around the head by adult men and he
has issues with teachers at school.
Hemant: I used to love learning new things. I like to read, I read the
Marathi paper every day. But I don’t like going to school. But
I have bad teachers. Only one teacher [names one] gives me atten-
tion because she says I could be a fast bowler. Everyone is busy
giving us [a group of low-income boys] lectures because we make
mischief. Yes, we do make mischief. We like to plague the teachers.
[Recounts long tale about some prank he and his friends played,
interrupted by customers.]
The juxtaposition of reading the Marathi paper and enjoyment of reading

with ‘bad teachers’ and dislike of school is a familiar repertoire; the state-
ment that the children are mischievous and that the teachers’ lecture them
is a statement of fact, not an agreement that the badness of the teachers is
justified because of the naughtiness of pupils. Learning and aspiration exist
outside Hemant’s experience of school, as for many low-income minority
and/or Dalit children. Gradually aspirations outside school change based on
pressure and circumstance.
Hemant: When I was little, when I grew up, I wanted to do a job
with cricket reporting! We have to see how the other players are
going, how is Pakistan, how is Australia, we have to know who
has which weakness, and we have tell “look this is coming now”.
Int: But you changed your mind about the job?
Hemant: (Smiles, laughs) My income is needed. If I pass SSC [sec-
ondary school certificate], I am going to college for engineering.
My sisters are SSC pass. My parents are very good, very thinking
people. They have good ideas. We all love to sing. My younger
sister has singing lessons. […] I would do anything for my family.
Without them I wouldn’t be anything. […]
Int: So if you were given a choice, of this job or just stay at home and
study for your exams…
Hemant: I would stay at home, and I would watch some TV and
I would not study; I would go to play cricket with my friends.
I am naturally lazy. Most people are naturally lazy. But there is no
choice. So I don’t think about that. I think about the future, about
becoming an engineer and playing cricket with my son! [laughs].
The irony of Hemant, one of the busiest 15 year olds I have met, calling
himself ‘naturally lazy’ – phrasing which I am confident he adopted from his
teachers – is chilling, as is his account of the scar on his hand, the result of a
momentary lapse as he turned to check out something on a phone. This scar
suggests that mobile browsing and intensive work conditions do not mix, or
do so with consequences.
Fast bowling and engineering are not dreadful careers to aspire to and the
idea of having a son to play cricket with arises from Hemant’s deep respect
for and attachment to his own family. I visited Hemant twice since these
interviews – he is now 18. He is still working on the stall, still talkative.
The tea-glass washing boy has now graduated to running the teas over to
neighbouring shops. Hemant’s family aspiration that he become an engineer
seems to be on hold. I find this unsettling, but he shrugs it off and says he is
getting tuition and is going to take the board examinations. He has a mobile
phone with a plan, it is one of his father’s three connections which is osten-
sibly used for ‘deliveries’ as people ring every 10 minutes asking for tea and
snacks. It is filthy and smeared with oil from where he handles it, but seems
to be his delight. We talk about the latest movies which he is still excited to
watch on television. I am struck by how little his life has changed since he
was 15 and how easily this could be his life for the foreseeable future. The
gap between aspiration and the mobile phone strikes me as ironic in view
of the way accessing the internet is often presented by ICT4D scholars and
practitioners as a pathway to self-improvement.
Perhaps it is in the changes which do not happen as promised by those
who promote the acquisition of and training in new communication
technologies as economic and social panaceas that insight into the resilience
of unequal social structures emerges. Sustained ethnographic observation
and interviews in Seelampur in New Delhi, Sreela Sarkar (2016) critically
examines the promise of inclusion in the information society for low-income
‘Muslim women’ and finds it empty. She follows the lives of the ‘computer
girls’ of Seelampur noting ‘that access to computer training contradictorily
reproduced and reified interconnected divisions of gender, class, caste, and
religion’ (p. 1). Sarkar’s analysis, like that of many critical scholars of media
and technology, suggests that while inequalities in access to the internet are
rampant, digital access and skills can articulate themselves with authori-
tarian hierarchies and be shaped such that authoritarian practices are not
substantially undermined.
I return in a final vignette to the need to de-essentialise media and com-
munications through understanding the lived experiences of communica-
tive assemblages as defined and experienced by children in rural locations.
Thirteen-year-old Ashok, from a Dalit family, lives on the outskirts of a
village in Maharashtra not far from a lake that forms a notable tourist des-
tination. His parents have been disabled for years, one from arthritis, the
other in an agricultural accident. Ashok’s 17-year-old sister is a live-in maid
in a ‘big city’. She sends home a little money every month. Ashok some-
times takes photographs for tourists and has learnt to operate their cameras
and phones by ‘pressing the buttons’: sometimes they tip him or give him a
chapathi. Ashok’s part of the village, which seems more like a collection of
ugly roadside shacks than a village, has no school, no post-office, only two
or three huts with electricity, only one television (which he has never seen),
no computers or broadband access (in 2011; and none when I checked in
2014), no cameras, no mobile masts (so mobile signal is hard to come by)
and one telephone in an ‘upper caste’ household which is some distance
from his hut and from the main village and to which Ashok has no access.
There may well be mobile phones, which are used when in range of mobile
masts, but at the time of our interview, Ashok has no knowledge of them.
According to the children with whom Ashok hangs around, food is the most
sought after thing in the village. On most days, the children walk two hours
to and from another larger village to attend school. They used to attend
because of a ‘food-to-study’ programme. Now, since the programme has
apparently been discontinued, they mainly skip school to fish in the lake.
Ashok is fishing during most of our conversation and catches one little fish.
Ashok: What would I do with a phone or computer? Here is no signal.

But if you can give me food. I will take food. We will thank you.
If you can give me some way to take photographs of these city
people – maybe yes, a camera will be useful to make some money.
But how will I print photos? I cannot be a photograph maker and
not give the photos! So I will also need a bicycle. A bicycle is what
I would ask for. It will allow me to work, to take mother to doc-
tors. A bicycle will be the thing that will let me talk to everyone,
find out about the world, and give me status.
We have here a complicated balance of food with communication technol-

ogy as a necessity of life. The bicycle is also a form of technology that can
be used for transportation and communication and is therefore a commu-
nication technology.
I was moved by Ashok and his friends. They were humorous and straight-
forward and after they got over their extreme shyness, they wanted to sug-
gest practical ways in which their lives could be better (‘If teacher did not
shout’, ‘if it did not rain so much’, ‘if you get me a job in the city’, ‘if we
had a bicycle or car’ – laughing at the impossibility – ‘if the food had not
stopped’). I have spoken about Ashok in venues both in India and outside
and I am increasingly cautious in case he is romanticised as ‘other’ or his
discourse on the bicycle as a means of communication is used by anyone
to suggest that working class and/or Dalit children in India need bicycles
and food rather than mobile phones or cameras. I do not wish to be read
as suggesting that there is an either/or binary whereby one thing comes at
the expense of the other and in which access to material things is more sig-
nificant than entrenched socio-political relations that force children to walk
two hours to school to sit at the back of the class and be ignored or bullied.
All children should have ‘bread and roses too’ and such a hierarchizing of
need, use and access is not what I endorse.
It would be insulting to suggest that Ashok wants a bicycle with which
to learn about the world because he cannot yet conceptualise the world
further than he can travel; and that, were he to encounter the reach of the
internet, or of televised programmes on a mobile phone, he would remain
in his village to learn. If Ashok and his friends assert thoughtfully that food
and bicycles will make their lives measurably better and that bicycles are the
greatest enablers of learning, earning and communication, then bicycles do
need to be considered as part of the communicative assemblage (DeLanda,
2006; Slater, 2013; 2014) for children in low-income communities; and
food provision could free up swathes of time for rest and leisure.
6.6 Conclusion
In Chapter 1, it became clear that research on childhood, media and agency
in India would have to concern itself with the questions: ‘What do poor chil-
dren in India want?’ ‘How do poverty and discrimination structure poor chil-
dren’s intentions, wants and desires?’ And ‘how are the structural conditions
of servitude politically compatible with the extremely heterogeneous circum-
stances they inhabit, and the development of their own wants and desires in
these circumstances?’ This chapter has engaged with all of these questions.
Low-income children make up almost 70 percent of the child popula-
tion in India. Interview, time-diary and participant and non-participant
observational data gathered between 2007 and 2015 have been examined.
The analysis suggests that working class Indian children express forms of
agency through disassembling and reassembling things, through affective
labour and through laborious or painful routines which contribute to their
own or to their families’ survival. The sometimes heightened and some-
time lesser significance of media and technologies for poor children at the
intersection of geography, hunger, physical constraint, caste, class and gen-
der hierarchies, exclusion and authoritarian pedagogic practices as well as
aspiration, innovation, labour, affection, family, friendship and neighbour-
hood spaces has been highlighted. As in the discussion of civic and personal
agency amongst middle class children and youth in Chapter 5, children’s
agency is shown as neither only individual nor only resistant and disruptive.
It may be subversive or humorous, it can be co-opted and complaint, and it
can be expressed through a stillness and patience that might seem to some
scholars the epitome of passivity or disempowerment as Spivak has pointed
out at length (1988). Most important, it is ephemeral, not fixed or sustained,
occurring in the enactment of routines and in the spaces between. Thus
children’s agency may contribute only faint traces to the social totality as
viewed by scholars of citizenship, participation, communications or medi-
ated creativity. It is obviously easier to capture the sharing of a poem or gif
on Facebook than the weird lopsided smiles Varsha gives Dhavan when her
mistress is berating someone, the ingenious contraption she built to recover
a dropped shawl, Pari’s marginal sketches and vituperative anger, or the
rounded, inviting confections Hemant cooks up and sells day in, day out.
However, the fact that one set of agentic and creative practices is archived
and another is fleeting should not condemn one to obscurity and raise the
other to a normative and exemplary status. This analysis suggests that, in
addition to an infrastructure for enforcement of all children’s rights, and of
a universal basic income, the UN convention on the rights of the child needs
two new articles: children’s right to have their productive agency recognised
and their right to have the risks they face described and mitigated. Would an
infrastructure for enforcement of children’s rights result in a politics of rec-
ognition that motivates diverse adult actors to ‘hear’ child subalterns from
different classes speak? The concluding chapter returns to this question to
suggest that a notion of agency and of risk which has developed around chil-
dren’s potential encounters with sexual and other content online in Western
contexts, needs to be rethought so that it does not subsume and erase the
hazards, needs and creativity of millions of global south children.
Notes
1. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Mental-health-facilities-poor-
in-BMC-hospitals/articleshow/44912461.cms; http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/
2014/12/03/worse-than-animals-dire-report-on-mental-health-care-in-india/.
2. http://scroll.in/article/807490/six-indicators-of-indias-looming-demographic-
disaster.
3. For some stories that have made it into the mainstream media, see: http://
www.smh.com.au/world/indias-servants-bear-brunt-of-callous-rich-20120810-
23zxi.html; http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2014/02/12/the-worst-states-
for-maid-abuse-in-india/; http://shaktivahini.org/shakti-vahini-2/india-horrified-
over-child-maid-abuse; https://traffickingnews.wordpress.com/2012/04/08/the-
delhi-child-servant-scandal-that-has-outraged-india/; http://iloblog.org/2013/
01/11/abuses-that-domestic-workers-suffer-are-we-to-blame/; http://www.
thenational.ae/world/south-asia/indian-maid-beaten-burnt-and-shamed-in-
upscale-new-delhi-home.
4. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2257536/The-teen-smartphone-
mugging-epidemic-Two-thirds-mobile-theft-victims-London-children-young-
adults.html.
7 Conclusion
7.1 Looking and not seeing

India is home to more than 440 million children under 18 (Census of India,
2011). This is four times the child population of the United States of America,
and over double the total child population of the European Union. As detailed
in Chapter 2, approximately 300 million Indian children are media-poor and
working class. Class inflects almost every aspect of their lives. Poor Indian
children’s lives are not represented frequently or accurately by Indian or West-
ern mainstream media; and their complex subjectivities, their views of the
world, tend not to be represented at all. Although the national channels do
show children’s content, India has no dedicated children’s channel that is free
to air in all languages, which might imply the beginning of a commitment to
representing, depicting and including 300 million working class children in
the representational sphere. Private television channels depict fantastic crea-
tures and children from a fairly restricted range of mainly middle class urban
backgrounds. Programmes are in English, Hindi or state languages. Although
child viewers who have access to these channels have become accustomed
to drawing pleasure from the current offer and seek satisfaction in sport,
melodrama or wildlife documentaries aimed at adults, children’s programmes
rarely deal with issues that are the central concerns of many lower middle
class and working class girls, or that might occupy working class, Dalit, Adi-
vasi and most rural children’s lives. No children’s programme in India deals
with what is happening to children in Kashmir; or mentions issues of curfew
in the North-East. National news media, meanwhile, tend to concentrate on
stories where children are victims, to illustrate statistics on health, mortality,
and other development indicators. Child-related crime stories are sensation-
alised, and relationships with many civil society organisations are strained.
Meanwhile, the role and impact of wider caste, religious and class discrimina-
tion and violence on children’s lives is barely mentioned.
On the one hand, none of this is very surprising. We could view this
narrow spectrum of representation as a natural consequence of increasingly
neoliberal capitalist social relations, a modernisation paradigm of devel-
opment that tries to validate urban sensibilities, and more broadly of an
orientalist colonial hangover that positions the global south’s rural poor
as uninteresting and homogenous masses with no right to representa-
tion or communication power. In this vein, my review of the literature in
188 Conclusion
Chapters 1 and 2 suggests that multiple studies of childhood in the United
States, Australia and Europe are widely available, but (that apart from on
issues of child labour, literacy and development) this is not the case for
children in India despite their ‘right to be heard’1. On the other hand, as my
content analysis suggested in Chapter 4, there are further axes of discrim-
ination: the ideological positioning of children from lower castes and out-
side the upper caste Hindu fold, as significantly anti-modern is a pernicious
undercurrent in both children’s and adult programming, and in educational
institutions in India. The emphasis on specific qualities for boys and differ-
ent ones for girls, and the smaller numbers of girls and women represented
is another salient issue. The absence of representations of children or adults
with disabilities is stark. The lack of interest shown by journalists in rural
poor, Muslim, Dalit, and other children’s issues that cannot be sensation-
alised, speaks to a media environment in which journalist ethics are being
subordinated not just to a competitive, unregulated, ratings-driven ethos
but also to an idea of the Indian public-sphere as Hindu, upper caste and
middle class. Rare exceptions just seem to prove the rule.
There are, of course, other poor children in other global south countries,
who are in a similar position and we could argue that these poor urban and
rural global south children exemplify the concept ‘subaltern’. Whether or
not they are defined as subalterns, however, the complex subjectivities and
forms of agency they display in response to structural conditions and indi-
vidual contexts are generally missing in studies of media and communica-
tions. This book’s insights emerge in the form of accounts of pleasure, anger,
discrimination and several incredibly complex sets of overlapping respon-
sibilities shared by working class children, and nuanced conceptualisations
of childhood agency: ephemeral agency, contaminated agency and trans-
formative agency, which are all immanent in children’s accounts of their
lives in the complicated media-rich and media-poor contexts of India. In
this context, I hope that the contextual and conceptual nuance offered here
can help to refocus the aims, variables and instruments for teachers, media
educators, academics, lay readers, and for those in the research and policy
fields who continue to conduct large multivariate surveys about media use,
or child labour or digital technologies.
The book has moved back and forth across discussions of education,
society, technology and civic agency generated in global north and global
south contexts to break with traditional quantitative studies that document
access to new media or to political information as a measure of democrati-
sation through media. I have argued instead for an understanding of confor-
mity and interpretive and social reproduction as measures of agency, and for
the centrality of poorer children’s resourceful conservation as a grassroots
democratic civic practice. Children’s resourceful conservation definitely
involves structures such as class, caste, religion, gender and age which sur-
round children and the emotional bonds, material environments, tools, ecol-
ogies, spaces and historical moments in which they find themselves. Poorer
Conclusion 189
children’s resourceful conservation might, but frequently does not, involve
intergenerational relationships, adult community members, and/or media
and communications technologies. It can be self-conscious and aware of
ecological and environmental concerns, but most often it is habitual. It can
arise from compassion, and care, or from what looks like rational self-interest.
My work suggests that this intertwining of identities, networks, politics and
the necessities of everyday survival operate in the case of children as they do
with adults, with particular adult family members or older peers becoming
the fulcrum of children’s conflicts over resources.
7.2 Childhood and media studies

Whereas children have been discussed as biologically circumscribed beings,
ticking their way through the stages of immaturity and development towards
adult maturity, today it is more common to view childhood as historically
and culturally contingent, contested and in flux. Discussions of Western
childhoods and global south childhoods which historicise, critique and
contextualise psychological and/or biological and/or economic determinist
accounts of children’s lives from within ‘the new sociology of childhood’ or
‘multiple childhoods’ traditions are becoming more central to teaching and
research in some disciplines. Research in the tradition of media and com-
munications scholarship also needs to uncouple itself from its predominant
attachment to modernisations discourses, developmental psychology and
technological determinism, both hard and soft.
This book set out to provide an understanding of Indian children’s
place in media and communications. It suggests ways forward for com-
munications research with working-class children in the global south and
ways of drawing connections between research with media rich and media
poor. Some Indian children’s lives are represented in Western media for-
mats and in studies about media, the internet and childhood. However,
from middle class Indian children’s testimonies, it is evident that some of
them inhabit two or more connected temporalities and systems of value
within modernity. Some aspects are familiar to school-going children and
to those who research them. Others are not. There are multiple articles
utilizing determinist theories of child development and socio-technical
change (Behara 1998, Kline, 1993; Levin & Kilbourne 2008; Palmer,
2006; Postman, 1983; Tapscott, 2008; Tondeur et al., 2010), but there is
little research in the media and communications field that contextualises
its analysis in relation to the lives of working class and very poor children
who inhabit complex modernities in India. Their fingers draw patterns in
mud and paint, whittle toys from sticks, break and mend electronic goods,
stroke and clean animals, stitch global north T-shirts, solder circuits in our
mobile phones or shell prawns for gourmet consumption. They are not
simply victims of child labour or tradition, nor are they simply consumers
or digital natives.
Figure 7.1 Little girl and pet goat.
Figure 7.2 Little girls playing with used syringes.

Conclusion 191
7.3 The risk of risk
The risks and harms experienced or avoided by children in India are
numerous and often unimaginable if they are experienced from the com-
fort of a digitally connected upper middle class living room anywhere
in the globe. From the children whose limbs are mangled or cut off in
industrial, agricultural, or traffic accidents, to those whose neighbours,
families, employers or teachers are subjecting them to humiliation or vio-
lence, one might learn that online Islamic radicalisation that is a major
concern for British and North American studies of children going online
is not a grave and present danger. From those who care for disabled par-
ents, get beaten by teachers and employers, chew tobacco, are married
at 14, go to sleep hungry, wake tired because they combine work and
schooling, are refused entry to public spaces such as schools and malls
because of their caste, or fear violence and humiliation because their
dress is the dress of the poor from a despised religion, we can learn that
being digitally illiterate, compromising one’s privacy, stumbling across
porn or gang-related material online, becoming obese through the con-
sumption of goods advertised without adequate warning, and sharing
inappropriate content on social media are not immediate hazards. Both
sets of risks are important to different groups of parents. Both sets are
ones we must take seriously in appropriate contexts. Amongst middle
class children and youth in India, there are forms of political extremism –
they are often surrounded by Hindu chauvinist and casteist frames of mind
and organisations both on and offline; others see sexism naturalised in
everyday contexts. There is plenty of infringement of privacy, illegal down-
loading, cyber-bullying, harassment and exclusion, particularly of girls,
and much of this causes harm and distress in quite persistent ways. I make
these comparisons because the latter set of risks has become detached,
free-floating and universalised in literature on children and media or com-
munications, while the former are discussed in passing, or absent, only
rarely part of conversations taking place amongst media professionals,
media and communications’ scholars and media students about risks (to
children).
It is important to note as Simon Cottle does, that ‘the nature of contem-
porary risks is highly susceptible, if not dependent, upon the means by which
they are made visible. The tension between ontological statements about
what is … the unprecedented nature of contemporary risks, and epistemo-
logical statements about how we can come to know these, that is, how they
are visualised in processes and fora of social definitions’ is constant (Cottle,
1998: 8). Therefore, it is not simply that the digital sphere in the highly
mediatised world and everyday life and media use amongst the poor major-
ity are two agendas of equal magnitude competing for scarce resources.
The constant constructions and perceptions of the digital as a sphere of risk
and harm for children which has the same significance in media wealthy
192 Conclusion
and media poor contexts has elevated one aspect of middle class children’s
lives – and a relatively minor setting for childhood risk amongst poorer
global south children – into a major concern, thus discursively diminishing
the enormous variety and magnitude of the issues facing children who live
in poverty.
Although the future is as relevant for inequitable events and processes
that are already taking place as it is for risks, the very ontological polit-
ical weight of current harm and damage discourages some scholars from
addressing these processes at all and others from addressing them system-
ically. Returning to Beck’s notion of risk society (see Chapter 1), I find
it problematically curtailed; elegant, and an interesting addition to our
conceptual lexicon, but it misses the nuance, the compassion and visceral
understanding about social inequality which characterises heterodox
Marxist and postcolonial feminist approaches to class. As such, the politics
of risk, and of risk society, is a reductive, depoliticised politics even more
than old industrial era structuralism. Discussions of risk are sometimes
repurposed by neoliberal forces – for instance, arguments about the envi-
ronmental risks to forests have been used to dispossess the rural poor, Adi-
vasis and other indigenous groups of land rights; and arguments about
the risk of global financial collapse have aided and abetted the work of
private corporations securing monopolies over necessities such as water
and healthcare in the global south. So it is imperative that we interrogate
the damage being done by such discourses outside the sphere of media and
communications.
7.4 Agency
Arising from my research questions, one of my enquiries has been whether,
and in which ways, work practices and media cultures arising out of diverse
and complicated class relationships and contexts in India can shed light on
children and young people’s social positioning and agency in other situa-
tions across the globe. If media and communications scholars and media
content producers were to decide to pay attention to the interests, wants,
needs and stories of some of the working class children in India and those of
other low income children in the global south, how should they approach,
write about and think about children’s agency?
My analysis demonstrates that the process of understanding what agency,
labour or media and communicative experience amongst children in India
looks like is the result of a recursive, nuanced and many-sided exploration.
It is one which returns to things, looks again from other angles, asks again
and in different ways, thereby avoiding a fixed and skewed picture which
suggests either resistance and agency or subservience and submission. As a
result, the evidence provides a basis for questioning the categorisation of
children’s labour as immature or economically subsidiary to that of adults,
and the notion that agency is a static or an individual attribute.
Conclusion 193
Children’s narrations of their own acts, political views, social participa-
tion, leisure, labour and emotional relationships suggest that they step in
and out of agency. They create and experience it – and its curtailment –
emotionally, vicariously, precariously, tenuously, secretively, and pursue it as
relentlessly as many pursue basic survival. Conversely, observations of par-
ents, teachers and employers during their interactions with children and my
analysis of adult experts’ reports, suggests that Waksler is right in pointing
to adults’ need to affirm their faith in a version of the social world which
they have come to accept:
Perhaps adulthood is at heart a tenuous achievement, being adult a

continuous accomplishment, and the serious questioning of adult
understandings thus a challenge to a fragile view of the world. Children
constantly threaten adults: their knowledge, the very achievement of
adulthood itself, and adult accommodations to issues from childhood
that were never resolved but simply overridden with adult conceptions.
Much of adult knowledge is based on faith – faith in the correctness of
what people were taught as children. Detailed sociological examination
of children’s creation and sustenance of world views and the ways in
which children do and do not adopt adult world views can provide the
data for an examination of the nature of adult conceptions. (1986: 72)
So, the predominant adult conceptions of childhood as an incomplete

becoming dovetails with a view of agency as an attribute of individuals
rather than of groups. These versions of knowledge are challenged at vari-
ous points in this book by what children say they do and feel. Everyone is
born into structures and experiences that inflect how and what they become.
Intersections of structures and circumstances curtail the collective agency of
children and adults. In most of the accounts given by Indian children in this
book, class and caste are clearly dominant structures, while gender inflects
the ways agency can be displayed in different class contexts. Examples used
in the book show that children understand and react to difference based
on unspoken codes about caste and class. This nuances the point made by
scholars such as Myra Macdonald (1995) and Stuart Hall (1997) about race
and gender that media representations of otherness are encoded through
absence and misrepresentation as well as banal representations of difference.
In practice, as agency emerges in situations of relationality (ethical or
otherwise) and social reproduction, agency can be expressed through a host
of actions on a spectrum of conformity and resistance. Some agentic choices
serve to build communities and relationships, which can be a form of resis-
tance or can be contaminated by those communities’ discriminatory prac-
tices, and also be a form of conformity. Many agentic actions occur under
duress or are deployed against those who are weaker than others, on behalf
of the powerful. These, I suggest, express what I call ‘contaminated agency’.
This cannot be denied its position as agency, but contrasts with normative
194 Conclusion
notions of agency as expressive of free will in an absolute sense. It is con-
taminated because it is agency which expresses hegemonic power or the will
of others. And yet the actions embodying it are often freely chosen. This
does not indicate that the meaningfulness of and difference between confor-
mity and resistance collapses. My analysis of children’s narratives suggests
that one can resist things which are just and equitable, or conform to norms
which are humane and just: both concepts are more complicated than nor-
mative assumptions allow.
7.3.1 Ephemeral agency and resourceful conservation

Ephemeral agency is evidenced in the way that children deal with tensions
between different levels of adult authority, from religious elders, scripture,
teacher and school, to state functionaries, parents, overseers and employers.
Decisions about which authority to ‘trust’ have been shown to be made
actively by some children. Touching or not touching objects, a decision
whether to break rules obviously or covertly, irreverence and sarcasm when
describing adults – “they are like Gods”; “this is how Gods behave” offer
visions of subversion reminiscent of Scott’s (1987) weapons of the weak. But
sarcasm deployed by the weak against those they view as powerful is not
necessarily liberatory or directed only at the strong: some older boys may
direct abusive terms and gestures (that they never use with authoritarian
men) at the backs of female clients or employers who behave officiously/
imperiously with them. Middle class girls make casual derogatory com-
ments about Muslim men, but rarely about men from their Jain or Hindu
communities. So, while it is useful to acknowledge that children can deploy
language and gesture tactically, a fetishisation of covert tactics as always
directed towards freedom is misplaced and should be carefully avoided.
Many studies of civic participation and development narratives produced
by NGOs and International NGOs (INGOs) valorise certain kinds of cre-
ative and communicative practices and civic consumption over others. As
Balagopalan’s (2014) and McCarthy’s (2015) work with different NGOs
illustrates, organisations which work to empower children are often sat-
isfied when children discursively conform2 to NGO values, narratives and
requirements (in one case of what it means to be a ‘street child’; in the other
of what it means to be healthy and clean through washing one’s hands).
They see this discursive conformity as ‘participation’ or ‘civicness’ but it may
be no more or less agentic than the children’s conformity to street norms or
religious, peer and community practices and value frameworks.
We need to pay heed to children’s lives, their work, their inventive,
patient, caring, innovative and collaborative labour in sustaining families,
selves and communities as a conservation of affect and of being. In circum-
stances where the emotions which surround children are in turmoil because
families live in stressful or hazardous circumstances, I observed that many
children do their utmost to ensure that positive emotions of adults and older
Conclusion 195
children are preserved in an attempt to ensure the well-being of those they
love. Amongst the children I interviewed, while this attempt was clearly
made by middle and working class groups, the greater lack of time and
economic security of working class children was met by them with a greater
range of strategies for conserving and sustaining affective relationships and
family wellbeing. This affective conservation was most often expressed
through unremunerated care work undertaken in both exceptional and rou-
tine circumstances, and through a refusal to provoke upheaval in their own
immediate communities rather than through overt refusal of authority.
Like scholars such as Dalla Costa and James (1972) and Seccombe
(1974; 1975), Hensman (2011b) argues that reproductive labour inside the
family is an area that should be seen as central to social reproduction and
as the backbone of economic production. In part because of the connections
between theories of labour, value and profit, labour within the home or car-
ing for young children and the frail, undertaken with no remuneration, has
often been relegated to the margins of capitalist social relations. My analysis
suggests that there are varied forms of child labour in low-income communities
and most of these embody varying amounts of economic agency, however
tenuous and ephemeral, and whether classed as productive or unproductive
labour in Marxist terms. Whether inside or outside the home, whether remu-
nerated at lower rates than that of adults and depressing wages or enabling
adults to earn by freeing up their time, most of these are dynamic facets of
socioeconomic relations. This is part of capitalist modernity, and cosmo-
politan globalisation. In parts of the global south this may be a modernity
which runs parallel to the ‘protected and pedagogised’ childhoods of some
families.
Legislation against children working should be strengthened massively,
and checks increased. However, failing to acknowledge and give recognition
to the work that children do both in the home and under the label of ‘child
labour’, to engage with the vicious grinding destructiveness of some labour,
its harms and exploitative drudgery, and with its opportunities for care, skill
and creativity, because one is normatively or rhetorically committed to a
social formation in which children’s labour no longer exists, is problematic.
One facet of the recognition of children’s being, and one means of rec-
ognition of their labour, is an understanding of this labour’s configuration
by many children as embodied agency. The concept of ‘embodied agency’3,
which is implicit in Merleau-Ponty’s work on consciousness, perception and
embodiment (1962; 1968) and is explicitly drawn out by Charles Taylor
(1989) interconnects thinking and doing, mind and body, the individual
and society in ways which fit the children in this book. As discussed in
Chapter 1, agency in my account is about both sociality and temporality.
Embodied agency reveals itself through the material and social actions chil-
dren take in this study and the ways in which these actions give an account
of their perceptions and feelings about the world around them. Embodied
agency can be ephemeral or sustained; it may be resistant, contaminated (by
196 Conclusion
adult pressure, by contextual factors) or conformist – largely consenting
and accepting of wider hegemonic patterns of thinking and behaviour, as
Avinesh’s is when he agrees to watch his sister for his parents.
The significance of embodied agency emerges from discussions with chil-
dren about their physical presence in and emotional alertness during pro-
cesses, routines and practices in mundane and exceptional circumstances.
Their reasons for making a habit of not touching certain things or not doing
certain things with technology while they are working are bound up with
their sense that the things we do are interpreted as agentic even when we
do them as part of constrained routines: so accidents and misfortunes easily
become our ‘fault’. Some children insert their own meanings around the
affordances of media and communications texts and technologies; many
accept adult accounts of these affordances.
While the gist of my argument is that children’s agency must be seen as
embodied in this sense, I have also found that their agency is curtailed and
intermittent. I would argue, in fact, that all agency is actually intermittent,
and exists as a potential rather than an essence. Much of children’s agency
is observable only if one is looking for it over extended periods, from mul-
tiple perspectives and in different contexts, and those working on media
and communications tend to pay most attention to what they observe of
children’s agency in this sphere. To describe this, I have coined the term
‘ephemeral agency’.
It is unquestionable that the accounts by children in Chapters 5 and 6
describe multiple examples of children’s agency that fits this description
Figure 7.3 Little girls playing in demolished home.

Conclusion 197
Figure 7.4 A tiny slum entrepreneur.
and might be overlooked were agency to be conceived as a fixed aspect of

human ontology. When work, learning and pleasure are interlinked by chil-
dren to make their work more bearable, this can be seen as an expression of
agency and of structural constraint. For many children, on many occasions,
doing something agentic does not entail individual rational decisions to take
action, or to behave in specific ways in response to perceived structural
conditions. The school child who squirms, giggles or falls asleep in class;
the daughter who lays her head on a parent’s lap when she senses that they
are sad or afraid; or the teenager who channel hops or scrolls through Ins-
tagram to avoid impending depression and anxiety are all making choices
that are at one and the same time agentic and constrained. The snatching
of momentary pleasures is often not considered to be agentic because it is
nested within the habitual and monotonous, but does not build towards
structured social change.
We can view these moments described in children’s accounts as external-
isations of ephemeral agency that is both individual and profoundly rela-
tional. Examples include: sketching in homework books, doodling during
class, whispering, football with stones as one walks, speed shelling of peas;
games with children in one’s care; the use of a common tool for an uncom-
mon purpose; listening to music while working or doing school work, riding
pillion on bikes or the footboards of trucks in dangerous ways while doing
deliveries, and many forms of chat, gossip, mischief and distraction during
long walks to collect wood, leaves, or to go to school. Many of these activ-
ities involve a form of resourceful conservation (Banaji, 2015). As I use it
198 Conclusion
here, the term resourceful conservation involves living and making choices
in ways that protect, reuse, recycle and sustain all available material and
affective resources individually and within communities. At one level, this
entails making more of material objects than their initial affordances sug-
gest is possible, in the manner exemplified by Gaffar, Varsha, Dheeraj and
other working class children in this study, and drawing affective sustenance
from structured social relationships – however limited by time and perme-
ated with authority – and environments – whatever the constraints.
To an extent, resourceful conservation dovetails with conventional
notions of conservation, in that material objects are not destroyed but are
repurposed, and with some exceptions (for instance, in relation to the use
of water when in middle class households) resources and environments are
maintained in ways which resist degradation. But conservation of affect and
identity also goes further and engages children in attempts to ensure that
the adults they live with are pleased with them and able to provide for them
emotionally despite the other pressures of life. Although for children some
of these decisions and actions are habitual, learnt from older group mem-
bers, or curtailed and forced by circumstance, much of this entails making
a series of agentic choices. These choices involve thinking about how to
address individual and group needs by engaging in fun and loving activities,
how to prevent the erosion of livelihoods, and how to prevent or ameliorate
adult grief, suffering and pain. In the case of some children in this study
this involved a tactful refusal to be openly defiant of parental (or employer)
requests and demands even when these were laborious, or conflicted with
their sense of fairness. In other instances, children’s conformist agency was
evident: their outward adherence to discriminatory practices such as who
does more chores in the home or who one hangs out with (determined by
gender, class, religion and caste) or who one reveals romantic feelings for. In
some cases, these choices might not be the path of least resistance, as when
children join their parents to perform religious rituals that mark them as
other, and endanger them, with a dominant group; or when children support
one parent/carer against another in an overt way.
Resourceful conservation is agentic to the extent that it requires choices
linked to actions. It is also often collective. The poorest children have two
opposite temporal imperatives pulling on them: the monotony and boredom
of work routines, long-known and extremely tiring, though occasionally
holding possibilities for amusement, pleasure or companionship and the
pressure to produce outcomes of labour in abbreviated time-spans. These
imperatives are entangled with unpredictable events: flooding, drought,
accidents, bankruptcy and unemployment; loss or theft leading to loss of
employment or demotion; harassment, illness or death of parents and sib-
lings. The most economically secure children had different but equally diver-
gent imperatives that will be recognisable in many middle class communities
the world over. These arise out of educational performance expectations and
peer-linked identity construction requirements: the logic of the former is to
Conclusion 199
focus on future success, examination grade-oriented tasks, elaborate strate-
gies for academic self-improvement with little connection to immediate real-
ity; the logic of the latter is to be permanently available both face-to-face
and on social media but also scarce and valued, to display loyalty, chutzpah,
wit, popularity, and a particular form of street knowledge and style (which
usually involves an outlay of economic capital which is not too much and
yet signals economic security). Examples include birthday celebrations and
brands, gifts and Instagram accounts. What should all of this tell us about
how to approach the meaning and significance of new and emerging tech-
nologies in Indian children’s everyday lives?
7.5 Technologies and modernity: the digital and its others

In the social sciences, dichotomies are often proposed to ease under-
standing. In the context of my analysis static and mobile, working and
non-working, new and old media are such dichotomies. In focusing on
relationships with lasting and direct impact on the bodies and psyches of
children – for instance, children who have to earn or work to ensure their
own and others’ survival and adults who choose to work harder than
they have to, in order to buy consumer goods or ensure that their children
attend private schools – it is crucial to distance oneself from these (false)
dichotomies.
Children in the working and lower middle classes and girls in these
groups, in particular, experience a mixture of temporal regimes as they
contend with familial schedules, identity work with peers, educational
demands and housework. Television and films, music and games and
online or social media have a different salience for urban and rural work-
ing and middle class children. Social class limits access to new media
in numerous ways, curtailing experiences of online surfing for children
with limited mobile connections and disconnecting others from the inter-
net sphere. Social class in India seems to structure and alter children’s
relationships to all media. But these media also have varying salience at
different points in their childhoods and in different geographic locations.
Television is desired or unavailable, new media may or may not be avail-
able in some geographical locations and/or for some classes of children;
the internet is taken-for-granted old media in others. Smart mobile phones
are becoming fetishized objects among some groups of older urban mid-
dle class children for whom they can signify both privacy and freedom;
others have never seen a smartphone and pay scant attention to the games
on non-internet enabled mobiles, seeming to care more about the music
they can hold.
The repetition of ‘the digital’ in relation to childhood and family, like the
linkage of ‘social media’ with the idea of ‘revolution’ in the Middle East and
North Africa, is challenged in Chapters 5 and 6 by the apparent absence of
an obsession with digital on the part of many children who were interviewed
200 Conclusion
for my research. The economic bias of the focus on and construction of the
idea of a ‘digital’ world in much of the scholarly and policy literature is
countered in my study by children’s discussions of communicative strategies
which do not involve mass or alternative media, of ‘old’ media content and
its role in their lives, and by the appearance of a ‘digital’ vocabulary and
imaginary mainly amongst middle class groups in India.
Some people around the world work with cutting-edge affordances of
information and communication technologies on a daily basis. These might
include, for instance, developers and programmers, hackers and hactivists,
military intelligence personnel, scientists, medical cyber-modellers, cyber-
crime units, corporate and state data analysts, social media entrepreneurs
and some new media theorists. These groups of people often think about
modernity and technological tools differently than those who work in other
professions or fields. When we are ill and have an operation, or when a wall
needs to be built, a bicycle repaired or lenses fitted, we are unlikely to be
obsessing about whether doctors and mechanics are using the internet or
using social media or apps as part of the process. In sectors from medicine
to farming, tools may now include smart technologies and smaller chips, but
many tools remain as they were hundreds of years ago and there are many
places where those are the only tools available or needed. Scalpels, drills
and forceps are used alongside fibre optic endoscopes. Despite the ‘green
revolution’ hooks, scythes and manual ploughs are mainstays of Indian agri-
culture; manual screwdrivers are useful to electricians and fishing lines and
nets to those who make a living through small and medium fisheries.
Contemporary children from poorer families in the global south do not
have the financial resources to invest in the newest technological tools. Even
if they did, their training and knowledge might suggest they are inappropri-
ate if electricity is scarce or temperatures are high. So, like fourteen-year-old
Gaffar, who repairs almost any electronic and electrical mechanism, adults
and children in low-income communities in India become highly skilled at
using cheap and time-honoured technologies and the methods that accom-
pany these.
‘Low-tech’ tools are often more affordable, ubiquitous and readily avail-
able in India. They play a role in subsistence in a manner demanded, inflected
or allowed by the market and the state in India. They may be used danger-
ously, thoughtlessly, in hazardous ways that harm health or ethically and
carefully so as not to destroy the environment or the livelihoods of impover-
ished people. The latter practices are fuelling a return to these technologies
in the sustainable development and organic farming and fisheries sectors
worldwide4. As with work, so with leisure. Analysing children’s games in
rural Orissa, Zazie Bowen (2015) discusses how lines drawn in the soil,
dolls made from clay [are all] constituent elements of elementary children’s
play. She writes: ‘[i]n print media eras, and market economies, cardboard
games, playing cards, and paper and pens occupy a significant place as tech-
nologies or media for children’s play and games. In urban households, where
Conclusion 201
digital resources are increasingly dominant in the performance of economic
and cultural activity, young peer players increasingly homed in on digital
technologies as the site and means of peer play exchanges’ (2015: 335–336).
The tools that poor children in India become accustomed to using for
work and play are modern insofar as they constitute a visible aspect of
capitalist modernity. Naming and classifying these tools as traditional, may
seem innocently descriptive, but it is a deeply ideological depoliticised short-
hand that elides the complex and unequal connotations of tradition and
modernity. Such classifications implicitly consign millions of Indian children
who use these tools (to survive, create, amuse or build, and who do not use
‘digital’ tools) to a space outside modernity. This space is often character-
ised in development discourses as one in which adult, corporate and poten-
tially Western intervention is a social and historical necessity, something that
William Mazarella (2010) has called attention to.
Following Warschauer (2003), Pieterse (2005) argues that ‘[t]he digital
divide is a deeply misleading discourse: the divide is not digital but socio-
economic, but representing the divide in technical terms suggests technical
solutions. It suggests digital solutions for digital problems’. Further,
[w]ith the digital divide comes reasoning that correlates connectiv-

ity with development performance – ‘Area A is rich, integrated into
market relationships, and has a lot of telephones; area B is poorer,
less integrated into market relationships, and has fewer telephones:
therefore, a telephone rollout will make B richer and more integrated’
(Wade 2002: 450). The next step is to equate connectivity and eco-
nomic development and to view ICT as key to bridging the rich-poor
gap and ‘national “e-readiness” as a cornerstone of capacity building’.
(2005: 12)
New and emerging technologies, including information and communication

technologies such as social network apps on internet-enabled smartphones
and laptops, are discursively constructed as quintessentially modern. How-
ever, some of the readily available new tools have ‘traditional’ status for
certain groups. The children of information sector workers and bankers,
or clerks and teachers are familiar with the swift scroll and flick of screens,
sharp ringtones, the parent who turns away to answer an email or text
at mealtimes, in the movie theatre, or while driving; they experience the
arguments following a smashed screen, a sticky keypad, or a monstrous
download bill. Arguing over the remote control thus can be regarded as a
traditional practice in some contexts. Posting a selfie is becoming so ‘famil-
iar’ for some people that it takes on the aura of tradition.
A final point regarding ‘digital’ imaginaries. Just as the coming of films
to urban screens and television in the home in the 20th century was asso-
ciated with variegated imaginaries of gender, nationalism, ethnicity and
class, leading to questioning and legitimisation of forms of racial and class
202 Conclusion
discrimination, gender violence or sexual exploration, so with new media.
Some observers seem to imagine emerging media and communication tech-
nologies as access points to a wider world and a brighter economic future.
Given the numbers of players in the education technology field (one lap top
per child, free tech), some state-linked, some corporate, some charitable,
many implicated in all camps, there are other equally plausible answers to
the question of why the significance and spread of emerging technologies in
India is exaggerated. The capitalist impulse to create new markets for tech-
nological products or the governmental strategy of being ranked highly in
relation to international technological indicators (which apparently trump
social welfare, or media freedom as constituents of modernity) are both
possible candidates. Academics’ reasons for allowing their narratives about
childhood, media and communication technologies to support and dove-
tail with those of governmental and corporate stakeholders’ need urgent
questioning.
For some children, in some circumstances, new and emerging technol-
ogies are painfully articulated with gendered capitalist social relations.
Sometimes unknown and irrelevant, at others unaffordable commodities or
forbidden fruit, when accessed, phones may appear in the guise of proxy
authorities or employers, giving rise to the need for caution and evasion.
They ring constantly, telling teenage workers or their parents to attend to
someone’s needs; they are a conduit to pressure from friends who want to be
called back because they have no credit and from parents who want money
or to know where their adolescent is and who he or she is with. The missed
call might signify nothing, or it might be a lost opportunity for survival. Sny-
der and Prinsloo (2007: 175) emphasise that ‘social context, far more than
hardware, shapes the use of new technologies; new technologies do not hold
the key to human progress; new technologies are neither causes nor cures
as the social context in which they are used or not used is all-important.’
In India, the variety of technological and semantic assemblages and their
implications do not yet lead to a privileging of new and emergent media and
technologies. For hundreds of millions of working class children in India
today, platform society and digital imaginaries are meaningless concepts.
Unequal society and urban imaginaries are not, however: and in so far as
digital imaginaries and platforms in the global north and middle class areas
of the global south are imbued with inequality and racism, they have an
impact on these children’s lives.
Newer and older technologies have costs: in one case, this may be an
exhausting and exploitative physical toll – hammering stones, carrying
weights on heads, blistered skin; muscles that ache and joints that swell
from digging and knitting and bending and stretching; exploding stoves,
flooded rooms; infected cuts. In the other case, it might be carpel tunnel,
attention deficit, cyber-bullying, indebtedness. New and old technologies
can make life easier: the pipeline which connects and the tap which switches
on a rush of ground water, obviating the need to walk miles to a well and
Conclusion 203
draw water. The phone which allows people to go online and read an old
newspaper report which makes them reflect on their own sexuality and ulti-
mately leads someone to start an advice centre for troubled teenagers is
another. Traditional technological tools can be defined, exist, and are valo-
rised amongst different classes of children in India. While some of these may
be more linked to communication than others, all these tools are associated
with actions on and in the world when they are used by children. All of
these exist in modernity. The newer ones, and the those used primarily for
communication, creativity or learning, should not be fetishized above those
used for amusement or for survival.
7.6 Where next?

Eduardo Galleano once asserted that the language he needed throughout
his life to animate and show solidarity with the magnificent histories and
movements of the poor and oppressed is ‘a feeling thinking language, feel-
ing and thinking at once…’. This injunction has travelled with me through
the years, influencing my teaching and research. I have extended it beyond
the language used to communicate research findings, and to the underlying
structures of thought which I apply, and teach others to apply, in relation to
our social worlds.
Throughout this book I have argued for scholarship and politics which
address the intersectional structural contexts and conditions, the choices,
constraints and immediate concerns of all different groups of children and
which does so in a way conducive to insight, redistribution and equity in
symbolic and material resources. It is problematic to study any aspect of
the social world or of everyday life as if only one factor, namely social class,
without reference to other factors such as age, sexuality, gender or race, can
give us access to its possibilities and contradictions. It is equally problematic
to study aspects of the social world such as technological usage, or com-
munications, or childhood, without paying attention to social class. I have
therefore argued strongly throughout this book that media and communi-
cations studies in relation to whatever platform, network, text, producer or
process, need to return their attention to class in substantive ways.
What this means in relation to childhood and risk studies in the sphere
of media and communications or digital culture is that if they are to remain
relevant, and to be equitable, they need to return their attention and imag-
ination to the ways in which intersecting factors such as class, gender, reli-
gion, caste and the body increase the visceral materiality of problems that
children face. If certain risks are only applicable to working class children,
and these children develop coping strategies which are categorised as resil-
ience by some researchers, these risks and strategies should be studied, and
the types and extent of agency involved understood without just being cele-
brated. If such agency happens to include submissive or conformist actions,
or co-option into economically neoliberal or socially regressive practices,
204 Conclusion
this needs to be historicised, studied with a keen attention to class and gen-
der, compared to the ways in which adults behave in similar circumstances,
and analysed within its local social context as problematic for other groups
of children.
Finally, when taking an interest in children and media in the global south,
scholars need to interrogate theories and concepts that they have found fit
for purpose in parts of the global north, or in researching adults. We should
always be alert to the potential for myth-making and coloniality in gener-
alising our scholarship, and for the appropriation, misreading or erasure of
histories, identities, and people’s felt theory. This does not mean that some
generalisation, which has been checked reflexively and rigorously against
diverse social contexts, is not warranted. The best way to achieve this as
scholars, practitioners and activists, is to keep observing, talking and lis-
tening to children in ethical and reflexive ways in order to understand the
nature of their agency and their disempowerment, their evaluations of the fun
they have, the relationships they negotiate, and the structural violence they
encounter, and to hear their interpretations of their social conditions and
contributions.
Notes
1. http://www.unicef.org/french/adolescence/files/Every_Childs_Right_to_be_
Heard.pdf.
2. I call this discursive conformity because, in reality, many of the children do not
conform in embodied ways unless violence is involved. They hide aspects of the
truth, singing songs about hand-washing and cleanliness or producing biogra-
phies about being orphaned and beaten which comfort the NGO workers.
3. Discussed elsewhere from a feminist perspective by scholars such as Nancy
Nyquist Potter (2013).
4. http://www.triplepundit.com/2016/05/low-tech-design-can-fuel-sustainable-
development-goals/ and http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/low-tech-solutions.
html.
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Index
Aayu 96, 98 Akbar Birbal 96, 98

Ab Dilli Dur Nahi (1953) 89 Alcoff, Linda Martinez 75, 76
absence xix, 24, 36n3, 77, 193; of child Alexander, Jeffrey C. 15
perspectives 21; of electricity 160; Amar Chitra Katha 82, 95, 96,
of regulation 68; of representation 107, 108
of disabled, lower caste, minority Amaya, Hector 1
religious & working class childhoods Ammu and Friends 96, 98
89, 92, 98, 188, 193; of parental Anderson, Kim 45
surveillance 128 anti-national 62, 63, 138
Adivasis 25, 41, 53, 64, 71, 73, 98, 109, apps 13, 14, 56, 124, 131, 132, 133,
112, 121 138, 148, 175, 200, 201
adulthood 3, 4, 5, 8, 89, 193 Arora, Payal xv, 126
adults 9, 10, 11, 12, 17, 23, 27, 31, Art Attack 96
32, 33, 35, 38, 41, 63, 64, 65, 68, Asian Development Bank 43, 79
69, 70, 71, 78, 99, 107, 111, 112, aspiration 38, 42, 138, 148, 185; and
113, 154, 170; children watching social class 44, 46, 62, 67, 106, 112,
content created for 94, 119, 187; as 127, 149, 181, 182
experts in interviews 81–3, 84, 85–8; assemblage (theories of) 175–7,
programmes and media products 180, 183–4, 185 and dis-assemblage
for 91–2, 94, 115, 119, 187; view 176, 185
of the world 93–4; views of and
interactions with domestic workers Balagopalan, Sarada 12, 63, 64, 67, 68,
150, 174 70, 123, 194
The Adventure of King Vikram 96 Bandbudh aur Budbak 96
The Adventures of Tenali Raman 98 Barnett, Clive xv
agency xiii, xiv, xv, xvi, xvii, 1, 6, 11, Basu, Anustup 175
12, 14–17, 20, 22–4, 27, 29–36, Beazley, Harriet, Bessell, Sharon,
66–8, 77, 86–7, 149–50, 152, 153, Ennew, Judith & Waterson, Roxana
166–167, 175, 192–7; of children 26, 27, 86
10, 36n3, 88, 90, 103, 152, 153, 167, Beck, Ulrich 17, 18, 19, 192
176, 184–5, 188, 192–5; collective Bemni, Uttarakhand 70
10; as conformist 33, 34, 35, 149–50, Benaras, Uttar Pradesh 69, 70
198, 203; as contaminated 33, 147, Berson, I. R. & Berson, M. J. xiv
203; as embodied 195–196; as Best of Luck Nikki 96, 98
ephemeral 33, 149–50, 188, 195, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) xi, 39,
196, 197; of ICTs 14; as resistance 108, 109, 143
24, 29–32, 141, 142, 153–4, 166–7; biopower 11, 26
and structures 7, 153, 192; of BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) xi, 39,
subalterns 19, 24, 154, 185, 195–7 108, 109, 143, 146
ages and stages 88 BookMyShow 124
218 Index
Boot Polish 89 xvi, 77; representations of 80–82,
Bourdieu, Pierre 41, 43, 66 89–114, 118–121, 189; and resilience
Bowen, Zazie 200 166; and risk 33, 192; universalized
boyd, dana xiv, 131 and Western xv, 57, 86, 88, 123,
broadband and wireless, access to 125, 188–9, 195; in India xv, 21, 25, 38–9,
127, 135, 150, 183 56, 60–71, 189
Brosius, Christiane 40, 42, 44, 45, Chintu 95, 96
89, 127 Chota Bheem 96, 98, 99, 101, 110
Buckingham, David xiv, xv, 14 Christians and Christianity 26, 41, 54,
Burman, Erica 86 62, 63, 64, 73n19, 98, 108, 109
Butler, Judith 31, 32 class i, ii, iii, vii, ix, xii, xiv, xv, xvi,
xvii, xix, xx, xxi, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 12,
Calcutta, West Bengal 65, 67 17, 20, 21, 23, 25, 26, 32, 34, 35,
Cammaerts, Bart, Bruter, Michael, 36, 37–79, 80, 83, 84, 85, 87, 88,
Banaji, Shakuntala, Harrison, 89, 90, 91, 92, 94, 98, 99, 100, 102,
Sarah & Anstead, Nick 29 105, 107, 109, 110, 112–115, 117,
Candy Crush 134, 147 119, 121–140, 144, 145, 147–150,
capitalism xx, 34, 44, 59, 60, 90, 91, 152–158, 161, 162, 166, 167, 169,
187, 192, 203; and caste 53; and 170, 171, 173, 174, 176, 180, 183,
class definitions in India 71; and 184, 185, 187, 188, 189, 191, 192,
the concept of sentiment towards 193, 194, 195, 197, 198, 199, 200,
children 3; and children’s media 201, 202, 203, 204; in literature on
production 56; and risk 19 India 37–79, 99, 199; and risk 1, 14,
Carrin, Marine 63, 64 17–19, 191–2, 203; and sub-classes
Cartoon Network 92, 95, 96, 107 41–42; and technology use 34, 124,
caste i, vii, ix, x, xi, xii, xiv, xvi, 14, 22, 199; theories of 14, 17, 32, 35,
25, 26, 27, 30, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 37–39, 195
42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, colonial 4, 5, 11, 21, 22, 25, 32, 35, 40,
52, 53–6, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 44, 45, 48, 57, 60, 61, 67, 109, 119,
71, 72, 73, 79, 80, 81, 83, 88, 89, 92, 153, 187
94, 100, 101, 104, 105, 107, 110, complicity 24, 32
114, 119, 123, 128, 134, 146, 152, conformism (see also agency) vii, 7, 8,
153, 154, 183, 185, 187, 188, 191, 9–10, 20, 22, 24, 29–30, 33, 34, 35,
193, 198, 203; atrocities xi, 25, 26, 59, 65, 123
27, 55; discrimination 45–56, 60–61; conformist agency (see agency)
reservations 146 consent 19, 83, 98
Castells, Manuel 29 conservation (see Resourceful
Census of India 42, 79, 187 conservation)
Chakraborty, Kabita 46 content analysis xiv, xvii, 80, 81, 92,
Chambers, Richard 12 102, 188
Chandra, Uday & Taghioff, Daniel 51 Corsaro, William 8, 10, 32, 139, 152
Chari, Sharad 48 Cottle, Simon 191
Chattopadhyay, Saayan 89 creativity xiv, xv, 14, 29, 40, 114, 134,
childhood (and childhoods) i, vii, 144, 153, 169, 185, 195, 203
xii, xiv, xv, xvi, xix, xx, xxi, 1–19, Creekmur, Korey 89
26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 37, 38, Cunningham, Hugh 2, 3
40, 42, 43, 56, 57, 64–7, 69, 71, Cyber-bullying 18, 124, 191, 202
83, 84, 86, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 98,
101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, dalits 14, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 36, 41,
110–12, 114, 116, 123, 138, 153, 54–5, 60–1, 71, 73, 98, 109, 112,
166, 184, 188, 189, 192, 193, 199, 121, 152, 181, 183, 184, 187,
202, 203; historical accounts of 188; childhood experiences 60–61,
1–19; normative assumptions about 181, 183
xvi, 34–6, 57, 195; questions about Davis, Kathy xiv, 24
Index 219
De Block, Liesbeth & Buckingham, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163,
David xv 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 170, 171,
De Certeau, Michel 141 172, 176, 179, 182, 183, 185, 189,
Deshpande, Ashwini 25, 40, 52, 54, 55 195, 199; as disciplinary technology
Detective Rajappa 96 31, 67
digital i, ii, xvii, xx, 2, 14, 35, 38, 40, Fanon, Franz xix, 20, 21, 22, 23
57, 71, 88, 107, 117, 118, 121, 124, Farida Lambay 82, 105, 112, 122
125, 130, 134, 150, 161, 169, 174, felt theory 174, 204
183, 188, 189, 191, 199, 200, 201, Feminist xii, 11, 12, 19, 27, 33, 34, 140,
202, 203; ‘Digital India’ xii, 125; 192, 204
digital natives xiv, 2, 14; imaginaries Fernandes, Leela 42, 46, 48, 51
201–2; literacy 117; and risks 35; films i, xiv, xvii, 70, 75, 80, 84, 89, 90,
set-top box 125 91, 92, 94, 96, 112, 114, 115, 119,
discourses xiv, xv, xvi, xvii, 1, 3, 4, 5, 121, 127, 134, 135, 140, 161, 162,
11, 12, 33, 35, 38, 40, 48, 62, 65, 67, 163, 165, 175, 181, 199, 201
69, 102, 111, 121, 126, 152, 175, Frendzter 124, 131, 137
189, 192, 201
Discovery Kids 92, 96 Gaana 124
Disney 82, 92, 95, 96, 97, 100, 102, gadgets 100, 107, 117, 133, 146,
116, 119 148, 174
Disney XD 92, 96 Gajjala, Radhika xx, 24
domination xvi, 20, 29, 30, 31, 32, Galleano, Eduardo xix, 203
33, 60 Galli Galli Sim Sim 96
Donald, Dwayne 151, 152 Ganguly-Scrace, Ruchira & Scrace,
Dwyer, Rachel 42, 43 Timothy 40, 42, 127, 130
Dyson, Jane 57, 70 Gardner, Howard & Davis, Katy xiv
Giddens, Anthony 15, 36
Emirbayer, Mustafa & Miche, Anne Girl Effect (Nike Foundation) 27
15, 16, 34, 36 globalisation (and global labour) xii, 2,
empowerment 13, 14, 27, 33, 56, 17, 38, 47, 195
68, 150 Gogoi, Annanya 59
Engineer, Asghar Ali 73n22 Gorringe, Hugo 40, 41, 54, 55
Ennew, Judith 26, 27, 65, 67, 86 Gramsci, Antonio 19, 20, 21, 31, 32, 36
Entertainment Education 114 Green, Marcus 20–21
entrepreneurs 14, 27 Groenwald, Thomas 74
epistemic violence 22, 62 Guha, Sumit 40, 41
epistemology 6, 74–75
Escobar, Arthuro 13, 45 habit (and habitual) 16, 189,
ethical relationality 151, 152 196–197, 198
ethics 74, 83, 152, 188 Halo 90
exclusion 20, 21, 24, 41, 54, 73, 78, Harriss-White, Barbara 48
92, 98, 158, 185, 191; caste 54, Hasan, Mushirul 98
73, 98; of children 21; from digital Hensman, Rohini xix, 46, 195
participation 158; of girls 191; hidden curriculum 58, 59
through ritual 41; religious 62, 73; of ‘hidden transcripts’ 30, 31, 32, 59, 141
subalterns 20–1; in representational Hike 131, 132
sphere 92, 98 Hindi films (and/or Bollywood) xiv,
xvii, 75, 77, 80, 84, 88, 89, 90, 92,
family xi, xiii, xiv, xxi, 2, 3, 5, 10, 25, 94, 114, 121, 127, 134, 135, 136,
31, 34, 39, 42, 44, 46, 48, 55, 57, 62, 165, 175, 181
63, 65, 67, 77, 85, 89, 92, 94, 100, Hinduism 53, 73, 107, 110
117, 120, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, Hindutva 45, 61, 62, 98, 108–9,
130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 110, 149
137, 138, 139, 141–54, 155, 156, Hindu Right xi, xii, 61, 62, 108–9
220 Index
Hiner, Ray & Hawes, Joseph 19 20, 49, 68, 82, 83, 89, 102, 105, 120,
Huberman, Jenny 48, 69, 70 153, 171, 188, 189, 195
Hungama 92, 96 Ladson-Billings, Gloria 76, 152
laptops 100, 117, 125, 126, 148,
ICT in Education Study 171, 201
(Bartlett et al.) 88 learning xiv, xv, xvii, 6, 7, 8, 14, 34, 36,
ICT4D xvii, 117, 175, 182 56, 57, 58, 59, 63, 68, 75, 77, 82, 90,
indigenous knowledge 63–4, 151–2 103, 105, 106, 119, 124, 140, 143,
Instagram xi, xxi, 87, 124, 126, 127, 147, 155, 158, 162, 163, 166, 170,
128, 131, 137, 139, 141, 142, 181, 184, 197, 203; from technological
143, 199 mistakes 147; about privacy 147
International Development xvi, 1, Learning through Videos 82
12, 14 leisure i, xvi, xvii, 2, 10, 14, 32, 35, 40,
Internews 111 46, 56, 65, 66, 67, 70, 78, 96, 107,
interpretive reproduction 10, 11, 16, 117, 120, 134, 135, 136, 155, 156,
32, 139 160, 169, 175, 184, 193, 200
intersectionality (and intersectional Lewis, Bex 12, 13
identities) 10, 21, 24, 25, 26, 29, 40, Little Krishna 96, 98, 100, 101
41, 88, 154, 185 The Little Terrorist 90
interviewing 74, 75, 78, 86, 87; adult Livingstone, Sonia 131, 132
experts xvii, xxi, 81, 101, 102, 105, Livingstone, Sonia & Haddon, Lesley xiv
107, 112, 193; children 78 Lukose, Ritty 38, 40, 42
Ishaan Saponon Ko Awaaz De 96, Lupton, Deborah 18
98, 101
Islam 33 Macdonald, Myra 193
Mahmoud, Saba 20, 29, 33–4, 152
Jaffrelot, Christophe 41 Majumdar, Manabi & Mooij,
James, Alison, Jenks, Chris & Prout, Jos 57, 58
Alan 5, 88 Mander, Harsh 48, 54, 55
Jeffrey, Craig 46 Manjrekar, Nandini 60, 62
Jeffrey, Robin & Doron, Assa 40, 57, 117 Mankekar, Purnima 51, 91, 92, 114
Manyozo, Linje 12
Karadi Tales 96 Mazzarella, William 40, 44, 71, 201
Katz, Cindy 12, 88 Mbembe, Achille 20, 31, 32, 179
King, Wilma 19 McCall, Leslie 24
Kleine, Dorothea., Hollow, D. & Mead, George Herbert 8, 16
Poveda, S. 117 media, mainstream i, xii, xiii, xiv, xv,
knowledge production (see xvi, xviii, 23, 31, 38, 42, 45, 51, 63,
epistemology) 80–1, 111, 112, 139, 166, 186, 187;
Kochu TV 95, 96, 97 and audience agency 14–5, 77; and
Kovats-Bernat J. Christopher 12, 84 Hindutva 45, 92, 149; interpretations
Krishna Desai 82, 95, 106 of 24; in the lives of middle class
Kuch Kuch Hota Hai 90 Indian teenagers 134–50; in the
Kumar, Nita 42, 57, 90, 123 lives of working class Indian
Kvale, Steinar 87 teenagers 151–86; as producers of
risk definitions 19; as producers of
labour i, xiv, xv, xvii, 4, 13, 14, 15, 16, stereotypes 63, 67, 92, 109, 119, 149
17, 19, 20, 25, 35, 40, 41, 43, 46, 47, memes 139, 140, 142, 146
48, 53, 63, 65, 67, 68, 69, 70, 78, 79, Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 195
82, 86, 89, 103, 104, 107, 112, 113, methodology (and methods) vii, 7, 13,
123, 130, 131, 151, 152, 153, 154, 34, 55–8, 74–87, 105, 125, 200
155, 157, 160, 166, 167, 185, 192, micro-aggressions 151–152
193, 194, 195, 198; of children 2, Mignolo, Walter 45, 64
Index 221
Million, Dian xv, 174 P. Sainath 51
MNS (Maharashtra Navnariman Pandey, Gynanendra 73, 82,
Sena) 134 105, 112, 113
mobile phones (includes Iphones, Parsons, Talcott 7, 15
Nokia) i, xii, 46, 57, 70, 80, 124, participant observation xiv, xv, 75, 76,
125, 126, 130, 132, 135, 136, 137, 77, 84, 85
138, 142, 146, 147, 159, 165, 169– Parzania 90
84, 189, 199; as agents of modernity performance 29, 31, 153, 198, 201
13, 80; in the lives of middle class phenomenology xvi, 15, 57, 74, 87, 175
Indian teenagers 134–50; in the lives Piaget, Jean 6, 86
of working class Indian teenagers Pieterse, Jan Nederveen 201
151–186 Pillow, Wanda 87
modernity xi, xix, 2, 17, 33, 38, 45, 66, Pogo 82, 92, 95, 96, 110
67, 180, 189, 195; and technology political participation xiv
199–203 pornography 139, 142
modernisation discourses 13, 71, post-feminist (see also feminism) 27
187, 189 postcolony 11, 20, 21, 31, 32, 33, 44,
Modleski, Tanya 146 53, 60, 89, 91, 192
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade 20, 25, 26, power, xi, xvi, xix, 1, 8, 9, 10, 11,
27, 29 12, 17, 18, 19, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33,
Motu Patlu 96, 101 35, 40, 42, 44, 46, 47, 55, 59, 60,
Muslims 18, 24, 25, 26, 33, 36, 41, 48, 61, 64, 72, 78, 81, 86, 87, 91, 103,
61, 62, 63, 73, 90, 97, 98, 108, 109, 122, 146, 148, 149, 162, 169, 175,
142, 146, 162, 183, 188, 194 187, 194
Pratham 82, 105
Nakassis, Constantine 38, 123 Prinsloo, Jeanne xv, 202
Narayana, Usharani & Malloli, privacy 128, 131, 134, 138, 141, 142,
Sukanya 125, 126 147, 149, 166, 175, 191, 199
Narendra Modi xi, xii, 31, 62, 133, prosumers 134
134, 138, 146, 148, 149 Pyar Mohabbat Happy Lucky 96
neoliberal 27, 34, 44, 59, 90, 91, 187,
192, 203 Rajagopal, Arvind xx, 91, 92, 115
NGOs (Non-Governmental rape jokes and memes 140
Organisations) xxi, 4, 5, 9, 33, Ray, Raka & Qayum, Simmin 43, 44,
88, 102, 161, 168, 169, 194, 204; 48, 85, 130
conceptualization of representation Reena Puri 82, 95, 102, 106, 107, 109
of caste 100; and digital risk reflexivity (and lack thereof) xii, 64, 72,
or digital life discourse 35, 71; 74, 83, 87, 91, 107, 113, 114, 125,
experiences and views on media 154, 204
and childhood in India 111–120; religion xiv, xvi, 7, 17, 21, 30, 41, 45,
interviews with experts from 75, 82 48, 73, 80, 92, 97, 98, 100, 107,
Nickelodeon 92, 96 114, 139, 142, 144, 154, 183, 188,
Nieuwenhuys, Olga 12, 48 191, 198
No FGM 27 representation xiii, 10, 11, 12, 21,
Nyamnjoh, Francis 103 51, 54, 68, 80, 81, 88, 89, 92, 99,
100, 187
Oakley, Ann 87 research questions xv–xvi, 77
observation (see also participant resistance (overt and covert) 9, 19, 20,
observation) xv, 8, 55, 59, 61, 74, 21, 24, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35,
75, 76, 84, 85, 86, 87, 107, 109, 59, 63, 67, 73, 87, 90, 150, 153, 192,
183, 199 193, 194, 198
Ohm, Britta 149 resourceful conservation i, vii, xvii,
orientalist (frameworks) 45, 110, 187 57, 151; as an expression of
222 Index
children’s agency 194–7; definitions sexual abuse (and rape) 3, 14, 25, 26,
of 188–189, 198; as a democratic 67, 114, 116
practice of the poor 188 Shah, Nishant 126
risk (and risk society) xv, xvi, 1, 17, 18, Shaktimaan 96
19, 33, 35, 62, 76, 77, 103, 174, 180, Sharma, Aradhana 14
185, 191, 192, 203 Skype 137
ritual (and ritualization) 30, 98, 133; Slater, Don 152, 153, 175, 184
used conserve the interests of middle Snapchat 87, 124, 128, 131, 150
class groups 40, 45 Snyder, Ilana & Prinsloo, Mastin 202
Rogers, Everett 13 social capital 40, 53, 59
Roll No 21 96 social reproduction i, 67, 139, 151, 188,
routine vii, 84, 123, 129, 130, 149, 152, 193, 195
153, 154, 155, 156, 162, 166, 179, Solorzano, Daniel G. 152
180, 181 Spinuzzi, Clay 175
RSS (Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh) Spivak, Gayatri 20, 23, 24, 185
61, 108, 109, 110 Stanley Ka Dabba 90
Ruby, Jay 87 statistics xxi, 36, 49, 79, 80, 111, 122,
Ruchi Anand 82, 105, 107, 112, 162 125, 127, 187
subaltern i, 17, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25,
Saarthi 82, 113 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 36, 54, 77, 188
Saavn 124 The Suite Life of Karan and Kabir 96, 98
Sarkar, Sreela 183 Sundberg, Juanita 71
Sarkar, Tanika 62 surveillance 10, 11, 25, 26, 27, 34, 36,
Sartre, Jean-Paul 22 45, 69, 128, 150
Sarup, Madan 12 Switzer, Heather 27
school (and schools) i, ix, xx, 10, 16,
25, 37, 38, 52, 57–71, 73, 84, 104, tablets (and Ipads) xiv, 43, 102, 117,
105, 112, 113, 116, 119, 120, 140, 135, 148
141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 153, 154, tactics (of subalterns) 141, 153,
155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 166, 194
164, 166, 167, 168, 170, 174, 176, Tapscott, Walter 189
179, 181, 182, 183, 184, 189, 191, Tare Zameen Par 90
194; and children’s everyday lives Tarkeshwar Singh 82, 111
in India 57–71, 126, 127, 129, Taylor, Charles 195
130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136; technologies i, xi, xii, xiv, xvi, xvii, xix,
and hidden curriculum 68; and xx, 1, 2, 8, 12, 13, 14, 17, 34, 36, 38,
hidden transcripts 31; and new 40, 45, 56, 64, 67, 74, 75, 77, 83–4,
communications technologies 117, 117, 124, 126, 127, 128, 134–8,
132, 133; over-burdening children 143–148, 149, 166–88, 189, 196,
148; and Piagetian ideas 7; as social 199, 200, 201, 202; access to 117;
capital 42, 143, 199; and uniform developers 56; corporations 40, 202;
norms 8; and working children 2, 13, middle class usage 124; 135–7; 138,
49, 107 143, 146–8; working class children’s
schooling xiv, 2, 13, 16, 49, 56, 57, experiences of 166–188, 196, 202–3
60, 62–3, 65, 68, 70, 82, 84, 105, television i, ii, ix, x, xi, xiv, xvii, 6, 38,
112, 113, 120, 160, 191; and 39, 40, 56, 66, 67, 70, 76, 79, 80, 84,
discrimination in India 57–64, 73, 88, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98,
105, 107 99, 101, 107, 111, 112, 114, 115,
Schramm, Wilbur 13 116, 117, 118, 119, 121, 122, 123,
Scott, James 20, 29–32, 141, 152, 194 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131,
The Script 134 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 139, 144,
secret chat facility 131, 133 145, 148, 149, 154, 155, 156, 157,
Sen, Hia 65–7 158, 159, 160, 161, 165, 173, 179,
Sen, Meheli 91 180, 181, 182, 183, 187, 199, 201
Index 223
Teltumbde, Anand 25, 40, 41, 52, Viswanath, Rupa 2014
53, 55 Visweswaran, Kamala, et al. 62
terror (and terrorists) 27, 56, 62, Vitali, Valentina 46
90, 139 vulnerability xvi, 2, 26, 31, 78, 84, 85,
Thapan, Meenakshi 57 105, 174
Thompson, Edward Palmer 41 Vygotsky, Lev 6, 17
Thompson, Mark 13
Thorat, Sukhadeo & Newman, Waksler, Frances Chaput 86, 193
Katherine 25, 55 Walt Disney India 102
Todd, Zoe 45, 71 Warschauer, Mark & Matuchniak,
Toxic Childhood 138 Tina 201
Turner International 82, 92, 95 Weapons of the Weak 30, 194
Webster, Rachel 49
Udupa, Sahana xx, 149 Weiner, Myron 104
UNICEF 88, 113, 121n1, 122n15, 204n1 Wells, Karen 12, 88
universalisation xv, xvii, 3, 25, 29, 65, WhatsApp 124, 127, 128, 129, 130,
67, 123, 191 131, 133, 134, 137, 150, 156
Uttarakhand (see also Bemni) 62, Willett, Rebekah 131
135, 159 Wilson, Kalpana 43, 51
working class (see also class) xiv, xvii,
Vachani, Nilita 48 xix, 4, 5, 23, 35, 37, 38, 41, 74,
Van Dijck, Jose 15 84, 87, 89, 99, 100, 112, 117, 119,
Van Krieken, Robert 19 121, 123, 150, 152–186, 187, 188,
Venkataraghavan, Manjula 124 189, 192, 195, 198, 202, 203; and
Viber 124, 129, 130, 131 caste 53–6, 60; categories and lives
Vijay Pandey 82, 105, 112 in India 46–53; childhoods in India
Vijay Subramaniam 82, 102, 106 60–61, 63–4, 67–71, 151–186
Villali Veeran 96 World Bank 43, 50, 79, 80
Vimeo 116 Wright, Erik Olin 41
violence (see also atrocities) 6, 17, 21,
23, 26, 27, 36, 39, 68, 73, 163 Zee Q 96, 97
Vir The Robot Boy 96 Zomato 124, 128

Children and Media in India - Narratives of Class, Agency and - Shakuntala Banaji - Routledge Advances in Internationalizing Media Studies 19

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Is the bicycle, like the loudspeaker, a medium of communication in India?

Shakuntala Banaji is Associate Professor of Media and Communications

Edited by Daya Thussu, University of Westminster

11 Al Jazeera and the Global Media Landscape

12 Online Journalism in Africa

13 Modernization, Nation-Building, and Television History

14 Media Across Borders

15 Asian Perspectives on Digital Culture

16 Digital Politics and Culture in Contemporary India

17 European Media Policy for the Twenty-First Century

18 Everyday Media Culture in Africa

19 Children and Media in India

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2017 Shakuntala Banaji

The right of Shakuntala Banaji to be identified as author of this work

The right of Javed Iqbal to be identified as creator of the credited photos

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

CIP data has been applied for.

ISBN: 978-1-138-92947-0 (hbk)

List of figures and tables ix

1 Historical accounts of childhood: Subalterns between

2 Class, caste and children’s life in contemporary India 37

3 Methods and reflection 74

4 Mediating Indian childhoods: Texts and producers 88

5 ‘Media rich’ in India: Routine, self-construction, conflicted

6 ‘Media poor’ in India: Deprivation, responsibility, resourceful

Figure 0.1 Children with insects on strings.

Map of the book

1.1 Historicising the rhetorics of childhood

1.1.1 Defining childhood, fashioning children

1.1.2 Definitive breaks or a continuity of sentiment

1.1.3i Socially constructed beings: essence or veneer?

the methodological individualism of rational choice according to which

In the 20th century, learning started to be seen as a process of recognition

Headteacher: (Removing his tie and then re-tying it slowly in front

1.1.3ii Dialectics of social structuration: conformity, resistance,

1.1.4 Children and power

1.1.5 The international development child

1.2 Childhood, subalterns and agency

User agency is cast by cultural theorists as participatory engagement,

1.2.2 Risk, the great equaliser?

1.2.3 Who is a subaltern?

1.2.4 Children as subalterns

In analyses of specific historical contexts, Gramsci refers to slaves, peas-

Gramsci writes: ‘Often the subaltern groups are originally of other

Notably, here subalternity is relational and historical, a product and effect

The anecdotes of deeply ingrained, sustained, active, systemic and personal

The colonized world is a world divided in two. The dividing line,

In many societies even today – and especially in educational ­establishments –

[v]ictims of male violence (Fran Hosken); victims of the colonial pro-

She is at pains to delineate the political and material implications of the

The women’s movement has at various times claimed girls to fall

While agreeing that the seemingly tidy essentialism of girls’ victimhood

Figure 1.2 Young mother.

1.2.5 Agency as performance, as resistance and as conformity

to the degree [that] structures of domination can be demonstrated to

Scott delineates the multiple contexts of humiliation, insult, denigration

Every subordinate group creates, out of its ordeal, a “hidden tran-

In the excerpt, Raymond Williams reminds us that the terminology describ-

Excerpt 1: Ravi. Age 14. Alishaan Society. February 2009

1.1.3ii Dialectics of social structuration: conformity, resistance,

In many societies even today – and especially in educational establishments –

ountry of origin of children’s television programmes (N = 163). Time

Figure 4.6 S urnames of lead protagonists from Indian-produced children’s shows,