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ABSTRACT
This paper engages with youth and the everyday culture of public higher education in selected urban sites of the Banaras Hindu University (BHU). As a public university, the BHU inspires massive youth mobility from rural areas and small towns in North India, specially of youth from socially disadvantaged castes and women. I find that these youth are not lacking in a capacity to aspire. Rather, their desires are formed in complex social conditions, and involve overlapping temporal flows. Their migration for education is about escaping the routine and habits of a rural past. It is simultaneously a dream for a future with secure government jobs and urban living. Further, their aspirations are not merely utilitarian – they include a normative idea of the university, with good-quality education and an egalitarian culture, replete with freedoms. However, the everyday culture of the public university is replete with boundaries. Persisting patriarchal constraints, bureaucratic academic cultures, and rampant casteism place boundaries on youth aspirations. Finally, I argue that the relational resources among youth on campus form a collective resource that provides them with a navigational capacity to overcome bounded aspirations.
Acknowledgements
The field work at the BHU was supported by the National Institute for Educational Planning and Administration, New Delhi.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. The city of Varanasi is located along the banks of river Ganges, in the state of Uttar Pradesh in North India. It is considered to be a ‘holy city’ by the Hindus. Renold views it as a timeless, eternal city, dating back to the 6th century BC (A Hindu Education, 65).
2. See Dar and Somaskandan History of the Banaras Hindu University. Renold (A Hindu Education) notes that the University was established in the political context of late colonialism and a movement to foster a Hindu identity as a counter to colonial cultural politics.
3. Dyson, “Fresh Contact”.
4. Ibid.
5. Other scholars who deal with this theme are Bok, “The Capacity to Aspire to Higher Education, Bufton,” “The Lifeworld of the University Student,” and Gale & Parker, “Calculating Student Aspiration”.
6. Bufton, “The Lifeworld of the University Student,” 207.
7. Jeffrey, Timepass, 2.
8. Appadurai, “The Capacity to Aspire,” 59.
9. These ‘metanarratives’ about reforming higher education have gained ground in India since the year 2000, with several federal governments promising to make it ‘world class’. See Priyam Reclaiming Public Universities, especially Chapters 6 and 11 herein.
10. Buckner, Degrees of Dignity.
11. The dalit are the most marginalised of all social castes in India. Discriminatory practices excluded their access to public places, including to educational institutions.
12. Field work has been done at three BHU campuses—Shiksha Sankay, VCW, and the BHU main campus at Lanka, Varanasi, between May 2019- March 2022. There was an interruption on account of forced campus closures due to COVID-19 pandemic between March 2020- February 2022. Names of all respondents have been anonymised.
13. The BHU is a large university, with multiple campuses dotting the city of Varanasi. It has its main campus spread over 1300 acres, on the Southern tip of the city, near Lanka. Both the Shiksha Sankay and the VCW are constituent institutions of the BHU, though not located in its main campus.
14. Mann, “Alternative Perspectives on the Student Experience,” 11.
15. Gupta, “Risk and the Everyday”.
16. ‘Silbatta’ is an engraved, flat stone platform, with a pestle, used for grinding spices.
17. A form of shadow education, ‘coaching’ refers to additional private tutoring, outside of formal educational institutions.
18. ‘ASER’ stands for ‘assessment, survey, evaluation, and research’, and it refers to regular surveys to test learning levels of school children.
19. The lack of facilities for good quality food for university students is taken note of by Priyam, Jeffrey and Dyson, “Student Food Insecurity in India”.
20. The Khairwars are listed as ‘scheduled tribes’ in UP. The state has a very small tribal population – just about 0.57% of its total population.
21. The term ‘bharti’ refers to the recruitment for government or public sector jobs.
22. The ‘civil service’ exam refers to the elite all-India administrative services, police, and foreign services.
23. This is possible as universities in India have affiliating institutions under them, located in far-away geographies.
24. Special education trains teachers for students who are differently abled or have special needs. The Shiksha Sankay is reputed for professional training of special educators.
25. Gupta, “Risk and the Everyday,” 2.
26. The paswans are said to be numerically dominant among the dalits in Bihar. They carry political heft as a vote back, are upwardly mobile and aspirational. See Dhingra, ‘Who are the Paswans?’ for more on the Paswan caste in Bihar.
27. The post-matric scholarship is awarded by the state of Bihar as a measure of supporting higher education of youth from marginalised social castes. It promotes educational mobility, as the youth can study even outside their home state (of Bihar).
28. Krishna, The Broken Ladder, 10.
29. Appadurai, “The Capacity to Aspire”.
30. Gale and Parker, “Calculating Student Aspiration”.
31. Walker, “Aspirations and Equality in Higher Education”.I borrow the use of the phrase ‘colonised migrants’ from Mann, “Alternative Perspectives on the Student Experience,” 11.
32. I borrow the use of the phrase colonised migrants’ from Mann, “Alternative Perspectives on the Student Experience,” 11.
33. Buckner, Degrees of Dignity, 451.
34. This data is available from the Periodic Labour Force Survey of the National Sample Survey Organisation.
35. The benefit of ‘reservation’ in jobs is available to him only in his home state of Bihar, and not in UP, where he has migrated for education.
36. See Mosse, “A Relational Approach to Durable Poverty, Inequality and Power”.
37. Gale and Parker, “Calculating Student Aspiration”.
38. Buckner, Degrees of Dignity, 442.