CCYSC Dialogues: Youth, Identity, and the Urban in Contemporary India

Liberalization and its accompanying processes have led to notable shifts in how young people re-orient themselves in the present, specifically with regards to evolving subjectivities and novel aspirations. The urban—which is undergoing massive transformations in India—is an important context within which these reworkings can be observed and analyzed. Opportunities available to youth inhabiting urban and peri-urban spaces allow them to move away from traditional occupations to ‘new’ kinds of work. What are some of the emergent aspirational trajectories and modes of self-fashioning embraced by youth today? To what extent do ascriptive identities, including caste, determine the choices made by young populations? Taking these (and other) indications as starting points, this session will showcase two ethnographic explorations of youth, identity, occupational trajectories, and the urban in contemporary India. 

Mona G. Mehta (Associate Professor, School of Arts and Sciences, Ahmedabad University) 

“Aspiring for Sarkari (government) jobs: The enigmatic career preferences of peri-urban youth in India”

 Dyotana Banerjee (Lecturer, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar) “Caste, gig-economy and the youth: The resurgence of a new age caste politics in urban Gujarat” Each speaker gets 30 minutes each, followed by Q&A for 30 minutes.