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C O N T E N T S

Acknowledgments ix Introduction xiii

1. Decolonizing Moves:!Beyond Eurocentric Culture, Narrative, and Identity 1

2. "e Cultural Psychology of Globalization:!Constructing Desirable Identities and Spaces 21

3. Psychology and the Neoliberal Self:!Global Culture and the “New Colonial” Subjects 39

4. Stories and "eories:!Globalization, Narrative, and Meaning- Making 57

5. Traveling Transnational Identities:!Imagining Stories of “Ultimate” Indianness 87

6. Outsourcing the Self:!Work, Love, and Money in the Call Center Culture 127

7. Identities Left Behind:!Globalization, Social Inequality, and the Search for Dignity 165

8. Toward a Transnational Cultural Psychology:!Narrative and Social Justice in the Age of Unequal Globalization 215

9. Studying Globalization at Home:!Re#ections on Method, Self- Re#exivity, and Narrative Inquiry 257

References 287 Index 307

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C H A P T E R!"

Identities Left!Behind

Globalization, Social Inequality, and

the Search for Dignity

Panchsheel basti (slum settlement) in Pune is located on the outskirts of two neighborhoods that had experienced a sudden, then continual, in#ux of brand- name stores, upscale restaurants, European tourists, and multinational information technology (IT) parks. However, everyday life in Panchsheel basti is disconnected from these new swirls of global #ows and symbols of a$uence. I!draw on the interviews I!conducted with young women and men who lived in this basti. In 2013, there were about 10 functioning stalls of public toilets for more than 1,500 people in Panchsheel basti. In other words, this basti was emblematic of the other India— an India in which, according to United Nations (UN) estimates, more than 600!million individu- als have no access to toilets or basic sanitation.1 "e cultural #ows that envel- oped the adjacent “high society” areas had bypassed this locality. "e young participants from the Panchsheel basti, one after another, furiously gestured at me, “What globalization? What progress? Our lives have remained the same!” "e stories of the young men and women in Panchsheel basti exem- plify lives that are lived in the “circuits of dispossession” (Fine & Ruglis, 2009). "eir interviews demonstrate how urban youth living in slums have ambitions for a better life, but they are unable to %nd an exit out of the basti life. "e youth I!spoke to wanted a middle- class lifestyle— access to educational oppor- tunities; a clean, livable space away from the basti; a motorcycle; a small one- bedroom apartment; and, above all, a private toilet. Globalization, in their corner of the world, represented a meaningless phenomenon that did not deliver much. "ese youth were aware that the phenomenon of globalization,

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referred to in the local Marathi language as jagtikikarana, was full of promise and hope for others— people who lived a mere few hundred feet outside the perimeter of their basti. "e stories that I!heard from the basti youth re#ect their engagements with jagtikikarana2 and are shaped by their imagined and real construction of youth that they refer to as hi- ! classes or upper and elite classes. I!use Arjun Appadurai’s (2013) concept of “capacity to aspire” to argue that the basti youth’s capacity to aspire and have ambition is not just an indi- vidual psychological trait. Rather, their aspirations are shaped by their caste identities, structural conditions of poverty, their schooling in the vernacu- lar language, collective social practices, and the prestige accorded to speakers of English in urban India. However, this aspirational discourse is interlaced with moral discourses as the youth assert their agency and di&erence from the a$uent youth who live in close proximity to their neighborhoods.

TOPOGRAPHIES OF%DISPOSSESSION

"e best way to understand a locale is to describe what it consists of and what it is surrounded by in order to examine how the various geographies are con- nected or separate. Cindy Katz (2004) employs the notion of “countertopogra- phies of globalization” in her book, Growing up Global, to call attention to how “particular people in disparate settings are pressed and ‘excessed’ by global- ization’s e&ects” (p.!179). A!countertopography, as Katz argues, is a “produc- tive and spatialized means for understanding how global neoliberal reforms produce uneven developments of ‘space and scale’ and social relations and practices” (p. xiv). Her book draws out the structural similarities between the daily routines of children growing up in Howsa, Sudan, and New!York City. By drawing on speci%c connections between the di&erent network of spaces, Katz argues, we can reveal the particular “global” e&ects of the material and social practices associated with capitalism in very di&erent locales. In this section, I! explore how this idea of “countertopographies” emerges in the context of Panchsheel!basti.

When I!was growing up in Pune, Boat Club Road and Koregaon Park were known as “high- class” neighborhoods or “posh localities” where the elite, pro- fessional upper- class, wealthy families lived. Hotel Blue Diamond, the Osho Rajneesh Ashram,3 and the lavish bungalows and palatial houses that were tucked away in the various lanes spoke of a di&erent India— where the a$u- ent and the foreign tourists were both cordoned o& from the rest of Pune. "eir lives were inaccessible to us, but we could bike through their tree- lined lanes to get a glimpse of a$uence from the outside. We often saw imported cars parked in front of the houses, high fences guarding the owners’ privacy, and white marble facades that adorned the heavily guarded entrance gates to cloistered communities. Riding on bicycles with friends from Pudumjee

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Compound, where I! lived, to Koregaon Park was akin to being a tourist at home— the wide footpaths, the green and clean spaces, the meticulously land- scaped gardens, and the relative scarce population in this area gave us a feeling of gazing at an exotic locale.4

Panchsheel basti is situated close to Koregaon Park and Kalyani Nagar, where the new centers of IT o'ces were being built along with expensive and exclusive residential apartment houses. Before I!headed to the basti, I!wanted to immerse myself in the surroundings to get a sense of the spatial and vis- ual symbols that surrounded the basti. I! asked myself the following ques- tions:!What do the youth and families see around them as they go back and forth from their settlement? What is the material and visual topography of the space around the!basti?

Locating Symbols of%Aff luence:%Topographies of%Possession

During my visit to Pune in early January 2013, I!headed to the basti by start- ing my walk from Boat Club Road toward North Main Street in Koregaon Park. During the past few years, I!had made this walk to the basti more than a dozen times, but this time I!was greeted by huge posters advertising various New Year’s Eve parties at hotels, open grounds, and special celebrations to accommodate thousands of youth in Pune. Growing up in Pune, I! had vis- ited Koregaon Park innumerable times, mostly on my bicycle and later on my Luna moped, and I!was always struck by its a$uence and distinct geography. During this visit, I!wanted to pay close attention to the transformation in the various surrounding neighborhoods of the basti, so I!took down detailed notes about my observations.

Uber Luxurious Apartments:%“Development with%a Conscience”

As I! was walking on North Main Street, I! saw one poster with three White women standing sideways on their toes with their hands stretching horizon- tally as though they were #ying. I!continued my walk across the open stores where Kashmiri merchants were selling Buddha statues, bronze and brass Indian handicrafts, marble jewelry boxes, gemstone necklaces, and other orna- ments. "e handicrafts included heavily sculptured brass %gurines, silver hoo- kahs, along with #oral utility bowls and walnut woodcarvings of lotus #owers and bedside tables; these were exhibited outside. I!wondered how much labor and time it took to bring out these heavy items every day and then put them back inside the store at closing time. I!continued my walk across the bus stop and passed by a co&ee shop and a tattoo studio, and across the road I! saw the branches of a lone enormous tree nudging a narrow, vertical advertising

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board. "e billboard had printed pictures of three high- rise towers that were built on %ve acres of prime land. One tower consisted of 21 apartments, and the other tower contained 59 apartments. "e slogan on the outdoor adver- tisement read, “Somethings you don’t look at. You only look up to.” Below the image was the following phrase:!“A private community of uber- luxurious, ultra exclusive apartments.” "e perimeter wall of the space where the buildings were being constructed had a series of printed posters that contained sketches of European street scenes circa the!1920s.

One such scene depicted a generic main street with cast iron lamp posts, antique horse- drawn sleigh carriages, and a chau&eur driving a vintage auto- mobile. "e scene included a silhouette of a modern, European- looking woman dressed in a red hat and skirt, walking a dog and marveling at the Windermere sign, which was the name of the compound that housed these exclusive res- idential buildings. Another scene depicted a male silhouette standing on a carved wide bench. He, too, was taking a picture of the sign titled “A Modern Classic.” On the left side of the perimeter wall was the logo of the real estate building company. "e logo was presented on a card that looked like a combi- nation of a %nely etched scroll and a formal American wedding invitation. "e slogan read, “Vascon:!Development with a Conscience.”

I found it quite ironic that the real estate company was developing exclusive, luxurious apartments with a conscience for one of the wealthiest segments of the Indian society. One is likely to hear an assertion linking development and conscience at a local nongovernmental organization (NGO) or at development conferences held by UN- type international organizations. "e real estate developers who were selling these ultra- luxurious residences had somehow found a way to market their buildings by merging capitalism with the notion of conscience. Past the Windermere sign was a huge art studio followed by a narrow lane banked by rows of small shops that sold mostly designer clothes, with names such as Naksha, Olive, and Boutiques. I! stopped at the Miracle Uni- Sex Salon, Slimming and Spa advertising board outside a store that was promoting a sale of spa and beauty treatment for Rs. 2999 ($50). "e %ve services in this package could include deep tissue body massage, head mas- sage, a basic haircut, wash and blow dry, pedicure, full arm waxing, or eyebrow shaving.

"e promotion displayed a headshot of a young White woman with an oval face, full lips, and green eyes. Her auburn- colored hair was cut in the style of a choppy bob and had bronze highlights. A!few yards away, a store called Olive sold upmarket fashion clothing and had three mannequins placed outside the shop. "e white mannequin was wearing a black, open- back, summer dress with a wig of straight black hair. One of two Black mannequins had a V- neck T- shirt over a miniskirt, and the other one wore a tight #oral dress. "ese two mannequins were wearing neon pink and orange punk rock- style wigs sport- ing blonde highlights.

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In front of these shops, there was a modern, multistory, glass o'ce build- ing with a large, rectangular sign on the front that read Kaya Skin Clinic. "ere was a picture of a young male model with shoulders exposed and two close- up face shots of young women. All three models had light skin and could pass for White Euro- Americans.5 As I!walked farther, I!noticed a sign on a wall of Rajput Restaurant on the other side of the road; the sign was painted blue and red and stated, “It feels Beautiful Today.” "ere was a stray dog sitting in front of the sign, impervious to the pedestrian tra'c and the cars whizzing by on the!road.

Europe in%India:%Villas, Townhouses, and Cobbled Streets

I ambled across the Koregaon Park Bridge to Kalyani Nagar and encountered a cluster of oversized advertising billboards. "ese were some of the largest out- door advertisements I!had seen in the city. "ey were placed at the intersec- tion of the bridge that connected Koregaon Park with Kalyani Nagar— both areas where English- speaking, urban elite residents lived and coexisted with the prosperous IT businesses in similarly manicured o'ce parks. One of the publicity boards proclaimed, “New Year Bash at the Pune Marriott:! Twist, Feast, Celebrate,” and the one next to it read, “New Year Bash:!Studio 53:!"e uber chic new year destination for Pune!” As I!walked across the bridge, I!spot- ted another huge advertising board for “Limited Edition homes from 2000 to 6000 square feet.” "is board showed a background of golden hue and a series of #ats rising up and touching the blue sky. "e board read, “PARKING FOR YOUR LIMO, RIVER AS WATER BODY, 24K [Gold] AS HOME.” I!could see the actual cluster of congested “24K” apartment buildings in the dis- tance, which barely resembled the “golden hued apartments” pictured on the board. "e Mula– Mutha River #owing through the apartment complex was parched dry save for a thin sluggish rivulet. Kids played cricket on the open, dried riverbed. Despite this desultory, dried landscape, advertisements showcasing luxury homes amid verdant greenery were everywhere— main highways, roads, theaters, glossy magazines, hotel lobbies, and alleys and lanes. Modern, Western- sounding names, reminiscent of the colonial era, were deployed to evoke an aura of European a$uence and luxury:! Oxford Riverside, Princetown Apartments, "e Glassy Junction, "e Royal Mirage, A!City of Joy— Luxury Apartments, Serene Homes— Paint Your Imagination, Landmark of Happiness, Green Luxury, Eco Life, Bella Vista, Swiss County, Costa Rica, Capriccio, and Silver Mist were some of the advertisements that I!spotted in and around!Pune.

One luxury real estate developer, Marvel, has speci%cally made deliver- ing “sophisticated” and “unparalleled” luxury to customers its mission. "e Marvel Aurum project was located just a few miles from the Panchsheel basti.

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"e advertising blurb on the Marvel website for this project proclaimed it as “most- top- of- the- line project (ever),” located in Koregaon Park. Koregaon Park, Pune’s exclusive residential area situated in northeastern Pune, was described as a green jewel surrounded by huge “rustling trees that canopy the quaint lanes.” "e website further elaborated how this elite space is dotted with sprawling bungalows, elegant towers, boutique stores, luxury spas, and world- class restaurants. "e Koregaon Park space was presented as a back- drop for luxurious living that grati%es the senses. "e advertising content further informed its readers that the moment one enters the lobby of the Aurum building, a concierge will greet its residents and the experience will simulate living in one of the most luxurious hotels in the world. "e four- bedroom apartments, each 3,400 square feet, were asserted to be “beautifully planned,” and Marvel Aurum’s “crowning glory is a swimming pool in the pri- vacy of each large, landscaped terrace. "e one- touch automation just adds to the incredible luxury.” In addition, the building would be protected by a dis- tinctive jaali— a facade that works like an “elegant %ligree sun- screen reducing the heat and glare inside.” Above all, the advertisement for Marvel Aurum guaranteed that the residents will have so much power over nature that “even the seasons will dance to your tune.” "e idea was to remove oneself from the dirt, %lth, and chaos of Indians streets and leave India to be in a global, mall- like space. Marvel makes it clear that these apartments are for those “seeking a world of their own” (see http:// www.marvelrealtors.com/ mail/ aurum.html).

In their insightful study on advertisements of gated communities and high- end residential buildings in Bangalore, Chacko and Varghese (2009) argue that these exclusive residential buildings construct an image of a community or a home that is primarily based on class rather than on caste, kinship, or reli- gion. "ese advertisements were mostly targeted to wealthy “global” Indians and Indian immigrants who were returning from the United States to work in Bangalore, Delhi, and Pune. "e transnational and international culture that was promoted in advertisements near the basti implied a clean, struc- tured, and organized living, away from the turmoil and grime of urban cities. "e advertisements for gated enclaves, for example, incorporated an ideal- ized form of European architecture and American space and landscaping with emphasis on cobbled patios and walkways and European- style villages. "ese rhetorical messages used signs and symbols to connote a lifestyle that was re%ned, “high class,” and communicated meanings related to what it means to be “Indian,” “global,” and “cosmopolitan.” Chacko and Varghese!note,

"e near- absence of vernacular architecture in the built environment of the gated enclaves and the widespread adoption of the terminology of “villas,” “townhouse” and “condominiums” that is standard in gated communities the world over, speak of the supplanting of local built forms by those with a global identity.!.!.!.!Such names and spaces identi%ed as “servants” quarters, “foyers,”

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“parlors,” or “powder rooms” may also evidence a desire to replicate the settings of the privileged lives of former colonial masters. (p.!62)

As I! continued my walk through Kalyani Nagar, I! came across the store Bread Story:!All Time Best Seller and Ad Labs "eatre, where the Hollywood movie Life of Pi was playing along with the Bollywood movie Dabbang 2. Crowds of college- aged youth were hanging around outside the theater and moving in and out of both the local Kalyani restaurant and the nearby McDonald’s. Taking a left turn from the theater onto Kalyani Nagar Road, I!was amazed to see a large number of beauty/ %tness and health clinics that operated within the small residential!area.

LOCATING PANCHSHEEL%BASTI

To make my way to Panchsheel basti, I! walked from Kalyani Nagar back to Koregaon Park, turning left onto Lane No. 5.! My walk on this lane ended rather abruptly when I!came upon an entrance to a railway track. As I!walked across the railway track, I!saw half a dozen young men playing cards. "e busy railway track was the back entrance to the basti; this small slum settlement was tucked behind the wealthy, exclusive topographies. I!walked through the back entrance that was used by several of the families in the slum and took the mud road that led to the interior of the!basti.

"e community of Panchsheel basti was established in 1965 near the rail- way line. It was a “declared slum” built illegally on the railway land owned by the Central Government. Joshi, Sen, and Hobson (2002) carried out the %rst comprehensive surveys and “poverty mapping” of slum settlements in Pune. "ey estimated that 45% of Pune’s population lives in slum settlements. "e residents of Panchsheel basti were a small part of the growing population of residents who lived in slum settlements. A! designation of a “declared slum” by the local municipal government meant that the slum was entitled to basic amenities such as electricity and running water. Joshi et!al. explain:

"e de%nition of “slum” is further complicated by the process of “declaration,” which applies to settlements on privately owned land. When a settlement is rec- ognized by the local municipality as being one where living conditions are below a speci%ed standard, it is “declared” under the Maharashtra Slum Improvement Act (1971). Once declared, a slum is eligible for basic improvements including water supplies, common toilets, paving, electricity and drainage. In practice, many slums with poor living conditions have not been declared. Slums located on land owned by the public sector can be provided with basic amenities without being declared, although in practice this seldom happens:!Many lack basic infra- structure and are similar to the undeclared slums (pp.!226– 227).

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"e local municipal government has largely been indi&erent to the needs of the slum dwellers and has portrayed them as illegal citizens, %lthy, undeserv- ing of assistance, and as people who steal land. It is important to understand that the basti youth throughout Pune have been battling both the crippling indi&erence of the government and the apathy of the public at!large.

"e Panchsheel basti had 501 households, with 1,724 people residing in these dwellings:! 74% of families were Hindu, 15% were Muslims, and 11% were Christians. "e majority (87%) of the families resided in semi- pucca (semi- permanent) houses, which were made with a combination of mud, bricks, and tin. Sometimes slum dwellers built the walls with bricks and the roof with corrugated tin sheets. Eleven percent resided in kutcha houses (tem- porary or makeshift mud- based dwellings) in which the roof, walls, and doors were typically composed of unforti%ed materials such as cardboard, tin, or asbestos sheets with either mud or cement #ooring. Only 2% of the popula- tion had pucca houses, which are solid or permanent and made of bricks and cement. Most of the residents worked in the informal sector as construction laborers, security guards, rickshaw drivers, plumbers, maid servants, and night nurses. Many did odd jobs, serving as cleaners, janitors, and custodial workers for the new apartments and IT o'ces nearby.

Slums, Wages of%Living, and Illegality in%City%Lights

In his book Planet of the Slums, Mike Davis (2007) argues that the world’s urban labor force has doubled since 1980. He notes that the current pop- ulation of cities is 3.2 billion, a number larger than the total population of the world when John F.! Kennedy was the US president. He predicts that by 2050, almost all of future population growth— which is expected to reach 10 billion— is going to occur in cities and small, peri- urban areas and towns that reside next to the megacities. "e sum of all the urban populations of China, India, and Brazil is almost equal to the entire population of Europe and North America.

"e rapid expansion of urban areas across the world has created more than 24 megacities with populations that exceed 8! million people. "ere are now several “hypercities” with populations of more than 20!million. Davis (2007) forecasts that by 2025, Asia will be home to 10 hypercities that include Jakarta (24.9!million), Dhaka (25!million), Karachi (26.5!million), Shanghai (27!mil- lion), and Mumbai (33! million). "ese overgrown cities with their uneven geographies will consist of societies characterized by deep chasms of social inequality within cities and between cities.

Davis (2007) also argues that along with the rise of the megacities, there will be an exponential growth of second- tier cities and urban areas where rural families will not have to migrate to cities, but the cities will migrate to their

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living spaces. For example, there are now 35 medium- sized Indian cities that have reached beyond the 1!million mark. "ese future human settlements will be a mix of urban and rural settlements where “there will be polycentric webs with neither traditional cores nor recognizable peripheries” (p.! 9). Much of this urbanization in the current climate of neoliberal globalization is largely disconnected from factors of growth, production, and sustainable forms of employment. Urbanization without growth is a common phenomenon in Latin America, the Middle East, and most of South Asia, and according to Davis, it is more the legacy!of

global political conjuncture— the worldwide debt crisis of the late 1970s and the subsequent IMF- led restructuring of "ird World economies in the 1980s— than any iron law of advancing technology.!.!.!.!Policies of agricultural de- regulation and %nancial discipline enforced by the IMF and World Bank continued to gen- erate an exodus of surplus labor to urban slums even as cities ceased to be job machines. (pp.!14– 15)

"e important question that economists have asked is why did urbaniza- tion in much of the developing world continue at such a rapid pace despite high urban unemployment, low wages, a shortage of housing, and high in#a- tion? For example, Davis (2007) notes that in the 1980s, much of the African continent experienced stagnant unemployment and low agricultural produc- tivity but experienced an annual urbanization rate of 3.5% or 4.0%. Cities across Asia and Africa have experienced negative growth and also simulta- neously experienced meager investments in infrastructure, education, public housing, and education.

"e rural- to- urban migration has ruptured the classical stereotypes of labor- intensive countryside and capital- intensive cities, and instead there are many reverse examples of capital- intensive countryside and labor- intensive cities. "e phenomenon of “overurbanization,” according to Davis (2007), is driven by “the reproduction of poverty, not by supply of jobs.!.!.!.!As a result, rapid urban growth in the context of structural adjustment, currency devalu- ation, and state retrenchment has been an inevitable recipe for the mass pro- duction of slums” (p.!16).

"e phenomenon of globalization that has spread through the instrument of neoliberal capitalism has intensi%ed the creation of more than 200,000 slums throughout the world, and it is now estimated that more than 1 bil- lion people live in slums and experience absolute poverty. "e city of Mumbai, for example, has an annual shortage of 450,000 formal housing units, which leads to an analogous increase in the creation of more than 500,000 informal slum dwellings. Out of a total of 500,000 people who come to Delhi annually, 400,000 of them become integrated within the existing infrastructure of slum communities (Appadurai, 2013). South Asia is home to one of the greatest

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concentrations of slums spread out in the cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Karachi, and!Dhaka.

In India alone, there are three mega- slums, and more than 150! million people reside in slums (Davis, 2007). Mumbai has approximately 10– 12!mil- lion squatters, and it is now considered the global capital of slum dwellers. According to the UN, a slum is o'cially de%ned by dense settlements; over- crowding; degraded, poor, or informal housing; inadequate access to safe water and sanitation; and insecurity of tenure (Davis, 2007). Panchsheel basti was indeed one of the small slum settlements that was built on railway land owned by the government, and thus the residents were technically considered to be illegal.6 Neoliberalism has produced what Harvey (2005) calls uneven geographical development. He makes a distinction between capital accumu- lation and accumulation by dispossession. "e former occurs through the growth of capital, and the latter is a phenomenon that occurs when public goods are privatized, such as the privatization of access to public services of water or education.

In most of the developing economies, the idea of a state that is strongly committed to public housing, social welfare, job development, education, and sanitation has been withering away. For a very long time in these nations, the governments have largely abandoned their responsibility to the urban poor, and they have been rather complicit in creating social conditions in which the philosophy of “accumulation by dispossession” takes root. Fine and Ruglis (2009) argue that neoliberalism produces state- sanctioned policies in which the discourse of personal responsibility and corporate pro%t replaces the basic duties and the obligations of the state and creates speci%c “circuits and con- sequences of dispossession” (p.! 20). "e youth all over the world are one of the casualties of this radical dispossession because neoliberal policies foster socially unequal societies and redistribute young people’s “dreams and aspira- tional capacities” (p.!20).

Gender, Dignity, and the%Search for%Private Toilets

Everyday life in Panchsheel basti is disconnected and dispossessed from the swirls of global wealth that surround its neighborhood. Reportedly, 94% of the 500 families, or 1,700 individuals, use the %ve community toilet blocks in the settlement, with only a minority (6%) of families having access to individual toilets. "is is a representation of the other India— an India in which, accord- ing to UN estimates, more than 600! million individuals have no access to a toilet or basic sanitation. "e struggle for survival in the basti was evident as the urban poor in this slum eked out a meager living and experienced the daily indignities of public defecation and high unemployment. Most of the youth were not aware of the term globalization because they spoke Hindi or Marathi

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and very little English. In Hindi, globalization was de%ned as “bhumandal- ikarana,” “sarvabhaumikata,” and “pragati,” and in Marathi it was referred to as “jagatikikarana,” but these were esoteric words that were used in academic or journalistic writing and had not entered the colloquial usage. "ese words implied awakening, worldwide activity, or progress, but for the families living in the slums, globalization was usually perceived as a social phenomenon that had only improved the lives of upper- class and a$uent families.

Zainab, a 19- year- old female who studied at Dr.! Ambedkar College and lived in the basti, identi%ed “water logging”7 and lack of toilet facilities as add- ing to the daily stress of living in the!slums:

(:!But have the conditions in the basti improved? ):!No. (:!What is the major problem!here? ):!Water logging in homes especially during!rains. (:!Where does the water come from, apart from!rains? ):!Due to the leakage in drainage!lines. (:!And what about toilets? ):!We have common toilets built by government. It is another problem. (:!What is the problem with the toilets? ):! During rains, water accumulates on roads. So the roads actually

become invisible. We face di'culties in going to the toilet. (:!So you have 10 toilets for about 1,500 persons? ):!Yes. (:!So you face problems in using toilets? ):!Yes. And there is no hygiene. "e woman appointed for cleaning bath-

rooms is not doing her work properly. Nobody shows any interest in cleaning the toilets.

(:!So there’s a lot of %lth around!there? ):!Yes. We can also see over#owing garbage!bins. (:!"e garbage is also close to bathroom? ):!Yes. And in rains it adds to the problems. "e garbage spills out of the

bin and it stinks.

Zainab believed that having degraded public toilet facilities was one of the greatest challenges for the women in the slums, and it was a problem that had deteriorated throughout the decades as the population of the basti swelled. While the toilet situation was singled out as an overarching problem that overwhelms the families in the basti, Zainab also talked about other chal- lenges, such as not having access to education, secure employment, and per- manent housing, that shaped the life of the people in the!basti.

Zeenat, who worked as a social worker for the local nonpro%t organiza- tion, Shelter Associates, lived in Panchsheel basti and had introduced me to

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several youth who had spent their childhood and most of their adult life in this slum. She said, “You should talk to a young man, Aman. He is shy but if you can engage him, he might speak.” Zeenat gave me some background about Aman’s family. Aman had four siblings, and two of his sisters were married. His father was an alcoholic and particularly abusive to his wife and his children.

Aman had su&ered from polio as a child, and his legs were paralyzed. Zeenat said that when Aman’s father “comes home from work, sees Aman sitting on the bed, doing nothing!.!.!.!he hits him. "en he gets physical with his wife.” Aman was enrolled in a basic computer program in school, but he could not a&ord to pay hostel fees so he was forced to drop out. When I!entered his 200- square- foot house that was made of mud, cement, and a tin roof, I!found Aman sitting on a black metal bed. He told me that he is free these days because he is unemployed. He said, “I feel bad due to polio. I!could not walk properly. I!was a&ected with it when I!was one and a half years old.” "en I!asked him what are the basic necessities that he cannot a&ord to!buy:

(:!What are the essentials that you want but are unable to purchase? *:!"ere are many such products. (:!Can you name!them? *:!Computer, products required for luxurious lifestyle, car, good house

in a good society. (:!What do you mean by luxurious lifestyle? *:!It means a prosperous life, where nothing is lacking.

Aman said the he notices the youth from other societies showing o& their luxuries, such as cars, jeans, and other brands, and then he spoke about how the lack of private toilet facilities is a torturous indignity that he has to expe- rience every day. He wakes up at 4:00 a.m. to go to the public toilets so he can avoid the long lines. Aman uses his hands to move his body forward, and the road to the toilet is dark and often %lled with muddy water. Often when he is inside the public toilet, people bang on his door, urging him to %nish his morning rituals. He told me that he really wants “a private toilet” in his house so he does not have to wake up at 4:00 a.m. to use the %lthy toilets.

Aman’s tone was stark, matter- of- fact, and he mentioned to me that he is looking for just one break and one opportunity in his life. He had visited Hinjewadi, a newly built IT park, for an interview at a domestic, Marathi- speaking call center. Aman did not get the job. He explained, “"ere was a problem. It was on %fth #oor. It was not possible for me to walk to the %fth #oor daily. "ere was a vacancy at a hotel too. But they wanted to hire a person who could walk properly.” After my conversation with Aman, I!went to Zeenat’s house to have tea. I!invited Aman, but he was not interested in continuing our

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conversation with others around us. Zeenat told me that aapaij log (disabled people) and young women sometime have to defecate outside because the public toilets are busy or not working.

"e 2012 United Nations’ “Millennium Development Goals Report” (United Nations Development Programme, 2012)!states that 626!million peo- ple in India do not have access to a toilet and practice what is called “open def- ecation.” Every day, millions of women and girls in India experience teasing, sexual harassment, stalking, violent assault, and rape when they go out to defecate in the open in bushes, %elds, and gutters on the road. Dasra, a phil- anthropic organization in Pune, published an extensive study in 2012 titled “Squatting Rights:!Access to Toilets in Urban India.” "is study reported that 30% of women from the underprivileged sections of Indian society experience violent sexual assaults every year because lack of sanitation facilities forces them to travel long distances to %nd secluded spots or public facilities to meet their bodily needs. "is report speci%cally highlights that 70% of girls living in Delhi slums experience teasing and verbal assaults when they are searching for places to defecate. Sanitation is a matter of both public health and gender equality. Every day, 1,600 Indian children younger than age 5!years die due to lack of proper sanitation. "ey die from diarrhea, cholera, typhoid, and para- sitic or worm infections.

For many women in urban and rural India, lack of sanitation is linked to issues of health, safety, dignity, and education.8 Toilet access increases school attendance for girls because parents are more likely to send their daughters to school if they know they can dispose of their sanitary products in safe toilet facilities when menstruating. Recently, families in some villages in the state of Maharashtra, India, have refused to marry their daughters into families that do not have proper toilets. "e 2008 UN fact sheet on sanitation mentions that these families have painted signs in their village that states, “Daughters from our village are not married into villages where open defecation is prac- ticed” (UN- Water,!2008).

Every major report or study on sanitation published in the past dec- ade notes that toilets give women dignity, access to education, security, and improved health. Almost everyone I!interviewed in the basti— young and old, men and women— singled out lack of toilet faculties as being crucial to how they viewed themselves:!urban poor who cannot a&ord basic amenities. Both Zainab and Aman expressed that not having a private toilet was a matter of dignity, and it impacted how they viewed their progress in life. "e families living in the slums emphasized that having access to toilets was about dig- nity and privacy, but it also protected them from diseases and ensured envi- ronmental sustainability. Lack of access to sanitation constituted one of the major threats to the security, stability, welfare, and development of children, youth, and families living in!slums.

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RAVI’S STORY:%CLASS%INEQUALITIES AND DANGEROUS%LIVING

As I! walked from Zeenat’s house through the narrow lanes, I! passed by exposed drains and women washing utensils and clothes using water collected in buckets. "e stench from the public toilets and over#owing garbage bins punctuated the spaces. Scooters and bicycles were lined up neatly against the walls of the small homes. It was mid- afternoon, and the rare soothing and gentle chill of the December sun enveloped the basti. "e houses were mostly semi- pucca and hugged each other with common partition walls. Most of the by- lanes in the slums were paved and kept reasonably clean because the lanes functioned as a social space where the neighbors congregated, cooked, bathed, and argued with each!other.

I interviewed Ravi Kartik Yadav, a 22- year- old male, at his house in the basti. When I!entered Ravi’s house, his mother walked out to give us privacy for the interview; “I will work outside so you can talk,” she o&ered helpfully. His house was a one- room space with a small “kitchen corner,” and on the other side of the room was a tiny enclosed space for bathing. A!small televi- sion sat perched on the Godrej stainless- steel cupboard along with a framed Bachelor’s Degree in Commerce diploma certi%cate from the same college where I!completed my undergraduate degree in psychology. We sat on a bed that served as multipurpose furniture, and we began the conversation by talk- ing about our alma mater, Wadia College.

I remarked to him that I! had recently visited the college and was sur- prised not to see a “cycle stand” as it was replaced by a parking space for mopeds and motorbikes. Ravi laughed, “"at was another time!.!.!.!there are also many cars now.” Ravi was born in this basti, and he had spent his child- hood and youth in a 200- square- foot room. His father, he said, did “service” in Khadki and brought in a very meager income. His mother was a house- wife. He had another brother and two sisters, and all of them lived in that small!space.

Monsoon Rains, Miniskirts, and the%Hi- Fi%Class

I asked Ravi to tell me what globalization had meant to him and if the growth of IT companies and the new economic prosperity had made any di&erence to this slum or his life in general:

+:!No. Nothing has changed in our!slums. (:!You are staying here for the last 20!years. Haven’t you seen any change? +:!Nothing has changed in the slums. Changes have taken place outside. (:!What kind of changes have you seen outside?

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+:!Towers, residential buildings and commercial complexes, big compa- nies, huge projects like Magarpatta City, Trimbak City have come up. City is progressing, but nothing has progressed in our slums. "ough there are some development works here like construction of!roads.

(:!So there is not much change in your!life? +:!No change.

Ravi explained that one of the most di'cult challenges faced by the slum dwellers is not having access to clean toilets. "ere are just a few stalls for more than 1,500 people, so many people end up defecating outside or they wait in long lines in the morning. "e public toilets are unclean, and for many in the slum, having a private toilet inside one’s house is considered a luxury.

"e other problem, he identi%ed, was the excessive water logging that occurs in the low slopes and nonpaved lanes of the basti during the monsoon season. He took me outside his house and showed me the space just beyond his door where the water accumulates:!“Last monsoon, all this water had come up in to our room! .! .! .! it was unmanageable.” However, not having a toilet inside the house was a source of even more immense stress. Ravi said that although his family could save money to build a toilet, there was no space to install it. A! toilet would replace the entire bathing space, and that would be just as inconvenient. He further added, “Suppose guests come to the house when females in the family are taking a bath. When the females come out of the bathroom for changing dress, all the gents have to move out of the house. "ey cannot change dress in the same room.” He said maneuvering around a small space on a daily basis and accommodating to the needs of %ve people is an ongoing struggle, but everyone adjusts. Ravi said there are larger families in the basti that have to make due with a one- room space, with husbands, wives, children, and in- laws all staying together under the same!roof.

In Ravi’s view, the discourse of “globalization equals progress” was super- %cial because it had brought no meaningful change in his life, although he had observed signi%cant cultural and economic shifts in the a$uent areas around the neighborhood. When he was growing up, Ravi said, he saw more young women wear sarees and dresses, and now they wear “minis and even micro- mini dresses. Girls also enjoy cigarettes.” Ravi seemed outraged at what he perceived to be the deterioration of Indian cultural values. He argued that in the past only the older men consumed alcohol, and now even schoolgoing children drank alcohol and smoked. He characterized the a$uent families and youth around him as being from a “high society” or being from a hi- ! class— drinking, driving fancy cars, and being indi&erent about the world was a fash- ion statement for the hi- %!class.

Ravi argued that young people also consumed alcohol in his basti and that could be justi%ed because they were experiencing hardships, unemployment, and a bleak future. I!asked him to describe what the term hi- ! meant because

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it was a word that I! had heard used by several others who had lived in the basti. Just as in the West, hi- % originally referred to the quality of music that was produced through “high- %delity” technology— abbreviated as hi- %. In colloquial, English- speaking urban Indian discourse, hi- % referred to “high- level thinking” or “high- level living” or a certain style of urban living that was re#ected in lives of the upper and a$uent classes. Ravi said that a hi- % life- style referred to living in nice apartments in an upper- class neighborhood, wearing branded clothes such as jeans, having a motorbike or a car, and going to bars and discos.

Hi- % also symbolized a liberal and modern outlook, that gave permission to adolescent girls and boys to being romantic in public with their partners. A!hi- % young woman smoked, went to bars, and wore miniskirts. A!hi- % young man wore jeans, branded sneakers, drove a car, and displayed a “carefree” and “con%dent” attitude. A!person labeled as hi- % spoke #uent English with a neu- tral or a “convent school” accent. Ravi claimed that having a hi- % lifestyle was associated with having money and a high standard of living. He told me that the youth from the basti could not become hi- % because becoming hi- % was connected with having material luxuries and having a speci%c lifestyle. Ravi remarked that a young person from a basti whose father works as a servant or does odd jobs cannot even dream of becoming a hi- % person. In contrast, children born to businessmen and professionals from places such as Kalyani Nagar inherently have access to resources leading to the hi- % lifestyle— they can go abroad, hang out at exclusive clubs, and give the impression that they are having a good!time.

"e youth from the Panchsheel basti, he noted, mostly used buses or bicy- cles to move around, and those were not symbols of being hi- %. I!asked Ravi to explain why he believed that the basti youth could never attain a hi- % identity:

(:! You talk about high life, hi- %, high standard. What do you mean by!that?

+:!I used to go to my school and college on a bicycle. And my friends used to come on two- wheelers. Some of them used to come in four wheel- ers. "en at the canteen, I! could only a&ord to purchase a vada pav (bread and potato fritter) and they were purchasing costly burgers. It was not possible for me to spend Rs. 50!a!day.

(:!For them, this amount (Rs. 50 a day) is!small? +:! Yes. My dad used to give me Rs. 5 every morning. "e money was

meant for repairing my bicycle if it gets punctured. I!used to save this money for purchasing my books, paying my class fees and other edu- cational expenses.

Ravi emphasized that there are profound class di&erences between the hi- % youth and the youth from the basti, and the divide can never be bridged

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because the hi- % people consider the urban poor as “cheap log” (cheap people). "e word “cheap” in the Indian urban context implies moral defects, vulgarity, and having a working- class lifestyle.

Class Struggles and the%Impending Anxiety of%Eviction

Ravi told me that most of the hi- % youth who studied with him at Wadia College were not focused on their studies. "e hi- % youth, he said, could neglect their academics because they were aware that they had a strong %nan- cial and well- connected familial support system that would ensure them a decent future. He commented that “going to Inox (modern multiplex cinema hall) was a routine thing for them.9 While, my friends were spending time in library, solving accounts problems.” Hi- % youth hung out at malls, watched movies at multiplex cinemas, and drove cars and fancy bikes; the boys hung out with girlfriends who wore miniskirts, and girls had boyfriends who were into drinking, smoking, and wearing fashionable clothes.

Ravi argued that the social and class barriers in India were not a new phenomenon because the chasm between the rich and the poor had existed throughout Indian history. Ravi said that as the neighborhoods around him were becoming more prosperous, the youth from the basti were also searching for ways to go beyond their limited lives. He had a close set of friends from his basti who shared his class background and values, and he felt emotionally connected to them. In college, however, he had developed a social network of friends and acquaintances from a range of classes— some he described as “two wheeler” class (motorbike) and others “four wheeler” class (cars). "e navi- gation and negotiation of social class di&erences was extremely stressful and demeaning for Ravi. He did not disclose to his middle- and upper- class friends that he lived in a basti and that his family was part of the urban poor in the city with limited resources. He remarked that he felt not just di&erent from his hi- % friends but also inferior to some of!them:

Yes, it has happened many times. I!used to feel ashamed, inferior while going to the college on my bicycle. So I!was parking my cycle on the rear gate. And then I!used to walk into the college from the main gate. My fashion sense was not like theirs (rich students). I! got some money from parents for paying college fees, which itself was a big thing. "ere was a di&erent group of poor students that I!used to hang out!with.

Ravi also resented the physical encroachment of the hi- % society on the areas around the basti. First, the “big companies” came to his neighborhood, and then industrial high- tech parks, restaurants, clubs, residential buildings, and call centers had taken over much of the space around!basti.

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Growing up, Ravi said, Panchsheel basti had many green spaces for play and open grounds for taking walks. He pointed to an apartment building near him:!“"ere was open ground with a few trees where we now see Clover building. We used to play cricket on this ground.” Ravi wanted to move out of this settlement, but he was losing hope that he would ever be able to a&ord a small apartment anywhere near his neighborhood. He remarked that he did not have a job and not even a small- time family business, so there were few options for his future. What made his family and him most insecure, how- ever, was not having ownership of the house in which he had grown up. He had some security knowing that he lived in a “declared slum” so his family could not be evicted easily, but the events of 1995, when the local government demolished some houses in the basti, gave him nightmares.

Ravi’s basti existed on land that was owned by the government, and in “legal terms” all the houses were temporary housing built on public land. Ravi was infuriated and worried that despite living in Panchsheel basti all his life; his family still could not claim their house as their!own:

Yes, I!wish to leave the slum. But this is the only house we have. Where will we go if this house breaks? No, this is not a permanent house. It is constructed on railway land. So if this breaks, we don’t know where to go. In 1995, we have seen houses being demolished here and people actually living on the pavements. We understand the problems they su&ered.

Ravi argued that it was fairly “dangerous” for youth to live in the slums because many were unable to deal with day- to- day stress of lack of sanitation, not having permanent employment and earning daily wages, and living with the fear that they could become homeless anytime. Ravi and other youth whom I!had interviewed believed that the young boys in the slums had taken to drink- ing cheap liquor because six new liquor dens had opened in and around the!basti:

+:! Yes. It has increased. Reason is unemployment. Because they don’t have work, the youths spend time gambling, playing cards and drink- ing liquor.

(:!Does that result in quarrels, or %ghts? +:!Yes. Even small disputes are giving rise to major clashes. Police cases

are %led against those indulging in %ghts. Once a police case is %led, these youth then start thinking, it will not matter even if they are booked in another case. But many youth in our slum are educated. However, they don’t have good!jobs.

At the end of our conversation, Ravi told me that he felt good sharing his story, but he reiterated the point that he does not believe that everyday living in the basti has changed in any signi%cant way. He observed, rather

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philosophically, “"ere are many problems. In fact life itself has become a problem. And the only solution is keep living your!life.”

What is the narrative “tone” and “imagery” of these stories? McAdams (1997) argues that identity stories have certain identi%able structures, con- tent, and components narrated in a setting; the stories reveal con#ict and drama between the characters, signi%cant scenes, and turning points, and they are made of resolved and unresolved endings. Life stories also display an overall emotional tone or an attitude that may be, for example, pessimis- tic, resentful, buoyant, or positive. "e life story is also shaped by particular metaphors, similes, sounds, and the imagery that capture unique experiences of the narrator. "erefore, “an individual’s favorite metaphor and symbols are re#ective of what his or her identity is about” (McAdams, 1997, p.! 66). Drawing on the work of MacIntyre and Taylor, McAdams argues that the crea- tion of identity through narrative requires an individual to have a moral orien- tation in the world. "ese moral orientations are deeply ideological and re#ect the political, social, and religious belief system of the narrator.

"e imagery in the narratives of Panchsheel basti youth is largely about the lack of basic amenities in their lives and the social inequality that they witness around them. "e youth with whom I! spoke asserted their agency and voice through political mobilization, employment, and education to bring about change in their lives, but they had little hope that the structural conditions of the slum were going to change in the near future. "e aspirations of the slum youth were in many ways similar to those of the other middle- class youth— they wanted upward social mobility, name- brand goods, and luxuries that they noticed around them and on television. However, their aspirations were essen- tially shaped by their inability to transform the power structures around!them.

PRIYANKA’S STORY:%CULTURAL PRACTICES AND MAPS OF%ASPIRATION

Priyanka’s story echoes the struggles expressed by Ravi and Zainab and others from the basti regarding the futility of individual e&ort in the face of asymmetrical power relationships, lack of material resources, and diminishing opportunities. Priyanka, a 21- year- old woman who had lived all her life in the basti, did much of her schooling in a Marathi medium school (the instruction was in the local Marathi language) and then transferred to the all- women’s St. Meera’s College to complete her 11th and 12th grades, where the instruction was in English (English medium) and the academics were fairly demanding. She was compelled to drop out of college because her parents could not a&ord her college!fees:

I had to leave studies due to family problems. It was mainly due to lack of money. My parents don’t earn much. My sister has completed her graduation, B.A. I!also

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want to do some courses. We are three sisters and there is nobody else to look after the family.

Priyanka had been practicing taekwondo for the past 2!years with the hope that she would be recruited as a constable in the local police force. She had intended to resume her college studies once she was selected for training in the police!force.

Mall Culture, Maid Servants, and Education

One of Priyanka’s sisters was married o& after she completed 10th grade because their parents did not have the %nancial means to take care of their daughters:

Our parents feel bad that they do not have a son. All three are daughters. So they got her married early. But we want to do something. We want to move ahead with the world. Wherever we go, computer knowledge is required.

Priyanka had decent prospects of getting a job in a mall as a sales assistant, but her parents prevented her from applying because the job required her to work in the mall until 10:00! p.m. She said, “So my mother did not allowed me to do the job. She said the people would talk bad about me if I!came late.” I! asked her why people would talk about her negatively if she worked late hours in the mall. Priyanka said that her parents believe that malls are for high- class or hi- % people and not for traditional girls with “middle- class” val- ues living in her slum. Priyanka stated that there is a fear among the parents that malls are places where young girls will meet boys and become intimate or have “a&airs” with them. "e families in the slum, she added, viewed young women as being wives, caregivers, and housewives, and someone working in the mall was viewed as breaking traditional!roles.

According to Priyanka, the slum would never progress because young girls and women are not perceived as intelligent enough to go to school and have careers. Her neighbors and relatives constantly put pressure on her parents to get the girls married o& when they had just graduated from high school. Priyanka noted that there is a deep gender bias in the slums, and she wanted to prove that girls are as intelligent and hard- working as boys. She wished to show she could be independent, but the system did not allow young women to realize their full potential:

We don’t even get any help for education. One of my friends could not pay her college fees in grade 12 due to her father’s illness. None of her teachers came

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forward for paying her fees. I!felt sad that I!could not help her. I!am not rich and so I!was unable to help her. Poor people don’t ask for money for everything. But they should at least get some help for completing education.

Priyanka was ambitious and had planned her future carefully so she could move out of the basti in the future. She got admitted to an English medium college (in which the primary instruction is in English), learned the basic com- puter applications, and then found a job in a mall and was practicing martial art skills to prepare for a career in law enforcement.

Priyanka was self- con%dent, assertive, and had aspirations for her family, but the obstacles she faced were fundamentally tied to not having resources. Her catalog of frustrations regarding the short supply of basic amenities and the lack of access to resources in the basti by now had become a familiar theme in every interview I! conducted in the slums or with the local social workers:! a shortage of toilets; lack of educational opportunities; over#ow- ing garbage; the smell of decomposing food; the unsustainable ratio of 1 toilet to 50 people resulting in many people defecating outside; indi&erent and corrupt local politicians; strategic, self- interested visits by the power elite during election time; vulnerability of families who had lived in the slum for decades but feared eviction at any time; the incessant sounds of passing trains making it di'cult to study in the evening; lack of job security due to working in the informal economy; crumbling and decrepit walls in their homes; leaking tin roofs that threatened to cave in every monsoon; and lack of English #uency prohibiting the youth from being competitive in the glo- balized local job market.

Priyanka’s father was a day wage laborer who held temporary jobs in the construction industry a few times per week. During the monsoon season, he had no employment because building work slowed during that period. She was currently spending time preparing for her police training exams and was mainly working at home helping her mother with chores such as cleaning and cooking. She had witnessed %rst- hand how rich people lived because she had worked as a “maid servant” during vacations doing jhadu-pocha (sweeping and cleaning) for several well- to- do families in the area. She said, “If I!missed a day’s work, the wages would be subtracted from a $12!monthly salary.”

Priyanka remarked the only way out of slum life was through acquiring an education that gave her reasonably good employment. She argued that upper- and middle- class youth have the advantages of education, well- connected networks, and living in surroundings that are conducive to their health, body, and mind. "e upper- class youth get!all the “facilities,” and she further emphasized, “I wish I!also get!all the things they have, but I!don’t have them. I!will work for them.” However, Priyanka promptly dismissed her wishes and remarked that the youth from the slum can dream big, but they will not have a

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car or a nice house in a posh residential complex. Marrying a rich boy was not a realistic possibility either:

No, no. I!will get married someday, but no boy from a rich family will marry us. It only happens in %lms that people from rich families join relations with slum people, get married to a girl from slum. In reality, I!have never seen anything like this. In my case, my parents would get me married to someone in our relation, where situation would be same. Only house will change, but the problems would remain the!same.

Priyanka blamed the conservative “mentality” of the families living in slums and the indi&erence of the government, the politicians, and the wealthy class for contributing to a lack of economic progress in the basti. "e local poli- ticians, she argued, win elections because of the basti votes, but once in power they become disengaged. "e politicians who get elected by the basti voters, Priyanka emphasized, need to investigate the realities on the ground in the slums. She reminded me that a “few days before we went to the local corporate for proof of residence certi%cate. But his men said that he was sleeping and asked us to come later. "ese politicians speak a lot, give many assurances, but do not do any!work.”

ASPIRATIONS, IDENTITY, AND STRUCTURAL PRACTICES

"e stories of Priyanka, Ravi, Aman, Zainab, and other youth I!met shed light on the dark side of neoliberal globalization— where large numbers of citizens are left out of the narrative of progress. "ese youth had ambition, hope, energy, and what Appadurai (2013, p.!189) refers to as a “map of aspirations.” However, the structural conditions in the slums did not provide them with the resources, opportunities, stories, or tools to implement their hopes and desires. As Appadurai reminds us, aspirations are “never simply individual.!.!.!. "ey are always formed in interaction and in the thick of social life” (p.!187). For Priyanka, her aspirations were not just connected to her individual desires but also given meaning through the cultural norms and practices of the collec- tive social life within which she was embedded.

Aspirations about the “good life” in the basti were intimately connected to local ideas about marriage, gender, divinity, cosmology, work, leisure, respect- ability, health, and virtue. Yet, Appadurai (2013) argues that the capacity to aspire is a “navigational capacity” (p.!188). Due to their lack of opportunities, poorer members of society are unable to #ex their capacity to aspire in tangi- ble, realistic, and concrete ways. "is limitation, due to their circumstances, in turn prohibits their ability to exercise their “voice.” Drawing upon Hirschman’s (1970) work, Appadurai notes that the poor tend to move between loyalty

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and exit. Here, loyalty refers to an attachment or acceptance to norms, and exit in this case could imply violent protest or total apathy. Rather, Appadurai calls for initiatives and interventions among poorer communities that can nurture the “faculty of ‘voice’ ”— “the capacity to debate, contest, inquire, and participate critically” (p.! 189). For the basti youth whom I! interviewed, the rhetoric of globalization and its promise of progress and prosperity were a dis- tant, unrealizable horizon. While their narratives certainly express individual agency, their aspirational capacity and their hopes for a better future are con- tinually battered and hemmed in by the exigencies of their present.

In the past decade, psychologists and behavioral economists have drawn on the social psychology literature of willpower and self- control to analyze how poor people make everyday decisions about food, money, recreation, medi- cine, alcohol, and calorie and food consumption. "e key %nding can be sum- marized as follows:!Exercising willpower essentially involves making rational decisions when we are faced with con#icting choices in our lives. Willpower is a limited resource, and it uses a “cool cognitive system” rather than a “hot emotional system.” From this view, the exercise of willpower is related to per- sonal goals (Bauemister & Tierney, 2011). "e behavioral science research on this subject has come to the conclusion that the self- control that the poor have to exercise on an everyday basis has much more devastating consequences for the poor than for the rich. In this regard, Abhijit Banerji and Esther Du#o (2011) explain,

Because self- control is hard to buy, self- aware decision makers take other defen- sive actions against the possibility of being tempted in the future. An obvious strategy is not save as much, because we know that we will just waste the money tomorrow. We might as well give in to the temptation today, if all we are going to do is give in to it tomorrow. "is perverse logic of temptation operates in the same way for the poor as it does for the rich, but there are good reasons that the consequences may be much serious for the poor than for the rich.!.!.!.!"e result is a vicious circle:!Saving is less attractive for the poor, because for them the goal tends to be very far away, and they know that there will be lots of temptations along the way. But of course, if they do not save they remain poor. (pp.!198– 199)

"us, in addition to citing the structural problems that impede the progress of the poor, these studies have provided us with important insights about how the poor think and make decisions about their resources. However, many of these behavioral economics studies are also based on a “rational choice model” and an “ethics of probability,” so they tend to de%ne aspiration, self- control, and choice as constructs that are mainly located in the individual (Appadurai, 2013). Such an individualized conceptualization largely ignores the cultural contexts and structural constraints that frame and give meaning to the narra- tives of the youth living in!slums.

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We need to move away from thinking of aspirations as arising out of an indi- vidual cognitive system; rather, we should locate them in the practices of eve- ryday life. Upper- class women from Mumbai and Chennai have di&erent views of happiness compared to a working- class woman in rural Pune. What is impor- tant to note here is that in every instance, aspirations of a “good life” are closely linked to a system of ideas located, in Appadurai’s words (2013), within “a larger map of local ideas and beliefs about:!life and death, the nature of worldly posses- sions, the signi%cance of material assets, the value of peace or warfare” (p.!187).

My central argument here is that the capacity to aspire, to regulate one’s behavior, and to exercise self- control is deeply linked to the cultural practices and other stories that circulate in the lives of the urban poor. "e stories that the youth in the slums narrated in my research are highly class bound and show that their capacity to aspire is not just an individual trait or a psycho- logical ability. Rather, aspirations, willpower, and other so- called rational choice- making activities are shaped by larger narratives of power and cultural capacity, which are in turn unevenly distributed in our society. "us, it is the meaning- making capacity of narrative, with its ability to shed light on how people interpret their experiences through stories, that can be used to under- stand the process of identity formation of the youth living in!slums.

"e concept of imagination, as previously mentioned, is linked to the “narra- tive way of knowing” that Bruner (1986) believes is essential to understanding personhood. It must be noted, however, that in the %eld of psychology, there are very few accounts about how non- Western populations living in urban pov- erty are using their narrative imagination to come to terms with their changing conceptions of personhood and identity. Following Appadurai (2013), I!empha- size that I! am not arguing that the poor do not have the capacity to aspire, have ambition, and voice their needs. However, part of being in the condition of poverty is having reduced opportunities and therefore lacking the power to enact and pursue their aspirations, practices, and experiences to achieve favor- able outcomes. "e capacity to aspire is not equally distributed in a given soci- ety, and the a$uent and well- to- do classes often have an advantage in having a much more developed capacity to aspire. Appadurai (2013) elaborates:

It means the better o& you are (in terms of power, dignity, and material resources), the more likely you are to be conscious of the links between the more and less immediate objects of aspiration. Because the better o&, by de%nition, have a more complex experience of the relation between a wide range of ends and means, because they have a bigger stock of available experiences of the rela- tionship of aspirations and outcomes.!.!.!.!"ey too express their aspirations in concrete, individual wishes and wants. But they are able to produce justi%ca- tions, narratives, metaphors, and pathways through which bundles of goods and services are actually tied to wider social scenes and contexts, and to still more abstracts and beliefs. (p.!188)

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"e stories I! heard in the basti re#ected individual aspirations. However, the propeller of power and material resources to transform these nascent aspi- rations into realistic and productive outcomes was missing, thereby limiting their “navigational capacity.” Building on Appadurai’s (2013) ideas regarding “navigational capacity,” I!propose the notion of narrative capacity as the ability of the poorer urban youth to create stories that matter in the larger society and the maps that are required to realize their aspirations. "e narrative psy- chology perspective provides us with a theoretical framework to connect the individual concepts of “voice,” “self- control,” and “capacity” to larger collective and cultural practices.

If we accept the premise that culture- is- in- self and self- is- in- culture, then individual narratives about aspirations are shaped by collective norms and belief systems about aspiration, and thus individual human capacities are dia- logically connected to local norms, values, and interpretations. It is through narrative that individuals make sense of cultural webs of meaning (Brockmeier, 2012). What is important to recognize here is that the aspirations of the slum youth are in many ways similar to those of the other middle- and upper- class youth:!"ey want social mobility and the brands, goods, and luxuries they see around them and on television. "e basic di&erence is that the upper- and middle- class youth whom I!interviewed had the advantage of having structures of wealth, legacy, education, social networks, and also stories of aspiration that empowered them to imagine and navigate their way to success in their educa- tion, business, or employment. "e upper- and middle- class youth also had col- lective storytellers— parents, teachers, peers, and supervisors— who were able to expand the horizons of their aspirational understanding. "is enabling of their navigational capacity as narrative capacity stands in contrast to Priyanka, for example, whose parents were limited in their capacity to imagine a di&erent and better future for her due to their own structural disadvantages.

One of the important arguments made by Appadurai (2013) is that the capacity to aspire is not so much about conceiving the past through the lens of tradition but, rather, about de%ning the “future as a cultural fact.” Within eco- nomics and the broader UN approach to poverty, development is always about designing economic futures. In contrast, scholars in anthropology or cultural psychology work with cultural concepts that are based on “pastness.” Bringing the “future” into the fold of culture allows us to design futures in which there are possibilities of fashioning new stories of self and identity. "us, cultural patterns that give rise to speci%c beliefs about aspirations can be changed and modi%ed through debate, collective mobilization, and strengthening of the collective voice of the!poor.

"is change requires psychologists to link debates about poverty to both individual psychology and how collective narratives about success and scar- city shape an individual’s capacity to aspire. "e burden of creating speci%c narratives and navigational capacities should not be entirely the personal

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responsibility of the urban poor. Rather, the combination of government intervention, creating social policies that reduce social and economic ine- quality, the willingness of dominant classes to redistribute capital, and the collective mobilization of the urban poor together are required to create new structures through which poor children and youth can reimagine and alter their cultural and narrative maps of aspiration.

"e well- known Indian economist, Amartya Sen (1999), argues that “freedom of agency,” or individual freedom, is shaped by the social, polit- ical, and economic opportunities that are available to us. "us, Sen writes, “Development consists of the removal of various types of unfreedoms that leave people with little choice and little opportunity of exercising their rea- soned agency. "e removal of substantial unfreedoms, it is argued here, is con- stitutive of development” (p. xii, emphasis in original). "e linking of agency and identity with development or culture, then, directly takes us into the heart of psychology— a humanistic science of sense- making.

Ultimately, concepts of voice and aspiration have to be viewed through what Taylor (1989) calls a hermeneutics of “ethical horizon” in which con- crete human capabilities can be shaped, made sustainable, and given meaning and expression in local contexts through others. "is means creating a new language for psychology. Mark Freeman (2014) argues that much of psychol- ogy gives priority to self and is “essentially egocentric” (p.!1). In contrast, he makes a plea for fashioning a new psychology that is other- oriented psychol- ogy or ex- centric and that is based on the priority of the other. An “other- oriented” narrative psychology will allow us to examine how our individual aspirations and capacities are connected to structural conditions of inequality, lack of educational opportunities, and the lives and everyday practices of the hi- % class. In this context, part of understanding the “language of otherness” means we have to strengthen the “narrative voice” of the poor and think of them as partners in the battle against poverty.

"e well- to- do youth from the adjacent neighborhoods were important oth- ers for the Panchsheel basti youth, and they played an integral role in shaping their identity narratives. "e youth from the basti mostly described the mid- dle class and rich as being “morally” adrift in their pursuit of money, who were mostly occupied with frivolous romances and excessive drinking and smoking. "eir narratives were shaped by their encounters with structural inequality, their cultural maps of aspiration, and the a$uence that surrounded!them.

HI. FI IDENTITY, EDUCATION, AND ENGLISH LANGUAGE%SKILLS

"e narratives analyzed previously are dialogically connected to what the basti youth perceive as the “hi- %” class. Hi- % youth are described as living in

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posh houses and apartments, driving motorbikes and cars, wearing fashion- able branded clothes, hanging out with girlfriends and boyfriends, and hav- ing a lifestyle that is seemingly free of worry or anxiety. Repeatedly in my interviews, the youth expressed such imagined constructions of upper- and middle- class youth who had heterogeneous lives that were di&erentially shaped by gender, education, social networks, and varied %nancial circum- stances. However, what is important to note here is that the “hi- %” construct played an important role in shaping their stories of identity. "e hi- % youth were visible in media, malls, and surrounding areas of the Panchsheel basti, and they were also portrayed as the new symbols of globalization:! English- speaking call center agents and IT workers. Many youth from Panchsheel basti viewed the rich and the a$uent class as being indi&erent to poverty and mor- ally corrupt, but they also expressed a yearning for having access to their sym- bolic and material privileges.

"e youth of Panchsheel basti were accustomed to seeing their wealthier peers drive motorcycles and fancy cars in the evening, throw parties on week- ends, and drink expensive alcohol at local bars. In contrast, most of residents in the slum held low- paying jobs as rickshaw drivers, security guards, waiters, and maids or worked in the construction industry as manual laborers. "e families owned very few necessities, yet! almost all the houses that I! visited had a television set with a basic cable package that gave them access to more than 50 Indian and Western channels. Many family members watched mostly Hindi and Marathi television programs on a regular basis, but they also were fond of some dubbed English movies and television programs. During a focus group discussion, the young people of the basti told me that there was a grad- ual but perceptible change in cultural identities of the youth— the girls wore jeans, they were encouraged to go to school and college, and some whom they knew had recently entered love marriages rather than traditionally arranged partnerships.

The Importance of%“Personality”

"e major source of entertainment for these youth was watching television shows, movies, and cricket games and also copying the fashion of Bollywood stars. Sohaib Khan, a 19- year- old who was studying commerce at Poona College, told me that there is a “craze” for Star Plus serials and soap operas in the slum. He remarked, “People leave all work and see these serials. And what they see in the serials they try to do the same in real life. "ey wear the same kind of dress that actors in these serials wear.” Sohaib lived with his three brothers and parents in a small house, typical of the basti. Sohaib, too, began the interview by identifying the lack of clean toilets as one of the daily stresses of his life. He said that the toilet doors were broken, there was not enough

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light in the toilets so it was di'cult to move around after dark, and the rotting garbage that accumulated near the toilets worsened the situation. He told me that the hi- % class had basic immunity from these problems and that was one of the reasons they were successful.

Sohaib argued that the high- class, hi- % people were culturally di&erent from the youth in the slums. He said that they received all the bene%ts of globalization, such as good clothes, jeans, branded T- shirts, cars, and fancy gadgets, and what ultimately made them di&erent was their “personality.” I!asked Sohaib to elaborate. He said, “"ey have a di&erent personality. "ey have a di&erent thinking. "ey think big. "ey don’t mix with us. "ey don’t speak properly to us. "ey curse us, abuse us. "ey can’t tolerate the sight of poor people around them.” Sohaib linked having a hi- ! personality to having the %nancial and cultural capital to pursue their aspirations and ful%ll their potential. His comments invoke Appadurai’s (2013) notion of “navigational capacity” because he recognized the cultural capital and power of the hi- % class. "ey had robust %nancial resources and social networks through which their aspirations could %nd the right pathways to become positive outcomes, and repeated failures did not signal the end of one’s career or opportunities.

Sohaib’s father was a street performer who did magic shows outside the Pune railway station. His work resulted in an unstable income ranging from 30 cents a day to $8 on exceptional days. Sohaib could not expect any pocket money from his father, but he wanted to live a hi- % lifestyle by moving into a “good #at.” He stressed that not having the ability to speak #uent English the way the hi- % and middle- class people spoke English prevented him from get- ting jobs at the call center, malls, and in the service industry:

(,-./0:!Yes. I!wish I!could speak English #uently. I!felt bad when I!failed in an interview.

(:!Why did you feel!bad? (,-./0:! My friends speak good English and hence they got job. But

I!failed. (:!How can they speak such good English? (,-./0:! "ey are my school friends. "ey don’t stay in slums. Here

nobody is so educated. Also I!could not go to private classes. I!did not have the money to pay the!fees.

Ravi, whom I!introduced previously in this chapter, similarly told me that English was not just required for the jobs in the global economy but also gave youth who spoke it well an identity and a feeling of superiority. He reminded me that the basti youth could learn from the “hi- % class” how to act and be successful, but they will not take the initiative to socially interact with!them.

I asked Ravi if he ever spoke to or interacted with the hi- % girls from col- lege or the neighboring areas. He remarked that he freely interacted with the

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girls from the slums, but interacting or even coming near the girls from the hi- % class was considered overstepping his boundaries. He explained, “We are afraid that they may say something hurtful and this may make us feel very bad. So we never tried to speak with them. Also they never felt the need to interact with us.” Ravi explained that the basti youth do not have the same “con%dence” in themselves as the hi- % youth, and not being able to speak #u- ent English puts them at a great disadvantage in the job market as well as in social situations. In focus group discussions with the basti youth, the point about not being able to speak #uently in English and with the right accent was reinforced repeatedly.

"e parents whom I!interviewed from the basti also claimed that almost all of the children from the basti went to inexpensive schools where Marathi was the primary language used. "e youth perceived #uency in the English language as essential to belonging to the hi- % class, but many were also interested in using it as a skill to acquire jobs at a call center. "e basti youth were aware of the eco- nomic developments that had occurred in their area, and they had witnessed the migration of middle- class urban youth from di&erent areas of India to Pune. "e youth wanted jobs that paid well and required them to make conversation in English with foreign clients. However, for many of them, passing the interviews in English was an arduous, stressful, and virtually impossible!task.

The English- Speaking Class as%the New%Caste

Wasim Akhtar, age 23!years, from the basti had been interviewed for call cen- ter jobs on several occasions, but he was never o&ered a job. He noted that the main di&erence between the a$uent youth who live in Kalyani Nagar and Koregaon Park and the “poor class” is that the latter do not have access to English education. Wasim argued that even call center work required #uency in English and a basic undergraduate degree, and being educated in the Hindi and Marathi vernacular school was an impediment to their progress and social mobility:

(:!So you don’t get a job if you don’t know English? 1:!Some of them manage to clear the %rst round, but fail in clearing the

second round. It has happened with me four times. So we now think of starting some business. Some youths sell vegetables, some drive auto rickshaw as jobs are not available.

Wasim had dropped out of school after 10th grade to support his family, and he noted that mehnghai (in#ation) was the root cause of su&ering in the slums. He worked as a tailor, cleaner, and an o'ce boy. He wanted to get a bachelor’s degree in commerce so he could support his family.

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Wasim said that globalization and economic development in Pune have created opportunities for the wealthy people from Pune and Mumbai and for Indians from “foreign countries.” He singled out the corrupt politicians as being responsible for stagnation in the lives of the urban poor. "e politi- cians, he stressed, “are dirty and responsible for keeping us in poverty— they give fake assurances, but do nothing.” Wasim remarked that “poor people here are cursed” and the basti needed good teachers and political leaders so the youth can get educated, but most leaders who oversee the basti are themselves uneducated.

Wasim wanted to speak #uent English so he could get a job at a call center to support his family and get his sisters married. He said he needed to save Rs. 50,000 for each of his sisters’ weddings. Wasim often re#ected on his fam- ily’s circumstances:!“Many times I!question myself and also God. I!feel those who don’t require get lot of cash and those who require it most have nothing in their hands. I!wish my life was like those rich chaps.” I!asked Wasim what would be the %rst thing he would do if he got some money. He replied that he would go to college to become educated so he could speak #uent English.

Given the large available pool of middle- class youth who had good English- speaking skills, the odds of getting a job at a call center were stacked against Wasim and his peers. Vasavi (2008) states that English- speaking skills are acquired by those youth who have studied in English medium schools or pri- vate schools, and so jobs at business process outsourcing companies (BPOs) and call centers by default only become available to those who belong to the higher socioeconomic group. "e stories of basti youth revealed that they wanted to acquire English language to “mimic” youth from the hi- % class and also, more important, to get a well- paying job. "us, the acquisition of English language had come to represent, in Bourdieu’s (1994) terms, access to sym- bolic capital because English was associated with being hi- %, modern, and having prestige and social status. Learning to speak English had also become associated with “becoming an educated” person, and it was assumed that a person who spoke English was knowledgeable, skillful, and competent.

The “English- Speaking Curse” and the%Global Economy

Speaking in the English language was part of the Indian postcolonial identity, but English had become de%ned as the language of success and speaking it had become a requirement for being part of the global economy. "e youth in the basti told me that most parents in their neighborhood wanted their children to go to “convent”- run English language schools, but the competitive selection process and lack of funds made it di'cult for them to be a part of the “English caste system.” Sohaib had experienced the anxiety of being rejected from this caste system:! “I was rejected in an interview recently. So I! became anxious.

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"ey asked me to do a 3- month course in English. Only then they would give me a!job.”

In an article titled “"e English Speaking Curse” that was published in the magazine Outlook, Puri (2008) wrote that English is a new source of anxiety and worry for students from poor and low- income families in India and for those youth who study in non- English medium schools. Puri noted that col- lege students frequently commit suicide because of their inability to master the English language. However, such stories do not get pro%led on the front pages of English newspapers. Her article exposes urban Indian youth’s une- qual access to English and how it has created new linguistic divides in Indian society. "e linguistic barriers between those who speak and those who do not speak English have always existed in postcolonial India. English as cul- tural capital is an indelible and powerful feature of the colonial legacy that has shaped the class hierarchies in!India.

What is new about the existing demand and interest in English language skills in India is that having a basic undergraduate degree and #uent English language skills alone is now su'cient to acquire jobs in call centers, BPOs, malls, hotels, and other service and retail industries. "e working- class youth were acutely aware of how not having #uency in English positioned them as being “vernacular,” regional, chote log (lower- class people), and lacking a mod- ern and hi- % Indianness. Puri (2008)!noted,

Another unequal world is that of the English language teaching industry, that teeming hub for seekers of “good” English. "ey want “good” English, not just for BPO jobs and scaling linguistic walls that prevent them from studying or working abroad, but also for better- paid jobs in malls, retail chains, airlines, hotels, restaurants, media, banking and %nance. “Good” English also gets you better treatment, English- speakers tell you poignantly, in malls, fancy show- rooms, from sellers of %nancial services.

"e stories that make the front pages are the ones that reinforce India’s image of an expanding English- speaking middle class and the advantages it gives them in a global economy. In addition, tales of Indian writers of English novels and non%ction gaining recognition at home and abroad, winning international prizes, and the rise of English- language teaching institutes in India garner attention. Because English has become the aspirational language associated with the hi- % class, large numbers of youth from places such as Panchsheel basti and India’s small towns and cities mistakenly believe that these training institutes can give them the credentials to get jobs in call cen- ters, malls, or the service industry.

"e English language institutes perpetuate the myth that the English lan- guage has become a commodity that one can purchase to upgrade one’s life. "ere is an expectation from students and parents that English can be learned

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and mastered quickly, and it can be used to get employment and a personal- ity makeover. Puri visited one such premier institute in Delhi and found that the spoken English curriculum that was being taught was deeply #awed. She observed that (as quoted in Puri,!2008)

a mish- mash of de%nitions of auxiliary verbs, hackneyed proverbs (man pro- poses, god disposes), American “slangs” and “jargons” (airhead, hunk, choco- holic), tongue- twisters, teaching exercises that seem to have been written for Chinese students, with references to common Chinese errors. American English is the place’s forte, I!am told, and a class could begin, says one teacher, by her walking in and saying, “Hi dudes and dudettes.”

"e rise of the call center industry and a rapidly expanding service and retail industry had resulted in the creation of many small and large English language institutes across India. During my travels in Pune, I! noticed there was one institute called “"e English Clinic,” perhaps implying that a lack of English- speaking skills was equivalent to some form of pathology or dis- ease. "e British Council had decided to enter the Indian market to meet a growing demand to teach “good English” to teachers, corporate workers, engi- neers, and call center workers. "e British Council was the United Kingdom’s main cultural organization and representative across the world, and there were 10 British Council centers in various cities in India. One of its functions was to expand the use of English language and expose people to British cul- ture through libraries, teaching English to youth and adults, and training the young Indian population to be “global citizens.”

The Cultural Imperialism of%British English and “Fake%Teeth”

Former British prime minster Gordon Brown visited India and announced that teaching English to the world was going to be one of the United Kingdom’s major exports and it was going to train 750,000 teachers in India to speak English. "e demand for English language skills had also created new paren- tal anxieties about their children’s ability to speak “proper” English because basic #uency in English was considered an important criterion for gaining admission to some of the elite, private schools in India. "ere was a general recognition in urban India that government- run vernacular schools did not teach proper English in their curriculum. Most children from the basti had graduated from these municipal schools as they were inexpensive and getting admission to them was easy. Gauri, a 60- year- old grandmother from the basti, wanted her grandchildren to learn English in a private school, but her children could not a&ord the fees, and there was no one at home who could supplement their English language instruction:

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No, we’ll put them in Marathi medium only. See, we are not that strong in English so we’ll not put them in English medium. Why lie about it? Why show your fake teeth? We’ll do whatever is in our capacity. In Marathi medium, also there is English after the 5th grade, so if the kid studies well, he’ll speak the lan- guage properly. Like my son speaks good English, studies well. If he studies with concentration then Marathi school is also good, but they should realize the dif- %culties he faces. Marathi school is also good. Our heart desires that we should be able to enroll our children in English schools but we should have that kind of money. Where will we get so much money? We don’t have money. "at’s why Marathi schools are better for us. What can we!do?!

Gauri likened not knowing English to “fake teeth,” and the learning of English then gave them the opposite:!real teeth. What the interviews with the youth and families in the basti revealed is that learning English symbolized a step toward permanent employment and also an entry into a global economy that was seen as controlled by the hi- % class. "e youth did not want to become exact replicas of the hi- % class; rather, they wanted to become part of those global, language- based practices that made them competent speakers of the language so they could get jobs in call centers and also acquire upward mobil- ity. "ese youth wanted the %nancial and social advantages associated with being like the hi- %!class.

"e aspiration to learn English was then tied to the larger cultural aspi- rations and beliefs about social mobility in a neoliberal economy— prestige, honor, and good salaries. Within the context of the hi- % class, the aspiration to learn English was intimately tied to their beliefs about good schools, academic preparation, studying abroad, hanging out with peers who speak English, watching English %lms, reading English books, traveling abroad, and making English “integral” to one’s identity. "e English language divide, similar to the caste category, plays a vital role in determining whom the youth will marry, which friends they will have, where they will work and shop, what schools they will attend, what books they will read, where they will travel, how much they will earn, and what media they will consume. "e way in which the English language was tied to class identities forces us to think about aspirations and capacities as intertwined with larger language- based communicative practices.

When parents from these upper- and middle- class families are teaching their children English, they are also socializing them to acquire a hybrid mix of global, postcolonial Indian identity. Language socialization researchers have argued that the impact of language on our everyday, mundane, routine communication can be seen in two important ways. First, we learn language in the process of becoming culturally competent members of society. Second, in the process of learning language, we learn about the cultural stories and practices of our communities (Miller et! al., 1992; Schie&elin & Ochs, 1986). Caregivers’ input not only plays an important role in children’s language

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acquisition but also provides an important basis for caregivers and children to construct shared narrative meanings about the social order. Caregivers’ nar- rative practices, through particular use of language, foreground certain situ- ational meanings or epistemic qualities about their family’s or community’s way of!life.

"e language- based practices create particular narratives and stories of cultural capacities and maps of aspirations, economic pathways, and collec- tive meanings about family, work, and marriage. "e language practices of the urban youth living in the basti— their ways of speaking in Marathi and Hindi— are often viewed as markers of a low- income lifestyle, being “vernac- ular” and not part of the “mainstream discourse.” It is through these language socialization discourses about self and others that narratives about whom to marry, where to work, and with whom to mingle become consolidated as identities.

CASTE AND CLASS%IDENTITIES:%BABASAHEB IS OUR%GOD

Most of the basti youth that I! spoke to identi%ed themselves as kaam karne wale log (working class) or as garib log (poor people). A! few of them, such as Ravi and Priyanka, referred to their family having “middle- class values.” Here, they separated their socioeconomic status from the values and norms that they espouse. In other words, they may be located in a lower economic strata and did not enjoy the social or economic privileges that came with being mid- dle class, but they identi%ed with what they viewed as middle- class values. Some of the youth who referred to themselves as garib or kaam karne wale log alternatively referred to themselves as Dalit. Dudley Jenkins (2003) argues that the so- called “untouchable” castes or Dalits are at the “bottom of the caste system.” "e term Dalit means oppressed or “ground down.” Some of the basti youth I!interviewed employed the discourse of being working class and Dalit interchangeably when they resisted and protested against the inequities that surrounded!them.

Despite the regional diversity in present- day caste practices, Jenkins (2003) writes that “caste continues to play a major role in the lives of many Indians, often having a profound e&ect on opportunities in terms of residence, educa- tion, occupations, social interaction and marriage” (p.!13). "e leadership of Babasaheb Ambedkar, who championed the cause of Dalit equality, provided the structural impetus to declare caste and casteism as illegal in the constitu- tion of India. A!mixture of colonial legacy, postcolonial policies, electoral poli- tics, and the powers of the state had led to the creation of the Scheduled Caste Order in the Indian constitution in 1950. "e Scheduled Caste Order of 1950 gave special allotment of seats to Dalits in the electoral legislative process

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and also created a'rmative action programs for jobs in the public sector and reserved seats for admission in universities and in most educational %elds.

What are the origins of the caste categories in India? How do these inform identity? It is important to contextualize how stories and interpretations of caste and class identities are connected to how youth think about collec- tive mobilization and social change. One of the earliest Aryan texts, the Rig Veda, provides the rationale for the four ranks of social categories that form the framework of the original caste system in India. According to Milner (1994), ancient Indian society was divided into four social categories or var- nas. "e Brahmans, perched at the highest rank, belong to the priest class; the Kshatriyas below them are described as warriors; the third- ranked Vashiyas are the farmers and merchants; and the Shudras, placed in the lowest category, are described as laborers and servants (Milner, 1994). "ose individuals who are born in the %rst three categories are designated as “twice born” (divijas). "ey are considered to be reborn when they take the vows at the initiation cer- emony to devote the %rst stages of their lives to studying the classical Hindu texts. "ose who are born in the Shudra caste are fated to be servants to the %rst three castes and unable to study such texts. "e yoking of caste catego- ries with professions and work is a unique feature of the Indian caste system. Khilnani (1997) argues that the roots of the varna system are not fully clear, but they seem to be derived from one of the hymns of Rig Veda, which iden- ti%es a cosmic giant named Purusha, who is known as a primeval male and whose sacri%ce created the!world.

"e maiming of the Purusha is recorded in the hymns through a rhetor- ical question:! “When they divided the Man, how many parts were made out of him? How do they describe his mouth, his two arms and thighs and feet?” (Khilnani, 1997, p.! 18). "e answer to this question in the hymn is that the Purusha’s mouth represents the Brahman caste, the arms symbol- ize the Kshatriya (warrior) caste, his thigh is identi%ed as the Vaishysa caste (merchant), and his feet represent the Sudras (servants). "e Manusmriti ("e Laws of Manu) codi%ed and consolidated the caste system, and it is dated to around 100 23. According to the Manusmriti, “one occupation only the lord prescribed to the Sudra, to serve meekly even these other three castes” (Milner, 1994, p.!47).

In Annihilation of Caste, Ambedkar (1971) reminds us about how “status power” was used to create speci%c social rules that were necessary for creat- ing and regulating the identity of what was referred to in pre- independent India as “depressed” classes or “untouchables.” He writes that “untouchables,” during the Peshwa rule of the Maratha Kingdom in the 16th century, were prevented from using public streets. Even if the shadow of an “untouchable” touched a Brahmin, it was considered to have the power of polluting the Hindu Brahmin. He points out that speci%c practices were enacted to consolidate

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the separation of the pure from the impure and the sacred from the profane. Ambedkar observes,

"e untouchable was required to have a black thread either on his wrist or on his neck as a sign or a mark to prevent Hindus from getting themselves polluted by his touch through mistake. In Poona, the capital of Peshwa, the untouchable was required to carry, strung from his waist, a broom to sweep away from behind the dust he treaded on lest a Hindu walking on the same should be polluted. In Poona, the untouchable was required to carry an earthen pot, hung in his neck wherever he went, for holding his spit lest his spit falling on earth should pollute a Hindu who might unknowingly happen to tread on it. (p.!39)

Gandhi, who coined the term Harijan (children of god) to refer to untouch- ables, believed in the abolition of caste and the removal of untouchability, but his proposed reforms were radically di&erent from that of Ambedkar (1971). For instance, he replied to Ambedkar’s ideas in Annihilation of Caste by stating that Dr.! Ambedkar had challenged the core principles of Hinduism and that caste had nothing to do with religion. In a response to Ambedkar’s speech on caste, Gandhi wrote (as cited in Ambedkar,!1971),

It is a custom whose origin I!do not know and do not need to know for the satis- faction of my spiritual hunger. But I!do know that it is harmful both to spiritual and national growth.!.!.!.!"e law of Varna teaches us that we have each one of us to earn our bread by following the ancestral calling. It de%nes not our rights but our duties.!.!.!.!"e calling of a Brahmin- spiritual teacher— and a scavenger are equal, and their due performances carries equal merit before God and at one time seems to have carried identical reward before man. (p.!119)

Gandhi’s letter directly stated that Ambedkar was engaging in a selective mis- reading of the classic texts, and he also insinuated that the texts that Ambedkar had used in his speech were not authentic. He also faulted Ambedkar for judg- ing the Hindu religion by its worst specimen and not its ideal representative. Gandhi’s foundation of radical social reform and his critique of modernity and industrial society were based on a village- based, self- sustainable society. His vision for India was very much tied to the Brahminical vision of Hinduism, in which technology and sexuality were viewed as entrapping human beings in desire (Omvedt, 2011). Gandhi found caste to be an immoral position, but he could not go along with Ambedkar’s suggestions of demolishing the struc- tural foundations of Hinduism that had in the %rst place given birth to caste categories.

Ambedkar (1971) argued that in order for caste to be abolished in India, the sacredness of the social order on which the caste system was founded had to be destroyed. He took aim at the destruction of the core classical texts that

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provided the initial basis of caste and thus wrote, “You must therefore destroy the sacredness and divinity with which Caste has become invested. In the last analysis, this means you must destroy the authority of the Shastras and the Vedas” (p.!93).

It would take many chapters to chart Ambedkar’s biography and political in#uence, so su'ce it to say here that he was born into a poor family of the Mahar caste, and growing up he su&ered the indignities of being an “untouch- able.” Ambedkar studied in an army cantonment school and then moved to Bombay to study at Elphinstone College in 1912. His educational achieve- ments drew the attention of the Maharaja Gaekwad of Baroda, who then gave him scholarship money to travel to the United States to obtain a PhD in polit- ical science from Columbia University and later to obtain law degrees from the London School of Economics and the London Bar (Dirks, 2001). Despite his brilliant educational achievements, he could not practice law in Baroda because he was subjected to continuous caste insults and discrimination; thus, he moved to Bombay to become a lecturer at a college and to practice law (Dirks,!2001).

Ambedkar’s foray into social reform began by taking up the cause of edu- cational access for “untouchables,” and he worked to address three other issues:! (1)! the abolition of work and labor associated with being a Mahar, (2)! the reform for having equal access to water for “untouchables,” and (3)! the campaign for granting untouchables permission to enter the tem- ple premises (Dirks, 2001). Ambedkar critiqued the foundation of caste by attacking the Brahminical aspects of Hinduism and described Brahmanism as a poison that had destroyed Hinduism. According to him, caste was based on the sacred rules of Hinduism and, thus, the foundations of the religion had to be destroyed. Ambedkar (1971) stated, “I have therefore, no hesita- tion in saying that such a religion must be destroyed and I!say, there is noth- ing irreligious in working for the destruction of such a religion” (p.! 105). Ambedkar is known as the architect of the Indian constitution, and in 1956 he announced his conversion to Buddhism; at approximately that time, he also converted more than a half million Dalit supporters to Buddhism or Buddha– dharma thorough a mass conversion ceremony in which his follow- ers took 22 sacred!vows.

In many slums across Pune city, photographs and statues of Ambedkar are a common sight. Gauri, whose story I!discussed previously, was a fervent fol- lower of Dr.!Ambedkar. One afternoon, I!sat with Gauri and her friend for a conversation about her life in Panchsheel basti. She told me that her caste is from the backward classes and that she does not believe in God but, rather, in the teachings of Dr.!Babasaheb Ambedkar:

Now see, in our faith we don’t believe in God as such. We believe in Dr.!Babasaheb Ambedkar. Our Baba has said all of you come together and study and do

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something. We live by his words and thoughts. We don’t feel that there is any- thing like this, though we think that there is God. But mostly we don’t believe in God. We don’t believe in God at all. We live by his principles.!.!.!.!All of us are from him only. "ere was discrimination against us, but we are here today because of him only. In our caste, he’s the only one who is so learned and has become a bar- rister. Only because of him today you and I!are talking. Otherwise these people wouldn’t have spoken!to!us.

Gauri said that Babasaheb had told the Dalits that “don’t make me a God, but use my teachings to %ght against oppression and brutality.” Her friend, Seema, who was also part of the conversation, commented that in the past the backward classes and the Dalits experienced systematic injustices, and it was only due to Dr.!Ambedkar that they feel they have some dignity!today:

As in %rst our religion was called Mahar Jat. Now it’s not Mahar, he (Ambedkar) gave us Bo Dharma/ DIKSHA on the 14th of October 1956. Since then we don’t believe in our caste, we don’t say that it’s Mahar! .! .! .! it’s Bo Dharma. We have done a great deal of study on it, no need to even say anything about it. Lot of study! We read their books and from those books we gain a little bit of knowl- edge. We’ve studied those books a lot. We had gone for Vipassana course one or two months back. Vipassana is part of Bo Dharma.

Gauri believed that Babasaheb’s story had given them the cultural narrative to resist the upper classes and the injustice that surrounded them. She also believed that many basti folk were capable of mobilizing to bring about change on both structural and psychological levels.

In other words, Babasaheb’s story not only induced aspirations in them but also gave them the tools to think about a better future for the families in the basti. Both Seema and Gauri had attended a free 10- day course in Vipassana meditation in Pune (which is now o&ered in centers throughout the world). "ey emphasized that meditation does not take them out of poverty, but it allows them to cope with the stress of daily life. Both of them believed that Ambedkar was responsible for %ghting for equal rights for the Dalits and the backward classes, and he gained all his “knowledge about the world” by study- ing abroad. Here is an instance in which Gauri applies her narrative capacity through Ambedkar’s story and her own spiritual development as a coun- terstory to her oppressive conditions. However, while Gauri and Seema can recognize and can articulate social injustice through the lens of Ambedkar’s philosophy, they are unable to realize its revolutionary potential due to the prevailing economic and social structural constraints. In contrast to Gauri’s narrative, most of the basti youth were reluctant to discuss caste. "ey saw themselves less through caste narratives and more through class- based hier- archies. Part of this reluctance stems from the fact that many of the basti

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dwellers would not necessarily be from Scheduled Caste categories but, rather, from the broader “Other Backward Classes” category.

To recognize and ameliorate the social and economic inequalities that con- tinued to persist despite the protective categories of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, the Indian government developed the category of Other Backward Classes (OBC) in 1980. "e category of OBC recognizes groups who have been systematically disadvantaged socially and economically. Consequently, religious minorities and various working- class and artisanal groups were included in this broader category. By employing the designation of OBC, a much larger swathe of the population is now recognized as being underprivileged in!India.

"e families in the Panchsheel basti labored in informal sectors. "ey worked in the construction and housing industries, service industry, or held jobs as security guards, garage mechanics, custodians, and janitors. Despite the changes in the caste system, social strati%cation continues to exist through the prism of caste and class in contemporary India. In urban India, many of the old caste- based occupations and professions have disappeared, and these populations have moved into doing degraded forms of modern labor. Some OBC farmers have become wealthy by selling their land and by modernizing the agricultural process. "e OBC category, then, is dynamic and at times politicized, with groups being included and removed based on whether they qualify as being structurally oppressed and disadvantaged.10

Ram Mahalingam, a cultural psychologist, has conducted several studies (see Mahalingam, 2007)!to show how marginalized caste groups in India cre- ate alternative cultural narratives to cope with their marginality. He argues that without access to structural power, it is di'cult for Dalits to transform the dominant social hierarchies in India. He writes,

Brahmin adults believed that caste identity would be transmitted from mother to o&spring, whereas Dalit adults believed that caste identity would be acquired through socialization. Being the dominant group in the caste hierarchy, it was to Brahmins’ advantage to believe in a caste identity %xed at birth, but Dalits resisted notions of caste identity as biologically transmitted. (p.!304)

Upper- caste groups such as Brahmins have used their power to selectively frame and shape their identity as normative, and thus privileged, while simul- taneously framing the identity of the Dalits as lower caste and inferior. "e Dalits do reinterpret and reframe the meanings of ethnicity that are assigned to them by the upper- caste Brahmins, but they do not have the power or the cultural capital to transform those meanings into social norms (Mahalingam, 2007). How do narratives of caste endure under neoliberal capitalism and practices of globalization? How does caste survive under neoliberal capitalism and globalized forms of multiculturalism? Natrajan (2012) notes that recent

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scholarship on caste suggests that there is decline in the application of the two central tenets of the caste system:! "ere is a weakening in the practice of “ritual hierarchy” and in the practices of “occupational hereditary” (p.!10). "e third tenet of caste refers to the mutual separation of caste identities. Natrajan notes that there are several reasons for the gradual erosion of the caste system. First, the British colonial rule undermined the economic founda- tion of a caste- based village economies. Second, there is a waning of religious notion of caste identity because of the implementation of law that emphasizes the non- legality of caste along with the passing of constitutional laws of res- ervation policies for reducing caste- based social inequalities. "ird, increasly lower- caste communities have moved out of their traditional occupations that were assigned to them. "is resistance has been fuelled by the spread of the message of the anti- caste movements and the active political engagement and mobilization from the Dalits. Natrajan writes that despite the caste system fading!away,

the declining power of the caste system has been noted to be matched by the rising signi%cance of caste identities in social and political life where caste- based marital practices endure, caste associations and communities #ourish, and caste has become by far the most fecund access of political mobilization for political parties in contemporary India. (p.!11, emphasis in original)

He reminds us that the new mechanisms of democracy, the language of liberal rights, and state- based protections given to minorities in contemporary India make it illegal to practice caste- based discrimination and stigmatization.

Although the hard forms of caste- based identities manifested through brutal forms of exploitation and ineradicable social inequality have weak- ened, there has been a continued expansion of the presence of caste in other spheres, such as labor markets, educational institutions, banking, housing, and marriage and family contexts. "erefore, Natrajan (2012) observes that a new paradox of identity with regard to caste has emerged, and now there is “castes without the caste system, casteism without traditional legitimacy” (p.! 11). "e process of culturalization is caste’s last triumph that obliterates Ambedkar’s vision of annihilating the structures of caste that were based in religious texts. Natrajan views the so- called “silent revolution” of the rise of the political power of marginalized groups as a democratization of caste rather than as a genuine structural makeover of the legacy of power and pol- itics associated with casteism. Natrajan asserts that “culturalization of caste sustains a powerful illusion that caste can be tolerated by, accommodated within, or even facilitates the building of deep democracy, or that the annihila- tion of caste is no longer a necessary condition for democracy in India” (p.!8). When caste is constructed as culture through the process of culturalization, it promotes a type of multiculturalism where caste identities become part of a

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mosaic of other types of diverse identities that are organized along language, religion, region, and tribe, and it elevates caste to a benign category founded on di&erence rather than on discrimination, injustice, and inequality.

What I!found in the narratives of youth and families in the basti was that caste categories were being mixed with class- based cultural identities. For instance, as mentioned previously, youth talked about themselves as kaam karne wale log (working- class people) and di&erentiated themselves from the hi-% class. Vinod’s narrative powerfully expresses the focus on class identity and lack of economic mobility as a discursive category.

VINOD:%GLOBALIZATION IS A KHOKLA /EMPTY0%TERM

I interviewed Vinod, a 24- year- old male, in July 2015, %rst in a focus group and then individually. He felt constrained in the focus group discussion and wanted to be able to speak freely, so he came to the interview with two of his trusted friends. Vinod began by telling me that one of the main problems in his life is that he did not receive a proper education. He and his three sisters lost their father when he was 7!years old. Vinod’s mother worked as a maid- servant, washing dishes and utensils at wealthy people’s banglas (big houses) in Kalyani Nagar and Koregaon Park in Pune. She would cook food in their bangla and work as a bai (maidservant), and that is how she supported her four children and provided for the education of her three didis (sisters). She had spent 40! years of her life working as a maidservant in various houses nearby. One of Vinod’s sisters, Sarika, also started working as a bai when she was 9! years old; she simultaneously went to school, returning home to visit her family once a month. Sarika’s employers were abusive and controlling, but she still continued to work doing jhadu-pocha (sweeping and cleaning) until she was 17!years!old.

Vinod lost interest in studying further and dropped out of school. He started doing odd jobs and worked in a low- end job at a catering business as a server at weddings. Later, he found a housekeeping job in Mira hospital making Rs. 5000 ($90) a month. He often worked three shifts in a row to get overtime pay. He mainly did patient care that involved cleaning, bath- ing, and feeding patients and taking orders from the management to do all kinds of menial and dirty jobs that no one else would do. "e job of a “ward boy” is one of the lowest- level jobs in an Indian hospital and requires intense physical labor. After 2! years, Vinod left Mira hospital and joined the new Pemberton Asia Hospital, one of the largest hospitals in Pune, as a ward boy. His salary increased to Ra. 10,000 ($180), and Vinod believed that the pres- ence of multinational companies was bene%tting the basti log. "ere were new employment opportunities, but he added that the wages were relatively meager compared to what the management personnel made. "e high cost

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of living and ever- increasing in#ation canceled out any minor raises in sala- ries and wages of these unskilled labor jobs. Vinod had lived all his life in the basti and had seen the impact of neoliberal globalization around him as new call centers, restaurants, residential apartments, and deluxe housing were built around his neighborhood. He had a theory of how globalization worked in!Pune:

"e real rich around here are not from proper Pune. "ese outsiders who come to Pune are wealthy people and they strike deals with local people, wealthy people and they look out for their mutual interests. So the local rich people are becoming richer as new %nancial capital is coming in. "e di&erence between the rich families and the families living in the basti is that when a child is born in a rich and educated family, the %rst question the parents ask is:!“What should I! make him?” Should I! make him an engineer or something else?” "en right from the beginning the upper class folks will make sure that the entire educa- tional apparatus is put in place for their child so he is on the path to becoming an engineer. In our basti, we also start out with big ambitions for our children but then we realize that we don’t have the resources. We want our children to be lawyers and doctors and then we tell them to start doing labor jobs or we ask them to scale down their ambitions due to lack of English education and good schooling.

Vinod argued that the government- sponsored, free Marathi Medium schools (vernacular schools run by the municipalities and taught in the local language Marathi) do not provide the right kind of education. "e teachers in the non- English medium schools, according to Vinod, did not care whether students showed up to class or had done their homework. Many children from the basti, he observed, often told their parents that they went to school while they were really spending time in parks or other public spaces smoking or drinking alcohol. He explained,

"e educational system for basti kids is corrupt.!.!.!.!If there are 100 people serv- ing in a particular government job, 75 of them are thieves. You just see the case of the government- sponsored Marathi schools. "ere is money allocated for free books, but the children never get any %nancial help. Bishop’s school (a well- known English- speaking school for the upper class and elites), on the contrary, spends about 30,000 Rupees ($500) a year for a child only for transport. "e curriculum is in English and the students are highly disciplined with their hair combed, ironed uniforms, and polished shoes. But if you go to Marathi school, you are not going to succeed, as there is no emphasis on education or discipline. "ese Bishop kids get!all the facilities and a good package with teachers that care for their students. Once the child comes home from these good schools the par- ents speak in English and say “Hi,!Baby.”

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Vinod noted that the class di&erences between the rich and middle- class youth versus the urban poor youth have always existed, but now the basti youth have aspirations and they are not willing to accommodate to their station in life. He stated that the youth from the basti today are exposed to television, media, and %lms and they want what the upper- class, hi- % youth have. "ey have dreams about doing well and having a house and a car, but hi- % people view the basti youth as chota nazariya (inferior people).

Vinod continued that their (the basti people) lives are full of qurbani (sac- ri%ces) at every turn. Vinod and the two boys who accompanied him for the interview emphasized that one of the most di'cult issues facing young men in the basti pertains to %nding a “right girl” to marry. He said that young women from the basti want “to see” and marry a boy who has a good salary of Rupees 30,000 ($500) a month, a decent house and transportation, whereas most young men do not have any of these amenities. He laughed, “I had two girlfriends but I!could not provide them with these amenities so they married other boys who were more well to do. I! have the ability to patao (to court) girls for 2 to 3!years, but somehow they don’t stay with me. "en they go with someone!else.”

Rajesh said that one di&erence between youth from the upper- class fami- lies and the basti youth is that basti youth do not have any privacy. Most of the homes in the basti are small single rooms with an attached small kitchen, and in some homes there is a toilet. He lamented that there are many homes in the basti that have two brothers living with their parents and often one brother will get married and the newly wedded husband and wife have to make adjust- ments. He asked me, “What do new couples want to do? "ey want to be inti- mate, but they don’t have privacy!here.”

Rajesh elaborated that the couples are sharing a one- room space with so many others that they cannot have personal conversations freely. "e couples cannot go outside and have sex, and they cannot have it easily at home either. If couples go out of their house to be intimate, there are closed- circuit TVs all over the place and they will get caught. He said that most people in the basti live in a 10 4 10- foot space, and sometimes there are more than %ve fam- ily members sleeping and living in such a small space so the young couples become frustrated. Rajesh argued that the urban poor struggle with basic needs of living, such as water, food, and education, but he also warned me not to overlook the privacy and psychological needs of families that live in crammed spaces:

If the unmarried younger brother goes out for 15 minutes then the married brother may have a chance to be with his wife to be intimate, but if he comes back quickly then the young married couple cannot do anything. Sometimes parents understand and give the newly wedded couple privacy but other members don’t understand so the couple becomes frustrated. "e wives want

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nail polish, a TV, and they make demands on the husband and then the older parents also make demands on their son to get groceries and their medicine. "is one earning member feels the pressure and cannot satisfy everyone’s demands. Often young newly married men %nd that they are not sexually sat- is%ed and nor are they getting any family support. Even when husband and wife are sleeping next to each other in the night they have to whisper to each other. "ere is no privacy. We have to worry about a lot of things. Life is full of qurbani here and there is danger at every corner.!.!.!.!"e young generation that are a$uent don’t have this problem. "ey have sex in their house and in cars and we have seen that their cars are dancing when they are having sex in the back of the!car.

Rajesh told me that sociocultural changes in Indian society at large have lifted taboos about sex and sexuality in the basti. Unlike the older generation of the basti, Rajesh said sexual intimacy and privacy is given importance in the younger generation. He emphasized that it is not just married young men who do not have privacy for being intimate with their wives. Other young men from the basti also have to go through a major ordeal to be intimate with their girlfriends.

"e young boys often have to organize an “encounter” with their respective girlfriends weeks in advance by calling six or seven of their friends, and they usually have to %nd a friend who works in an o'ce on a Saturday and is willing to give them a room for about 30 minutes. Rajesh told me that the basti youth have to have “hurried sex” as the friend who has arranged for a room in the o'ce is on the lookout for his or her boss and keeps shouting, “Hurry up, the boss might be coming!soon.”

Vinod stated that today’s yuva pidi (younger generation) from the basti did not focus much on caste distinctions, but instead they believed that social class di&erences in urban Indian prevented the basti youth from achieving social mobility. He reiterated his aspirations to own an apartment and have a married life, but he believed that the path to achieving his goals was %lled with challenges that were going to be di'cult to overcome. "e multinational companies, call centers, and large malls, Vinod observed, provided employ- ment for the youth in basti, but the wages were low and the conditions were exploitative. He noted that “we are impacted by the lifestyle of the a$uent youth and we copy their way of speaking and dressing but we are not like them.” His generation, he commented, believes that globalization or progress is a khokla (empty and meaningless) term because not much has changed in their lives. He stated that the government, the politicians, and the elite and educated families are not going to assist the poor. "e younger generation who live in urban bastis will have to rise up by themselves. Vinod believed that members of his generation were ready to take charge of their future but they will have to %nd their own ways to ful%ll their dreams. He believed that the

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basti people had a shared bonding of pyaar aur qurbani (love and sacri%ce) that the upper- class and the rich did not have. "ey— basti youth— faced hard- ships, he argued, but they knew how to maximize their happiness in condi- tions of scarcity. Vinod believed that the basti families’ ability to cope with the misfortunes of their lives made them morally superior to their more a$uent neighbors.

GLOBALIZATION, NARRATIVE, AND THE%URBAN POOR: THE POLITICS OF%RECOGNITION AND REDISTRIBUTION

"e imagery and tone of the youth narratives presented I!this chapter are radi- cally di&erent from those of the upper- and middle- class youth that I!analyzed in Chapters! 3 and 4.! Panchsheel basti, as I! noted previously, is located amid two of the most a$uent neighborhoods in!Pune.

I characterize the stories of the basti youth as dispossessed because they are shaped by and connected to the possessions of the dominant class who live nearby and the unequal structural conditions of their basti. "ese stories reveal that globalization, by and large, has exacerbated the structural inequal- ity in the slum settlements in Pune. Structural inequality refers to a system that creates and perpetuates an unequal distribution of material and psycho- logical privileges, such as access to health care, education, and employment; permanent housing; clean water and sanitation; environmentally safe spaces; leisure; recreation; and dignity. "e system creates a societal condition in which the valuable material, symbolic, and psychological privileges are une- qually distributed across nations, groups, abilities, categories, castes, classes, races, and gender.

"e narratives of Aman, Zainab, Wasim, Ravi, Gauri, Vinod, and others show us their remarkable ability to plan, negotiate, aspire, and have voice, but they are unable to mobilize their capacities into objective advantage for themselves. "e youth’s stories in the basti are dialogically connected to economic and cultural global #ows in surrounding neighborhoods and the structural realities of the slums— insu'ciency of access to toilets, tem- porary housing, and lack of %nancial and cultural resources. Lack of power to make changes disproportionately impacts the stories and voices of the youth living in slums. "e capacity to aspire is not just an individual trait or a psychological voice but, rather, a narrative capacity, which is unevenly distributed in society.

It is important to clarify that the “capacity to aspire” is based on the assumption that the poor have the capacity to wish, plan, aspire, and voice their needs. However, part of being in poverty is having reduced opportunities to implement these practices and create experiences of favorable outcomes. Taylor (1992) writes that the “crucial feature of human life is its fundamental

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dialogical character” (p.! 32, emphasis in original)— we create and de%ne our identity in dialogue and struggle with our signi%cant others. He writes,

"us my discovering my identity doesn’t mean that I!work it out in isolation, but that I! negotiate it through dialogue, partly overt, partly internal, with others. "at is why the development of an ideal of inwardly generated identity gives a new importance to recognition. My own identity crucially depends on my dia- logical relations with others. (p.!32)

Taylor’s (1992) notion of the “politics of recognition” is based on the idea that we have an ethical obligation to give dignity and rights to others in both the private and the public sphere. If our identities are shaped by “recognition or its absence” from real and imagined others, dominant others, and famil- iar others, then “nonrecognition or misrecognition can in#ict harm, can be a form of oppression, imprisoning someone in a false, distorted, and reduced mode of being” (p.!25).

"is notion of recognition gives political and moral power to “psycholog- ical” concepts of tolerance, intercultural understanding, and dignity. If we conceive of the urban poor as a community of persons who are embedded in particular class and cultural practices through which they have been made invisible, erased, and marginalized, then we have to %rst begin by “recogniz- ing” the conditions in which they have been placed. We need to recognize the historical and social sources that give their stories and identities meaning. However, giving “recognition” or giving equal dignity to the urban poor in the dialogical equation is only a partial!step.

We must make sure that cultural recognition of their stories and lived experience can also guarantee them access to power, basic human rights, and equitable redistribution of resources. Beyond recognizing the urban poor, we have to %nd ways to strengthen the capacities to create conditions that culti- vate their “voice” and their narrative capacity in political debates around pov- erty and welfare so they can shape their future (Appadurai, 2013; Sen, 1999). Appadurai writes that just as human beings use categories to describe them- selves as belonging to a certain group or place, poor people also see them- selves as belonging to a class or a group in their societies. He is not advocating the thesis that the urban poor youth live in a “culture of poverty” but, rather, that they have deep cultural and economic understanding of how their world works. "e urban poor often have depleted sources and capital when it comes to negotiating their terms of recognition.

"e basti youth are not just people who re#ect the condition of poverty but, rather, they constitute a social group who are only partly de%ned by statistics and government/ UN/ o'cial measures. "ey are self- re#exive and aware of how their narratives are shaped by belonging to a particular cultural group or class. What is the relationship between culture, narrative, and poverty?

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First, members of poor communities can express their relationship to these norms through resistance, irony, distance, and cynicism. "is ironic sense allows them to maintain some dignity despite their experiences of marginal- ity and oppression. Second, the poor also demonstrate compliance by express- ing “deep moral attachment” to the cultural narrative practices that directly “supports their degradation” (Appadurai, 2013, p.! 185). Appadurai cites the example of lower- caste groups in India who comply by the demeaning rules and caste practices such as ideas about fate, caste duty, rebirth, and social hier- archy. "e practices are shaped by their moral beliefs about their social order, and their narratives of personhood are also acquired from these practices. As a consequence, Appadurai notes that the poor frequently %nd themselves in a position in which they are prompted to follows norms, stories, and practices that diminish their dignity, exacerbate their inequality, and worsen their abil- ity to access basic amenities and goods. Appadurai clari%es this!point:

When I! refer to operating under adverse terms of recognition, I! mean that in recognizing those who are wealthy, the poor permit the existing and cor- rupt standing of local and national elites to be further bolstered and repro- duced.! .! .! .! "e poor are recognized, but in ways that ensure minimum change in terms of redistribution. So, to that extent that poverty is indexed by weak terms of recognition for the poor, intervention to positively a&ect these terms is a crucial priority. (p.!187)

Narrative psychology has an important role to play in both understand- ing the stories of the basti youth and showing how they are embedded in the larger narratives of globalization and a$uence. We can gain insights about youth identity formation in the basti by examining how both acts of recogni- tion and acts of redistribution comingle in their narratives. "at is, just hav- ing the narrative voice to express one’s aspirations or desire is not enough. "e poor have to be given the tools to transform their narrative voice into a cultural voice so they can mobilize change not just through individualized, abstract, universal democratic principles but also through their collective par- ticipation. Appadurai (2013) explains:

Because for voice to take e&ect, it must engage in social, political, and economic issues in terms of ideologies, doctrines, and norms that are widely shared and credible, even by the rich and powerful. Furthermore, voice must be expressed in terms of actions and performances that have local force!.!.!.!as the poor seek to strengthen their voices as a cultural capacity, they will need to %nd those levelers of metaphor, rhetoric, organization, and public performance that will work best in their cultural world. And when they do work, as we have seen with various movements in the past, they change the terms of recognition, indeed the cultural framework itself. (p.!186)

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"us, for “empowerment” to take e&ect in Panchsheel basti, the youth’s narra- tive voices must be imbued with local meanings of consensus building, imple- mentation of policies, and grass- roots mobilization. What follows from the linking of culture and narrative with poverty is that the concept of aspiration gets removed from the individual cognitive realm and is created in relation to the larger collective life of self– other relationships.

NOTES

1. "e 2012 United Nations’ “Millennium Development Goals Report” (United Nations Development Programme, 2012)!states that 626!million people in India do not have access to a toilet and practice what is called “open defecation.” Every day, millions of women and girls in India experience teasing, sexual harassment, stalking, violent assault, and rape when they go out to defecate in open %elds, in bushes, and in gutters on the!road.

2. "e young participants who were not well- versed with the English language were aware of the word “globalization” as a phenomenon and translated it as naya zamana, meaning a new era or new society, or pragati, which means progress.

3. Osho Rajneesh, a well- known Indian philosopher and guru, became famous throughout the world in the 1970s for his radical views on sexuality, marriage, God, and the purpose of life. By the 1980s, he had a strong following in the West. When I! was growing up in Pune, he was called Acharaya Rajneesh or Bhagwan Rajneesh, and his disciples wore maroon- or orange- colored robes with a mala (beaded necklace) and were frequently seen near the “Rajneesh Ashram” that was located in Koregaon!Park.

4. "e city of Pune was much smaller when I! was in college; it resembled a small town, and there were fewer a$uent areas. Koregaon Park was typically associated with “old money” people, and the “camp area” was associated with the “nouveau riche.” "at distinction does not apply any longer because global investments in Pune and the residential boom have signi%cantly altered the geography of the city, expanding zones of a$uence of the super- rich.

5. "e Pune Central Mall near Bund Garden, which I!used to pass frequently when I!was doing %eldwork in Pune, displayed a sign that read “Shop, Eat, Celebrate.” "ere was a perpetual “Happiness Sale” on display near the entrance of the mall. Life- size photos of young— mostly Euro- American— models were displayed both in the interiors and on exteriors of the stores. Brands such as Calvin Klein, Adidas, Nike, Luis Phillips, Allen Solly, and Peter England were being marketed to the growing a$uent and aspiring middle classes of India. "e advertisements typ- ically displayed mostly pictures of young Euro- American male and female models. One of my participants somewhat ironically asked me what would happen if all the US malls suddenly displayed only Indian models.

6. Much of urban planning and future development projects that are undertaken by the Municipal Corporation in Pune do not include the slum settlements. "e local NGO, Shelter Associates, has undertaken extensive poverty mapping and has found that it is extremely rare for the slum settlements to be integrated in o'cial planning discussions. "eir projects have documented that even when the slums in questions are going to be impacted through the construction of bridges, roads, industries, and so on, the families from the basti are rarely included in discussions

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or dialogue initiated by the local government. It is rare that the city’s slum settle- ments are considered in major proposals, and the Municipal Corporation plans for slum settlements through haphazard, piecemeal projects. "ere is no integrated inclusive approach to planning for the whole city. A!large part of the problem is inadequate information about the poor. Reliable and comprehensive information about slums, their locations, and their population is needed as a basis for ensuring that planning works for all citizens, not just those people who live outside!slums.

7. Water logging was used to describe the frequent #ooding that occurred near their houses during monsoons. "e rainwater often #ooded their dwellings because the government did not provide any services for water removal or for erecting barri- ers that would divert the #ow of water to other!areas.

8. As I! was writing the %rst draft of this chapter in May 2014, the press in India reported the rape of two girls. "e newspapers were reporting that two cousins, aged 14 and 15!years, from the Katra Sadatganj village in Badaun district of the state of Uttar Pradesh went out after dusk to the nearby %elds. "ey were search- ing for a secluded spot to relieve themselves because they did not have a toilet at home. "at evening, these two girls were gang raped and murdered. "eir bodies were found hung to a mango tree, in a nearby %eld, by their pink and green heads- carves. "at same evening, Baburam, the father of one of the girls, had set out to inspect his crops, which were close to the mango tree, when he heard screams. He was carrying a #ashlight because there was no electricity. "e transformer in the village was malfunctioning and had not been repaired for 8!days. He reported to the newspaper, Indian Express, “I was walking back when I!heard the screams of two girls. I!#ashed my torch around but couldn’t see anything at %rst. "en I!saw movement, and Pappu Yadav and three other men. "ey were dragging one of my nieces by the hair.” Baburam intervened, but he retreated when the young men threatened to kill him with a handgun. Sohan Lal, the brother of Baburam and the father of one of the girls, went to the police, but they refused to investigate the matter. Several hours later, a policeman called Lal and told him, “Go to the mango trees, the body of your daughter is there.” What the two teenagers encountered as they were searching for a place to defecate is an experience that many young women from the basti spoke about in their interviews.

9. "e multiplex cinema halls began to be built in the mid- 1990s in many cities, and these theaters show movies on 3– 15 screens. "ese theaters have mall- style food courts, arcades, and stores. "e ticket prices are usually very high, so only middle- and upper- class!Indians can a&ord to watch movies in these multiplexes.

10. For instance, there is controversy about the Jats being considered an OBC group because they are viewed as a relatively prosperous community. Recently, the Patel community has agitated for being considered an OBC group, despite the fact that they are a relatively successful community of entrepreneurs.