Abstract
Drawing from media analysis and supplemental ethnographic work in Tamil Nadu, India, between 2016 and 2020, this chapter analyzes the school uniform and its discursive functions in cleanliness-oriented campaigns in the region. As a site of everyday performance and visualization of modernity, the school uniform is a signifier of different childhood ideals within the region’s cleanliness discourses. Contrasting the figuration of the child in school uniform within public health campaigns and a product advertisement campaign, I argue that they mark domestic and embodied cleanliness to project differentiation of class and aspirational futures onto their child protagonists. The differentiation further surfaces in the gendered reproductive labor and domestic affordances surrounding the child. I observe that, alternatively, environmental cleanliness campaigns, which predominantly critique middle-class practices, seek to portray generalized children-in-school as demanding their right to a safe future and hence embed class-differentiated schooling within a symbolic realm of generational divide.
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Notes
- 1.
Stiff collar, mandatory in boys’ uniforms, is considered difficult to clean since it accumulates sweat.
- 2.
Schools characterized as “mainstream” in the region, over “alternative” schooling systems such as traditional paatashalas, schools for differences in ability, or elite schools that did not implement the more prevalent disciplinary regimes.
- 3.
In 2019, the Tamil Nadu Director of State Education issued a circular to district officers disallowing students wearing colored threads as caste-markers, which was later revoked. The education minister clarified that this was due to the absence of any complaints of such threads. A heated debate ensued in the media regarding the “cleansing” caste politics in the state’s public schools, informed by the idea that modern schools ought to be free of any markers of caste apart from those towards affirmative action.
- 4.
Students and teacher’s caste identities within schools were usually hinted, albeit unreliably, through the kind of language one spoke or in discussions of food or ritual codes. Apart from these school’s policies, students and teachers implemented different caste identity modification/neutralizing strategies in their everyday language practices. Dwelling on another person’s, in particular a student’s caste identity by an adult was often perceived as an act of aggression.
- 5.
- 6.
TSC including Sanitation and Hygiene Education (SSHE) in Central Rural Sanitation Programme (1986) frames children as receptive targets and community champions (GoI, 2007). Similar perception of children within hygiene education in late-colonial sanitary programming has been critiqued as a diversion from necessary structural investments (Harrison, 1994) and attempts by urban middle class to produce a field of hygienic difference through “social service” and philanthropy (Kidambi, 2011; Watt, 2011) undermining everyday lives and labor of their target communities.
- 7.
Centre for Policy Research. Accountability Initiatives, Budget Briefs, Sbm, Goi 2016–17, Vol8/Issue2. URL: http://accountabilityindia.in/sites/default/files/pdf_files/SBM.pdf.
- 8.
Deep, Aroon. (2017). “Swachh Bharat spent Rs 530 crore on publicity in three years—but little on grassroots awareness”. Scroll.in. November 22, 2017, URL: https://scroll.in/article/857030/centre-spent-rs-530-crores-in-3-years-on-swachh-bharat-publicity-but-has-little-to-show-for-it.
- 9.
Some teachers also discussed sessions in private schools conducted by Proctor and Gamble on menstrual management using disposable pads.
- 10.
Based on data in https://src.udiseplus.gov.in/ (Accessed April 2021).
- 11.
Apart from attire, these manifest in features like the built structures of the home or the language spoken by the parents.
- 12.
As a heuristic category.
- 13.
Social Samosa. (2018). “Daag Acche Hai—A Lowe Lintas brainchild that changed the face of Surf Excel’s brand identity”. https://www.socialsamosa.com/2018/02/surf-excel-daag-acche-hai-campaign/.
- 14.
D’Souza, Johnny. (2010). “Surf Excel LBFM TVC”. Johnny D’Souza. Nov 26, 2010. 1:49 min YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0gg2Lqkt2A.
Surf Excel. (2016). “Are your kids #ReadyforLife?”. Apr 26, 2016. 2:33 min YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-jPrQzvE9E.
- 15.
Surf Excel. (2011). ‘Surf Excel-Chicken Champion—LBFM 3’. June 16, 2011. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eua77uu9FpI.
- 16.
Also discussed by Sarah Hodges (2018).
- 17.
2D Entertainment. (2019). ‘Maatralaam! |Suriya |Harish Ram LH | LH | 2D Entertainment | Knack Studios’. Tamilnadu Pollution Control Board. Mar 8, 2019. 4:27 min. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgbKp8RkGUc&t=206s.
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Kannan, S.B. (2023). Clean Bodies in School Uniform: Childhood and Media Discourses of Cleanliness in Tamil Nadu, India. In: Dar, A., Kannan, D. (eds) Childhood and Youth in India. Studies in Childhood and Youth. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31820-7_5
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