Epilogue

Abstract

Youth in India stand at the edge of an uncertain modernity that seeks to take them, by leaps and bounds, into a “modern” throbbing world of fast movement, flashing images, and imagined opportunities amid political upheavals and an uncertain future. Bollywood cinema, and endless television “serials,” ceaselessly enumerate the virtues of a life of wealth, luxury, and social status. They thus play a crucial role in the communication of this modernity and fuel aspirations for a life that appears to be close at hand, within reach, and as accessible as to the actors on the screen. At the same time, this so-called modernity constrains youth by its very condition as India’s youth-in-waiting, mired in poverty, trapped by caste, class, and gender prejudice, inhibited by lack of social capital, face unemployment and further deprivation, marginalization, and exclusion. These two dimensions simultaneously represent the social reality of India with an enormous youth population (41 percent in 2001) including those who never manage to complete secondary education, or if they do, rarely find employment after secondary or tertiary education. What then we may ask has been the benefit of reaching out to India’s millions through the recent initiatives of the state such as the Right to Education Act (2009)? And other state-driven and civil-society initiatives over the past two decades? We may wonder whether or not there been a substantial difference in the opportunities that education has opened up to its beneficiaries. The real question that remains however is whether education has enabled youth to shape their futures differently from the past.

The first section of the epilogue is by Meenakshi Thapan and the second section is by Poonam Batra.