• ICT and education

ICT and education

Is education really the key to a better life? Many people in north India are finding that education is not necessarily a route to a better life, and they remain marginalised from employment. Extra schooling may not expand freedoms when inequalities are already deep-rooted.

The book, ‘Degrees Without Freedom’, describes the struggles faced by educated young men in the state of Uttar Pradesh to gain work and respect. It draws on ethnographic research with men from the Jat middle-ranked Hindu caste, from the Chamar caste of Dalit ‘untouchables’ and Muslims. The research shows that formal systems of education fail to challenge their marginalised existence, instead of giving them a way out.

The authors describe men who are much better educated than their parents. They have been raised to expect paid employment but have spent their twenties searching in vain for secure jobs. Uttar Pradesh shows one of the contradictions of globalisation: at a time when increasing numbers of people who were formerly excluded from mainstream schooling have recognised its empowering possibilities, many of the opportunities to benefit from education are disappearing.

The research shows how young men are differently equipped to manage prolonged unemployment. A rapidly privatising education market and corrupt practices in the competition for secure jobs have allowed rural elite families to obtain privileged access to the best schooling and employment. Most Chamars and Muslims have either been excluded from secondary school altogether, have received devalued qualifications, or had job applications rejected because they were unable to pay bribes.

The authors point to some benefits of education, even for those who remain unemployed on a long term basis. Education offers key skills, a measure of social respect, and better knowledge of local government. But the authors also describe the uncertain social outcomes of widespread educated unemployment, as these vary by caste, class and religion:

• Jats may build connections with upper caste Hindus and use their inherited wealth to obtain alternative employment in services, business or agriculture.
• Some unemployed Chamars have entered politics alongside powerful Dalits. Most, however, have no interest in organised politics.
• Many Muslims seek respect outside secular office work, using social links to enter Muslim-run craft workshops or religious work. Yet efforts to reinforce educated Islamic masculinity have become more problematic as a result of anti-Muslim prejudice and the ‘war on terror’.
• Some young men simply wander around villages and label their activity as mere “timepass” (passing time).

Many educated young Jat, Muslim and Chamar men blame education for their ‘useless’ status. Their parents resent having spent so much time and money providing them with an education and parents also worry that young men’s idleness sets a bad moral example. Many Chamar parents urge their sons to seek agricultural labouring work. Muslim and Jat parents who had been able to fund extended periods of education for their sons may still have the resources necessary to finance “timepass cultures”.

The authors suggest the need to be wary of the assumption – most associated with the work of Amartya Sen – of the potential of education to transform lives. It is important to:

• recognise the role of schooling systems in reproducing inequality
• understand the way marginalised young men question the value of education and get frustrated with their career prospects
• see rural education as a contradictory resource, providing marginalised young men with certain ‘freedoms’, but also drawing them more tightly into systems of inequality
• understand why parents may change their education strategies, wanting to take sons out of school as soon as they have received basic education.

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