Timepass: Youth, Class, and the Politics of Waiting in India

233 Pages·2010·1.693 MB·English

by  Jeffrey, Craig

Timepass

T i m e p a s s
Youth, Class, and the
Politics of Waiting
in India
Craig Jeffrey
stanford university press
Stanford, California
stanford University press
stanford, California
©2010 by the Board of Trustees of the
Leland stanford Junior University
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system with-
out the prior written permission of stanford University press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-publication Data
Jeffrey, Craig.
Timepass : youth, class, and the politics of waiting in india / Craig
Jeffrey.
p. cm.
includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8047-7073-6 (cloth : alk. paper) —
isbn 978-0-8047-7074-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. young men—india—meerut—social conditions. 2. Unemployed
youth—india—meerut. 3. College students—political activity—india—
meerut. 4. middle class—india—meerut. i. Title.
hq799.8.i42j44 2010
305.242'108694109542—dc22
2010011335
printed in the United states of america on acid-free, archival-quality
paper
Typeset at stanford University press in 10.5/15 garamond
Contents
acknowledgments vii
1 india Waiting 1
2 Cultivating fields: The rise and resilience of a rural middle Class 37
3 Life at the Crossroads: Timepass 72
4 Collective student protest 103
5 fixing futures: improvised politics 135
6 Conclusions 171
Bibliography 193
index 213

acknowledgments
I am very grateful to the villagers and students in Uttar Pradesh who feature
in this book for their time and friendship. I will always remember the hos-
pitality and warmth of many of the people with whom I worked. I am also
most grateful to Dr. OP Bohra for his assistance in the field in  and .
OP’s wisdom and energy contributed a great deal to the research. The field-
work upon which this book is based was primarily funded by the Economic
and Social Research Council (R).
In India I am indebted to a host of people for their advice and guidance,
especially Amita Baviskar, Radhika Chopra, Prem Chowdhry, Krishna Kumar,
Satendra Kumar, Satish Kumar, Jagpal Singh, Kanchan Singh, Rajni Palri-
wala, Saraswathi Raju, Nandini Sundar and Patricia Uberoi. Thank you, too,
Katrine Danielsen in Delhi and Uncle and Auntie Verma in Meerut for your
generosity and kindness.
I have benefited a great deal from conversations with colleagues and
friends in Cambridge, Edinburgh, Seattle and Oxford since  as well as
from discussions with other scholars at conferences and seminar events. I
would particularly like to thank the following people for their ideas, assistance
and encouragement: in the UK, Harriet Bulkeley, Sharad Chari, Shana Cohen,
Nandini Gooptu, Thomas Hansen, Barbara Harriss-White, Patricia Jeffery,
Roger Jeffery, Alex Jeffrey, Jens Lerche, Emma Mawdsley, Fiona McConnell,
Linda McDowell, Filippo Osella, James Sidaway and Philippa Williams; in
the US: Paul Brass, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Lawrence Cohen, Veena Das, Vi-
viii acknowledgments
nay Gidwani, Ann Grodzins Gold, Patrick Heller, Victoria Lawson, Katha-
ryne Mitchell, Anand Pandian, Sarah Pinto, Priti Ramamurthy, Paul Robbins,
“Shivi” Sivaramakrishnan, Mathew Sparke, Susan Wadley, Steven Wilkinson,
Kathleen Woodward and Anand Yang. I would also like to thank Dena Auf-
seeser, Colin McFarlane, Jane Dyson, Deborah Durham, Rowan Ellis, John
Harriss, David Jeffrey and Stephen Young for their close readings of draft
versions of the manuscript and for discussing the ideas in the book. Jennifer
Hele and Stacy Wagner at Stanford University Press helped a great deal in the
preparation of the manuscript. It was a great privilege to have been guided by
Stuart Corbridge for my doctoral dissertation in Cambridge in the s.
This book would not have been written without the love and kindness of
my family, especially my wife, Jane Dyson. The book is dedicated to our two
children, Florence and Finn.
Timepass