I'm delighted that we've been joined today by Professor Craig Jeffrey from the United Kingdom. Craig is professor of Development Geography at the University of Oxford and also a fellow at St. John's College in Oxford. He is a social scientist and a geographer by discipline. >> That's right. >> But I think of you so much more in terms of the disciplines of contemporary politics- >> Right. >> Of ethnography- >> Right. >> Of anthropology- >> Yes. >> It seems to me anything but geography. >> Sure. >> But, Craig, I know that you have published very widely in the area of youth, of class, of development in India, in particular. >> Right. >> Which is what I'm hoping you will be able to help unpack a little for us, today. >> Sure, yeah. >> And, in particular, your book Timepass, Youth, Class, and the Politics of Waiting in India, I found a really fascinating challenge in a sense to that notion of how countries and individuals might benefit from this notion of the demographic dividend. And as we know with the immense scale of India's young people, the, if you like, the theory, the rhetoric is that if countries like India are able to educate their young people and then employ them, that not only is that of economic benefit for the young people themselves and a social good, but obviously, a mechanism to promote national development and wealth for India. >> Right, right. >> But your work really challenges that and suggests that it's not quite that straightforward. Can you tell us a little bit about your findings? >> Well, part of the context for the work is the extraordinary demographic importance of youth in contemporary India. 60% of India's population are under the age of 30. One in ten people in the world is an Indian youth. So that incredibly important in sheer terms of numbers. In 2015 in India there are going to be by some calculations between 90 and 115 million Indians coming on to the job market in the next ten years. And the study that I did, it was between 2004 and 2005 in a city about 50 miles northeast of Delhi called Meerut in the western part of Uttar Pradesh state, was looking at neither very rich sections of this youth population, nor the very poor, but those who are lower middle class, who had come from villages to study in a provincial university in Meerut, who aspire to getting middle ranking jobs in government service or jobs possibly in IT companies or corporations moving into India. And they studied usually a degree first of all in Meerut, an undergraduate degree, and then tried often to go on and get further qualifications. They were quite successful at getting those qualifications but couldn't make the next step into secure employment because the economic change that was occurring in India at that time was not creating jobs. So there was this mismatch that emerged between, on the one hand, young people's aspirations to get secure, salaried work, and on the other hand, the dearth of social opportunities in particularly of employment- >> Mm. >> Opportunities. >> Mm. >> The reason the book is called Timepass is because one of the interesting things that came out of working with these young people, and I lived with them and taught to them in Hindi and Urdu, which are languages that I speak, over quite a long period of time, was the importance of a sense of boredom. >> Mm. >> Timepass suggested a sense of there being too much time. What do you do with time? It also connoted a feeling of detachment from one's studies. These were not people like those who were engaging with this MOOC who feel excited about educational opportunities. They were people who felt that degrees have become meaningless. I'm studying physics but I don't know why anymore. They were almost collecting degrees in a haphazard fashion. And not all of them but many of them felt like that. They also felt left behind because a few among their cohort had made it and made that leap into Delhi and into IT jobs. So those left in Meerut, in these cities felt left behind. And Timepass expressed that sense of anomie, of blighted hope. At the same time, I think there was a sense among some of these young people that things would get better in the future. And I think one of the interesting things about Modey's victory last year was that he was able to capture both the frustration of this huge youth generation, and on the other hand, the sense in which they continued to hope. >> How much of what you experienced from that research in Meerut is representative, do you believe, of what's happening more broadly in India? Is this a phenomenon that's seen very widely, or is this restricted to particular geographic regions, do you think? >> I think it's a very broad phenomenon. I mean, one of the problems, I think, with a lot of the media representation of India as well as the scholarly work that's happened in the past is that the media and scholars have focused either on the very rich- >> Mm. >> In the big cities or on the very poor. >> Mm. >> And yet very large sections of the Indian population belong to the groups I've worked with. Lower middle class. >> Yep. >> People who are not absolutely on the bread line, they're able to educate there children, but who haven't been able to buy cars or get secure employment or join the formal economy. >> Mm. Mm. >> And that's a very broad story. 92% of India's population, working population, work in the informal economy. >> Yep. Yep. >> Of course, there are also variations across India. There are boom areas, like the area around Bangalore for example. Gujarat is done been quite successful economically recently. And liberalization of the Indian economy, the opening up of the Indian economy to foreign competition and dismantling of various state controls over the economy has had the effect often of widening inequalities between the successful South and the relatively unsuccessful North. So one has to bear that regional pattern in mind. Having said that, I think the phenomenon of educated unemployed, underemployed, frustrated youth is one that you can see across India. I mean, people who travel to India will be familiar with the phenomenon of Timepass, of young men standing about on street corners. You see it. >> And, can I push you, given that this is a MOOC on global adolescent health- >> Sure. >> What has been your experience in relationship to the implications of this phenomena for young men's health and well being? >> Right. I should preface my answer by saying, I wasn't focusing on health. >> Sure. >> But I did become very interested in the way in which young men talked about their frustration and sense of boredom. And one of the things they talked about quite a lot was tension. And they used the English word tension even though they were speaking in Hindi or Urdu, to express a sense of very intense frustration and long periods of feeling very low. >> Mm. So what we might think of as depression. >> Exactly. >> Yeah. Yeah. I'm also aware from some of the research in particular that Vikram Patel, as a psychiatrist, has done in India- >> Yes. >> Was showing really very worrying rates of youth suicide. >> Sure. >> And demonstrating some very significant differences in the rates of suicides between the relatively better educated south versus the more impoverished north. And his interpretation of that, my understanding from discussions is this notion of thwarted expectations as you've also eluded to. >> Right, right. >> Is that consistent with your understanding of the risks that these young men might experience in terms of subsequent risks for self-harm for indeed even committed suicide? >> I think it's something very, maybe if I could take a couple of steps back from your question and say I think there's very interesting developments at the moment in public discussion of suicide in India that do reflect social changes, and I will come back to young men. One of those developments of course is the discourse around rural suicides and farmer suicides. I think people are increasingly recognizing it's not just a rural phenomenon, but also very much an urban phenomenon. There's also a long history of public discussion of young women committing suicide in the context of the arranged marriage system that remains prevalent in most parts of India. And increasingly marriages are moving towards a Dowry system which places particular pressures on young women who often become subject to avert violence or still more commonly forms of harassment from their in-laws where they go to live with their in-laws after marriage. And that often leads to instances of suicide. And one doesn't want to exaggerate it but that's quite well documented in terms of the figures. So there were important rural urban differences that are coming into focus. Or rather actually continuities between rural and urban areas and suicide rates. But also very important differences in terms of gender where women historically and particularly young women being seen as the at-risk population in terms of depression, mental health issues, questions about extreme harassments and suicide. On the other hand young men often actually have been casts as the aggressors with respect to suicide. >> Mm-hm. >> Now I think we are seeing a shift, partly as a result of this new quantitative research. But also with the kinds of studies I've been doing, coming to the surface that show that young men are very vulnerable to feelings of long term feelings of acute depression and committing suicide. And that happening's a result, I think, partly of the umemployment problem I'm talking about. But also it relates to intergenerational tensions, very high levels of parental expectation about how they're going to achieve, even before they leave formal education, a sense that education is becoming increasingly competitive within school and university. And that intensification of competition, the sense of scarcity is really leading to intense feelings of worry and in extreme cases- >> Mm-hm. >> Leading to self harm and suicide. >> So, this is a very challenging situation. I appreciate your initial research was from really a decade or so ago now. But from what you're describing if anything we know that things have perhaps got only worse not better. What do you think are some of the pulse implications of this? I mean obviously generation of more jobs is one. Have some proven quality of education this is a very challenging problem from a policy perspective. And I'm sure you've given thought to if you were the Prime Minister of India- >> Sure. >> What might you be thinking of doing differently. >> Sure. Well, I think the stigma surrounding discussing mental health is receding in contemporary India, which creates a window of opportunity for government to actually try to intervene, to support the young men that have been at the center of my research. They are isolated in terms of access to sources of professional support, sources of social support. Many of them are migrants, they've come from rural areas. They were cut off from networks of kinship supports. >> Mm. >> They are often slow coming forward even in the context of the destigmatization of mental health issues, they're often slow coming forward to authority figures. For example, within the university or within the health community in the cities in which they're living to explain that they're suffering from mental health problems. As a result they rely quite a lot on friendship networks to receive informal counseling and particularly. And I have been come very interested in this, the emergence of a set of young people, often people in their late 20's or early 30's, who become very important advisors, motivators, helpers for younger youth, in a context where those younger youth don't get parental support. So there's this instinctual generation. So it's a rather long-winded way of saying if it was in a government position, I would try and support those people, I think, probably. >> But from a perspective of prevention, that obviously is a mechanism- >> Right. >> Of trying to support young men who find themselves in that situation and I would absolutely agree with the ideas- >> Right. >> Behind that. >> Right. Right. >> But, are there any other interventions available- >> Right. >> Apart from- >> Sure. >> Finding somehow more jobs? And as we know that's- >> Right. >> Very challenging. >> Right. There's very little careers counseling that occurs in provincial universities- >> Okay. >> In India reflecting a wider funding crisis in- >> Okay >> Higher education in India. >> Yep. And one of your colleagues at Anthony Tacosta and works on contemporary India here at University of Melbourne, has written and talked quite a lot about higher education in contemporary India, and the challenges that India faces in terms of funding. Of course, India has some superb universities and technical institutes. because on the other hand, there is this large set of institutions that are limping along. >> So do you think that improving the quality of education more broadly is one strategy that's required? >> I think improving quality and making sure that the skills that are taught within universities and schools are matched with the needs of employers. >> Yep. >> So increasing the number of vocational training opportunities for young people or technical skills. >> Mm-hm. >> That would certainly be one way of trying to address this issue. >> Okay, so better matching if you like of the skills required with the skills that young people actually have access to train and gain, okay. We've talked obviously a lot, and I appreciate your research is focused on young men. You've talked a little bit in relationship to some of the challenges of young women in terms of Dowry systems and marriage. But this notion of time pass, is this also? And perhaps of over-education for the current employment environment? Is this also a phenomenon of young women in India? >> Increasingly so, and partly it reflects the fact that attitudes around gender and work are slow to change in India. So Many parents in the regions of India in which I've worked are still imaging that their daughter's education is going to be useful primarily in order for them to be able to attract a good husband. >> Prove their marriageability status, yes. >> Exactly. You have to be quite careful because if your daughter's too educated, then there's very few grooms that you can arrange a union with, because the convention is that the man will be more educated than the woman. Nevertheless, the general attitude is that young women now should have extended qualifications in order to be attractive on the marriage market. And as a result, a lot of the young women I've worked with in regard themselves as waiting, but in a different sense to the young men. They're not waiting for jobs, they're waiting to get married. And there is the same sense of surplus time, of detachment from one's studies. Because you're not actually going to use the studies to gain employment, you're simply using your studies to obtain a credential, which has a value in the marriage market. So some of those feelings of frustration and ennui that I've discussed in relation to young men, also apply to young women. There is another phenomenon which is very interesting which is the increasing use of correspondence courses for young women. So there's many women I've worked with in villages in North India who have been to school outside of their villages but at the point of roughly from puberty onwards, parents are very concerned to limit their movement. They're concerned about their daughters obtaining a bad reputation. So often bring them back in the family fold and arrange for them to study by correspondence. And they're often doing degrees by correspondence, too. Which means they can't do the science subjects because they require practicals. So they're channeled along the commerce and art stream, much to the chagrin, I should say, of many of the young women with whom I work who want to be doing science and can't. And they also feel frustrated quite often that they are getting these qualifications, but not obtaining the wider social benefits. And they're excluded from some of the most prestigious courses offered by universities, by dint of having to do their work by correspondence. >> You haven't described what some of us might expect as a repercussion of large groups of young people with a lot of time on their hands becoming, if you like, more antisocial as a phenomena. You've described some very pro-social benefits in terms of some of the more mature of these young men being of assistance to younger men coming through in similar situations. Do you think that there is a risk for India in terms of more antisocial behaviors, whether that's fueled by substance use, whether that's fueled by anger, whether that's fueled by depression? Or that's not a phenomena that is being experienced? >> Sure. I think it's a puzzle for political scientists and sociologists that there haven't been any very significant large scale political conflagrations involving this youth population during the past 30 years in India. With the possible exception of the Naxalite movement, a Communist movement in Central India, and that's very much youth-based but it's not educated youth, so much. It's not the constituency that I work with. I think there are ways in which society and the educational institutions in which these young men and young women are embedded operate that mean that youth are unlikely to engage in a widespread, antisocial, destructive set of political actions. Men and women tend to internalize their predicament as a result of their personal failure. >> Mm-hm. >> So they don't perceive it as being a structural, social, political issue. They also don't experience this failure as a particular moment. >> Okay. >> It gradually dawns on them. >> And yet, in a sense, we did see some uprisings relatively recently in response to corruption with Anna Hazare. And as an older Indian, but very much mobilizing young people was my sense, as an Australian. But that doesn't seem to have been sustained in terms of a protest or as a ground swell. That seems to have settled largely. Is that true or not? >> I think that partly because of this sense of young people regarding what's happening as a personal crisis, partly because of the difficulties of coordinating political protest, and partly because young people continue to hope. There's a very nice article about Africa, I wish I could remember the author, that is called Sentenced to Hope. Hope is a life sentence. This idea that as long as you hope, you're unlikely to engage in that very desperate kind of political protest. So Anna Hazare flared up and many of the young people with whom I work were involved in that movement peripherally. But it didn't lead to the kind of mass uprising that you might expect. >> Because arguably, with the extent of social media and mobile phone technologies in India, this generation of young people disenfranchised from employment, as you're suggesting, with time on their hands. It does seem such a ready environment that in other countries clearly has resulted in much more challenges to the very social fabric. But I think it's fascinating what you're saying about that if you like individualization or that internalization of individuals, that sense of self-responsibility, of self-blame rather than looking at more structural understandings, yeah. I'm afraid we're going to have to finish up. I've greatly enjoyed the opportunity of hearing your expertise. Thanks so much for joining us, Craig. >> No, I've been delighted. Thank you very much.
