Paper short abstract:

I look at the grooming schools that train the aspirational class in India to negotiate the global world. Via an ethnography of a grooming school, I will probe into the new worker-subject learning image development. Does this impact our understanding of labour and selfhood in a neoliberal regime?

Paper long abstract:

The new economic reforms of 1991 signalled the beginning of a consumption driven economy and paved the way for an aspirational class in India. The globalized economy made way for an active enterprising citizen who was no longer dependent on the state, but had to be a self-regulating, self-disciplined subject, treating her life and self as an enterprise. An allied development has been the expanding service sector that demands workers to equip themselves with skills suitable for the globalized market. Aspirations to be part of the global culture of leisure and work are verbalized in the form of training modules like "Transaction Analyses", "International Etiquette", "Personalized English Conversation", "Image Management", "Cosmopolitan Diva" and "Interview Skills Training". What are the methods deployed in the classroom that will bring about this "transformation" of turning one from a "pupa to a butterfly" in the age of 'self-development'? My paper aims to look at the grooming institutions that familiarize, teach and train the aspirational class to negotiate the new world that they desire and actively want to be a part of. Through an ethnography of one such grooming school, the paper will probe into how the new subject is modelled in these schools. Subsequently, who is the new subject emerging as a product of these institutions that specialize in addressing one's aspirations? More importantly, how does this impact our understanding of the seeming democratization of grooming, labour and selfhood in what is understood as a 'neoliberal' regime?