Paper short abstract:

This paper explores ideas of self-identity, marginality, aspirations and agency amongst lower-middle youth in Pune, to reflect more broadly on emerging 'cosmopolitan subjectivities' in the contemporary era of digitalisation and the changing landscapes of socio-political consciousness in India.

Paper long abstract:

A general augmentation of life chances, accessibility to internet, smart-phones, media and communications technologies among India's youth have (together) opened-up new avenues of social interactions, and effected a realignment of their socio-economic and political realities as well as consciousness. This has arguably effected a change in the ways in which India's youth perceive society and how they participate in it (see Udupa et al. 2019). But is this change so different? How useful are labels such as 'neoliberalism' to understand youth subjectivities in digitalis(ing) India that is also witnessing the onset of new forms of socio-economic inequalities layered over older ones? This paper attempts to answer such concerns. The analysis in the paper emerges from prolonged ethnographic engagement with a cohort of lower-middle class youth engaged actively in the new services economy in Pune, an emergent Tier-2 metro in Maharashtra, between 2015 and 2017. The paper is structured in terms of thematic reflections on their work/life-course - touching upon ideas of young people's self-identity, marginalisation, aspirations and agency, to reflect more broadly on emerging 'cosmopolitan subjectivities' amongst young people in times of digitalisation, and the advent of new socio-political consciousness in India.