Search

This paper examines the educational and livelihood trajectories of mainly upper caste youth in the quickly changing Shanti Valley, Kullu district, Himachal Pradesh. This, against the backdrop of economic liberalisation, and the spread of urbanisation and higher education in India in the last two decades. It shows that while higher education has limited attraction for area youth in terms of work and livelihood, what is really transformational is the metamorphosis of the valley from a space dominated by horticulture and agriculture to a site with expanded tourist arrivals. Youth entry points into tourism appear to follow family trajectories, as young people move away from farming as a sole and primary occupation, via such new non-farm employment. Further, as young people and their families come to engage with tourism, the knowledge for such endeavours comes from numerous sources, with higher education being only one route to such learning. Tourism, and the spread of mediated encounters mean that 'urbanised' forms of life and living are increasingly visible as the valley is reconstructed as a hybrid global-local space. However, as the local landscape metamorphoses, there are widespread concerns about ecological futures, raised by youth and their families alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2000 in New Delhi, urban decentralization has mainly come in the form of the highly visible Bhagidari or partnership scheme, inviting city residents to participate in a "process of dialogue and the discovery of jointsolutions."1 This paper critically examines this program between 2000 and 2012, through the experiences of primarily middle-class neighbourhood organizations called Resident Welfare Associations, or RWAs that were included in the scheme. The paper argues that rather than constitutional decentralization, Bhagidari as an initiative must be read in terms of a larger shift to entrepreneurial governance. Bhagidari's success has been in delegating management to RWAs, at little cost to city government, while seemingly opening up a "participatory" space for middle-class urban residents in civic affairs. However, for RWAs the article argues that Bhagidari's impact has come to represent an attempt at harnessing and managing the new middle-class aspiration to engage with urban government for administrative and political ends. In this context, Bhagidari has also been seen as an important means of cultivating middle-class consent and a constituency through courting RWAs for an ambitious chief executive. Over time, this has become a common strategy for building political and civic visibility for a range of actors, one reason why the number of RWAs has proliferated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]