Combining nuanced ethnographic insights with rich theoretical perspectives, this book represents the contradictory positioning of India’s youth as either ‘population dividend’ or as masses of troublemakers. As Maithreyi explicates, ‘life-skills’ training for disadvantaged youth entails attempts to fit them into the dominant class and cultural capital apparatus and the subsequent rendering of life-skills training as meaningless to their life-worlds. The book will be a landmark study that provides insights into the trajectories of mainstream education, the misplaced orientation that overlooks the agency of youth and the personal disorientation and systemic distortions that ensue. A mustread for all educationists and education policymakers.

- Professor A. R. Vasavi, Social Anthropologist

In this brilliant new study, Maithreyi develops a compelling argument about the role of education in the formation of youth identities. The book charts with extraordinary sophistication and clarity the changing context shaping young people’s actions as well as youth efforts to reinterpret and, sometimes, transform what it means to be young and successful. A tour de force.

- Professor Craig Jeffrey, Director of the Australia India Institute and Professor of Geography, University of Melbourne, Australia