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“Pray for My Results:” Making One’s Self Worthy for Employment in Lahore Muntasir Sattar Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy under the Executive Committee of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2016 © 2016 Muntasir Sattar All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT “Pray for My Results:” Making One’s Self Worthy for Employment in Lahore Muntasir Sattar In this dissertation, I explore how male university graduates in Lahore go about securing employment. Ethnographic exploration of what seems to be an individual quest in the temporal juncture between completing a degree and securing full time employment is in fact an intensively social and political process. Participant observation of these career-building endeavors in and around a hostel, an ‘academy,’ and in a call center speaks to the way graduates orient themselves and endeavor to create their future in a stratified society. Accounts of experiences of job seekers reveal how different forms of capital are mobilized in the processes. The goal that often drives aspirations and strategies is that of elite government service, indicative of a time of anemic economic growth and perceived political instability. The state then sets the standard for achievement of graduates’ career goals, motivated by security, status, and stability. Thus, the state looms large in the ways young men figure their future, in a way, becoming an arbiter in an encounter between job seekers and the structure of power relations. That is, unemployed graduates need to become worthy or achieve merit, adjusting or cultivating one’s habitus in order to get there. The foregoing suggests power relations in the eyes of young men are configured not only through social or cultural capital but by political capital. I thus highlight power in the self- making process that produces what I argue could be seen as a culturally-specific middle class subjectivity. I make the case for a ‘habitus’ that can be cultivated and shaped by political and economic conditions, loosening theory’s conceptual rigidity while highlighting the ways it mediates the temporal juncture between education and employment. TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Maps, Graphs, and Photographs………………………………………………….. ii Chapter 1: Introduction…………………………………………………………………… 1 Chapter 2: Getting “Up There:” the Search for Employment without Sifarish ………..… 33 Chapter 3: Merit or Copy Culture: Being ‘Educated’ in the Shifting Economy…………... 73 Chapter 4: Making the CSS and VIP Mahol and Being Made………………………… 108 Chapter 5: Being Educated as a Classed Subjectivity…………………..………………. 142 Chapter 6: Conclusion…………………………………………………………………… 164 Chapter 7: Epilogue…………………………………………………………………….… 178 Works Cited ……………………………………………………………………………… 192 i List of Maps, Graphs, and Photographs Image 2.1 Job Advertisement for a Teller position……………………………………… 51 Image 3.1 Farhan’s status update on Facebook ………………………………………… 92 Image 3.2 The CSS 2014 English essay………………………………………………… 95 Image 3.3 CSS Notes…………………………………………………………………… 96 Image 3.4 Sir Fawad’s Lecture Notes…………………………………………………… 97 Image 3.5 Sir Fawad’s Session in progress……………………………………………..... 99 Map 4.1 Map of the hostel zone…………………………………………………..……… 115 Image 4.2 A dhobi, outside his shop in the Katchi Abadi/Galli……………….………… 122 Image 4.3 New (VVIP) Choudhury Mansion advertisement at Choudhury Mansion…… 123 Image 4.4 Choudhury Mansion staff during a monthly water cleaning………….……… 125 Image 4.5 Notice from Elaqa’s [area] Station House Officer (SHO) ……………….…… 127 Image 4.6 Back of the monthly rent bill with the list of rules …………………………… 129 Image 4.7 Laptops are an important study tool, electricity or no electricity……………… 132 Image 4.8 Ali J. studying in D13 during ‘loadshedding’………………………………... 135 Image 5.1 Taimur’s Facebook post………………………………………………….…… 152 Image 7.1 Scam Warning…………………………………………………...……….…… 185 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Like the job seekers and students I got to know, I sought to make myself worthy during the course of my dissertation research. And like the job seeker, a number of teachers, mentors, family members, and friends brought me closer to my goal. In that process many individuals deserve appreciation for guiding, mentoring, and listening. In particular, deep gratitude goes to Professor Katherine P. Ewing for guiding me through the process, particularly after the passing of Professor Bond. I thank Professor Lambros Comitas for his consistent encouragement from the summer before I began the program back in 2009. Professor Zaidi deserves appreciation for advice and invaluable feedback over the last three years. I appreciate talking about youth with Dr. Heather Hindman and thank Dr. Anand Marri for always having an open door to and allowing me to learn with him on and off for the last 10 years. An unofficial member of the committee was Dr. Louis Cristillo who inspired me to embark on this learning process. I have learned so much from Dr. Aftab Ahmed in Urdu class and greatly appreciate Ms. Bridget Bartollini’s constant help every step of the way. Conducting fieldwork in Lahore would not have been possible without the advice and encouragement of Dr. Kamran Asdar Ali and the support of AIPS including Akbar saheb, Mr. Ghulam Rasul, Rizwan saheb, and staff members including Amjad saheb. I am fortunate to have hashed out many ideas during fieldwork from Gwen Kirk, Julie Flowerday, Soufia Siddiqi, Aijaz Ahmad, Zehra Hashmi, Sardar Hussain, Waqas Butt, Umar Anjum, Sumito Misazawa, among others. Support and a sounding board kept me going when I needed it most. To Bernadette and Derrick Dean, Framji Minwalla, Nida Kirmani, and Noman Baig, thank you for listening, giving me new perspectives through which to think from, and coaching me through this. iii Many of the twists and turns were anticipated by the mentors and friends at Forman Christian College. This dissertation would not have been possible in any way without the guidance of Dr. Grace Clark and the wonderful faculty in the Department of Sociology including Shahid Rasheed, Athar Azeem, Shumaila Athar, and colleagues from other departments including Dr. Muhammad Younus, and their students including Saif Nasar, Zahid Makhdoom, Samraiz Hafeez, Ahmad Gujjar, and many more. The road was paved by family throughout the process from my wife, my parents, my sister and of course thanks to constant moral support and fruit chaat from Zeeshan Suhail, all of whom kept me going when I was ready to pack up and go home. Most of all I appreciate getting to make new friends in Lahore with whom I have been able to create an account, a faithful one I hope, of hope and of struggle in Pakistan. iv In Memory of Dr. George C. Bond v CHAPTER 1 Introduction While hanging out in his hostel room one afternoon in the fall of 2013, Umar Saith asks me if I would like to eat something. He always finds something for me to munch on from his mother’s kitchen; this time, he pulls out from his mini-fridge some bedian [sweetened berries]. He flips open the tupperware lid and offers them to me, in fact, presses me to eat them. While I enjoy a few sticky bedian, I notice his room is nicer than mine; it not only has an AC but is furnished and more spacious. While I swivel around on his faux leather computer chair, he reposes on his charpoy [light roped bed stead] while he recalls in a mixture of Urdu and English his recent attempts at securing government jobs. In the last few months, he’s applied for ‘high grade’ positions in the federal Ministry of Social Welfare and in the Ministry of Defense, among others, joining almost 100,000 other applicants for the latter position.1 This means he has taken at least two ‘merit-based’ exams and is waiting to hear back. Like other residents of the hostel, he has not had much success but that has not shaken his faith in his ability nor in the principle of merit. His aspiration of working in the Central Superior Services (Pakistan’s elite bureaucracy) on his mind, Umar Saith is smiling and with wide excited eyes, he puts me in the role of a teacher and himself into the role of a student: “I do not get an opportunity to speak English; I never have in my life. Bhaiyya [brother] I want to speak English with you.” Our discussions tend to be dominated by topics that are relevant for the Central Superior Services (CSS) qualifying exams such as poverty or education in Pakistan. Sometimes he asks very specific questions: “Do you have any advice on how to improve my grasp of synonyms and antonyms?” In fact 1 Also mentioned by hostelites like Farhan, and by Fawad sb, the academy teacher at Bagh-i-Jinnah, and on a popular online forum, www.CSSForum.com.pk 1 everything he does is oriented around becoming an elite civil servant and he has been at it for years. Umar is highly determined, patient, and intently focused on becoming a high ranking government officer, shrugging off what I encountered as a widely-held skepticism about merit. “Sifarish [intercession] and paisa [money] are just terms we use when we talk to our parents about why we still don’t have jobs.” A tall, slim, well coiffeured young man with a crisp shalwar khameez [long tunic and pajama], Umar2 has never worked before; like many others he is supported by his family. In fact, he ties his family’s interests to his aspiration of a career in the civil service. “Some landlords have only power in their area, say, in their 100 acres or 1000 acres. They want power outside of that.” When I inquired why, he explains: For influence! Civil servants are very powerful. If a guy gets into an accident with someone from the elite service - suppose the guy is a rich landlord - the civil servant still has power.