Curating an ‘educational environment’: Commercial libraries, new entrepreneurs and shifting geographies of education in India

This article argues how a set of educational entrepreneurs are positioning emerging commercial facilities called ‘libraries’ as sites of preparation that can help young people in their attempts for upward mobility in a north Indian city. Commercial libraries largely represent ‘commodified study spaces’ that cater to the non-formal educational needs of educated, unemployed young people such as need for spaces to engage in uninterrupted study, access to internet services, or freedom from domestic chores or social and political projects. The educational entrepreneurs neither make claims of guaranteeing jobs nor provide any skills or competencies to the young people using such facilities. Using diverse place-making strategies, these entrepreneurs curate and commercialise the ‘educational environment’ of libraries, to highlight its significance in catering to the non-formal educational needs of unemployed young people preparing for government jobs. In doing so, these facilities neither ‘shadow’ formal academic processes and institutions nor function as conventional libraries found in formal educational settings. In this context, the article highlights the shifting terrains of geographies of education, especially with the rise of varied commercially driven institutional forms that have emerged in the context of a public crisis of education and un- and under-employment in India.