This careful ethnography of the meaning that education has in the lives of young men in rural North India today engages with debates about education on two levels. First, it addresses the role of education in discourses on development, with specific reference to Amartya Sen's assertion that education not only represents a prerequisite for the alleviation of poverty, but also has intrinsic value itself. Second, the ethnography shows how the experience of education is determined by communal identities, caste and religious origin, and local economic standing. Comparing the outcome of educational pursuits and aspirations for members of three different communities in rural Uttar Pradesh—namely, Muslims, members of the locally influential Jat agricultural landholding caste, and young, ex-untouchable Chamars—the authors show how the value of education, if measured in terms of access to resources, economic security, and status, is modified by other factors, in particular, collective networks and histories of migration....

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