EXPERIENCING RETURN AS A SOBO ELITE

Students from SoBo elite backgrounds experienced returning to India very differently to suburban strivers. This group was expected to return to India after

completing their international education in order to join the family business (or to get married, as Chapter Eight will discuss). This group’s mobility trajectories are largely pre- determined by familial expectations. While this is sometimes read by others as restrictive, SoBo elites contended that they happily returned to Mumbai because their lifestyles are more ‘comfortable’ at home.

The existence of a family business typically meant that SoBo students’ mobility trajectories were decided long before they engage with international education. Young men were more likely to report this expectation (however, the sample is too small to draw any conclusions beyond noting a trend33). Sahil, 22, a returned student from a SoBo elite family that owns a diamond business, described that he ‘always knew’ that he would join the family business because he had been ‘coached’ from a young age:

I always knew that my family wanted me to return one day and I knew that they would prefer that I didn’t stay away too long. … We have a business here so I grew up knowing that one day I would join the business. I spent a lot of my teenage years learning about different businesses … so I guess you could say that my family has been coaching me to join them for a long time!

Basing his comments on what he has witnessed among his high school friends, Anirudh, 25, a returned student from a SoBo elite family whose parents are well-paid professionals, explained that young people from business families ‘know’ that they will return to India to take up their pre-determined role within the company:

If you're going to end up in the family business, if that’s the expectation, then you probably know by the time you're fifteen. Then you have no geographic freedom. … The reality is that your family can tell you, ‘Five years from now, we want you to be here’. And there's nothing you can say!

The expectation that SoBo elite students will join the family business determines their return trajectories. Furthermore, both these responses suggest that return trajectories are time-specific, are potentially dictated by the family and that absences should not be ‘too long’. Anirudh suggests that this also limits the ‘geographic freedom’ of SoBo elite students from business families. However, that mobility trajectories of the SoBo elite are time-specific also denotes their elite status. SoBo elites can, hypothetically, return to India

33 _{Unlike the data on marriage presented in Chapter Eight, participants did not report this form of} return in gendered terms. Instead, I note that men in the sample were more likely to describe being expected to return, but participants did not explicitly observe this as specific to men.

at any time and still be rewarded by having spent time overseas because their ‘return on investment’ is not contingent on working overseas.

Most SoBo students reported that they wanted to join the family business so they willingly returned according to their family’s desires. For instance, Piyush, 25, a returned student from a SoBo elite business family:

My family wanted me to come back, yeah. But I also wanted to come back to Mumbai! I always wanted to join the business, and I like being here. It’s a good life over here.

Other respondents similarly reported wanting to return to India because they have opportunities waiting for them at home. Umang, 22, a SoBo elite returned student from a well-known business family, explained that he returned to India for several reasons, namely that he leads a comfortable lifestyle in India and that he has ‘more leverage’ there:

There’s a certain amount of comfort [in India] and that definitely plays a big factor. There’s also a foundation, as in there is something that I can build on, I don’t have to start from scratch. If I wanted, I can take over my dad’s business one day, or I can lean on my father for the people he knows, his understanding of the system. So there’s a lot more I can leverage here.

Both of these responses suggest that, for SoBo elites, returning to India is part of their expected trajectory as they transition into ‘adulthood’. In contrast to suburban strivers, for SoBo elites returning home did not represent a ‘failure’. Instead, return was a marker of their elite status because international education is a hiatus from life in India rather than a pursuit of upward mobility – the cosmopolitan cultural capital that SoBo elites accumulate therefore holds symbolic value (unlike the economic returns that suburban strivers desire). Furthermore, the access to social and economic capital that this group has in India is unparalleled, so returning home is an attractive prospect not only because of the business opportunities awaiting them in India but also because their lifestyles in Mumbai are ‘comfortable’ and they have extensive family networks that they can ‘leverage’ to advance careers. For this group, international education is primarily a marker of status.

Several studies on student mobilities relating to India (Sancho, 2015; Baas, 2016; Rizvi, 2014), and elsewhere in the Global South (Tran, 2016), have observed a similar return trajectory of international students belonging to business families. Fazal Rizvi

(2014) notes a trend among students at an old elite school in central India, wherein parents who own small businesses wanted their children to obtain an international education with the view that it would help internationalise the family business. Rizvi observes that many of these students return to India, regarding themselves as “well prepared for global engagement, while insisting that they remain deeply committed to Indian values and cultural practices. Their social imaginary is at once global and local, modern and traditional” (2014: 306). Similarly, SoBo elites journey overseas in order to acquire a ‘global’ mindset that I have interpreted as a form of cosmopolitan cultural capital (Chapters Two and Six), which they then anticipate converting to symbolic capital in the form of prestige associated with having spent time overseas. For this group, international education is an ‘experience’ that they often gladly return from in order to resume the ‘comfortable’ lives they temporarily left behind in India.

Many SoBo elite returned students explained that their desire to return to was informed by the lifestyles they grew up with, in which they have paid staff to assist with household tasks. Vidya, 25, a returned student from a SoBo elite family, described the ‘difficulties’ she faced when looking after herself whilst overseas, and that she was glad to return to a move convenient lifestyle in India:

I need my breakfast on the table when I get up, I need my lunch, I need my dinner, I need my clothes ironed and put into my cupboard, I need a chauffeur to drive me around. I need it. Because, I mean, I can manage it when I have to but not for a complete lifetime. It’s because of how I have grown up. … I can't do that every day. I can't. Well, I can, but I wouldn’t want to. It’s very difficult, so I prefer this. … Like, dude, you get up and you don’t even have your breakfast on the table. You have to cook it! It was fairly difficult for me to do all of that. I was tired!

Vidya explained that she had always intended to return to India after graduating because she did not think she could manage working a full-time job and looking after herself – as she says, she ‘needs’ certain luxuries. This reflects the findings in Chapter Six, wherein undergoing temporary and very relative downward mobility whilst living overseas is prized as an ‘experience’ by SoBo elites. Vidya’s comment reinforces the notion that, for the SoBo elite, this ‘hardship’ is part of a normative trajectory in which one gains international exposure to become ‘independent’ and undergo ‘personal growth’, which symbolises their transition to adulthood by having acquired requisite symbolic capital that marks their privilege in India.