‘Upvaluation’ and personality development in Delhi

With the Indian state’s growing emphasis on skilling, private institutes offering personality development (PD) courses have become a familiar feature of urban India. This article examines a PD institute in Delhi catering to relatively caste- and class-privileged young people. Through an ethnographic study, the author argues that PD is not simply about producing employable young people but about ‘upvaluation’: the cultivation of embodied dispositions that consolidate existing caste and class privilege into globally intelligible forms of professionalism and urbanity. The aim of PD institutes is not to facilitate a transition from abject exclusion into inclusion, but to reformat existing caste privilege into markers of distinction. Through lessons in English communication, attitude and time management, the author shows how upvaluation translates caste privilege into linguistic capital, while also depoliticising the connections among social hierarchies, self-worth and aspirations.