Yoga ‘Walmart’ in the Himalayas: A Case of Wellness Centres in Dharamshala

Abstract

This article explores the proliferating small-scale wellness centres such as Yoga, meditation, reiki, spas, and healing and rejuvenation therapies in a small town, Dharamshala. The expansion of such spaces has its interlinkages with the liberalization of the Indian market, expansion in consumer choices, shift in the nature of employment and retrenchment of everyday security in the post-reform period. These centres have become a source of employment for the unemployed youth in this small town, especially the pastoral tribe of Gaddis. Through an ethnographic study, the article establishes that deteriorating state support and retrenchment of security have not only induced these service providers to manoeuvre, improvise, employ jugaad to run their Yoga business but also engage themselves in multiple avenues, thereby keeping a ‘back-up’, in case the other avenues/ventures fail to earn a living. The article coins the term ‘back-up economy’ to provide a name to the processes, practices and strategies adopted by the service providers who in the scenario of shrinking state support and government services, as well as evolving forms of Yoga realize that ‘doing Yoga is not enough’ to survive in the market. The back-up economy would resonate with situation of youth struggling with the evolving state-market practices and shrinking state support and collectively defines such practices, processes that though informally, contributes to the employment situation in post-reform India.

Keywords

• dharamshala
• back-up economy
• yoga