Gender and education policy in India: Twists,turns and trims of transnational policy transfers

Abstract

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Gender-based exclusion remains a vexing problem in the Indian education system. Drawing on feminist and intersectionality perspectives, this article examines the constraints of Indian education policies in addressing issues pertaining to the education of girls from marginalised communities. The article examines the knowledge transfers from developed countries to developing countries based on notions of ideational power and the ‘epistemic imagery’ of modernisation. Focusing on a plethora of conditional cash transfers, programmes that were initiated by the Indian state governments to address gender inequalities in the education system, the article concludes that such knowledge transfers are inevitable in the current mode of epistemic governance and emanate from the power imbalance between rich and poor countries. When juxtaposed against the institutional discrimination widely prevalent in the Indian education system, political rhetoric fails on the dual goals of educational policy, to achieve economic efficiency and social justice.

Keywords

Children gender India learning outcomes social exclusion

Introduction

Gender-based discrimination results in Indian girls being excluded from the education system. Lack of access and adverse learning outcomes result in a lifetime of deprivation. Historically, India has been a multi-cultural, multi-religious and multi-ethnic society with a clearly defined caste and gender hierarchy which more or less determines a child’s life-chances. In the American context, Crenshaw (1993) has recognised that black women and men from ethnic minority communities are more vulnerable to violence owing to their social location. Social exclusion can arise through long-term persecution (for example, via slavery or homeland dispossession) and through membership of certain identifiably different social and ethnic groups. This phenomenon creates barriers to education for children and especially for girls (Lockheed, 2010: 1). The education system is an arena of social reproduction as it creates new and reinforces existing forms of social segregation. Extant research clearly maps out the vulnerability of female children, especially if they belong to marginalised communities (Gragnolati et al., 2005). Gender intersects with other dimensions, such as the deprivation of urban slums, the geographically segregated communities of Dalits and scheduled tribes and the mobile groups of nomadic tribes (Nambissan, 2014). Burgeoning evidence has not resulted in policy shifts geared towards immediate goals of improvements in economic efficiency or long-term transformatory goals associated with social justice. Feminist voices in India have been faint and fragmented when it has come to questions of girl-child education from marginalised communities (Balagopalan, 2012). Such policy failures do not appear as innocuous acts of omission in a context marred by institutional biases against the Dalits, Muslims and scheduled tribes.

India, over the last two decades, has witnessed consistent improvements in its economic growth together with the several social policy innovations, yet better human development outcomes remain elusive. As compared to its counterparts in the other developing countries in the BRICS, India has performed poorly in the attainment of the global benchmarks set by the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Although India had cut in half its total incidence of extreme poverty, from 49.4% in 1994 to 24.7% in 2011, ahead of the 2015 MDG deadline, its neighbours Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh have each outstripped India in poverty reduction (Raghavan, 2015). In relation to human development, India ranks 135th among 187 countries globally, and the lowest among its BRICS counterparts with Brazil at 79, Russia 65, China at 91 and South Africa at 118 (UNDP, 2014). Gender inequality in India, in particular, remains ranked 135 on the United Nations Development Fund’s Gender-Related Development Index, which is a composite index measuring women’s status based on female to male ratio, life-expectancy at birth for males and females, and mean years of schooling (UNDP, 2014). The gender discrimination is manifested by a perilous child sex ratio as the latest census of 2011 reveals a further decline in the number of girls to 918 from 927 (in the year 2001) to 1000 boys (Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, 2011). Primarily, this is attributed to the preference for a male child as opposed to female children in Indian families. The Indian parliament has passed the Right to Education Act (RTE), making eight years of quality education a fundamental right for every girl and boy in India, which has resulted in improvements in enrolments. However, gross enrolments stand at 54% for males and 56% for females. China has gross enrolments of 61% for males and 62% for females. South Africa has gross enrolments of 65% for both males and females (UNICEF, 2015). Brazil has not only made impressive strides in terms of the universalisation of education but improvements in the quality of education are evident from the 2009 results for the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) – the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) test of high school student learning levels in over 70 countries (Bruns et al., 2012).

Improvements in policies and legislative frameworks have not translated into better outcomes for young girls from marginalised communities in India. On scratching the surface of the Indian education policy it resembles a mélange of policy transfers which are arbitrarily adopted by the Indian leaders and bureaucrats without any effort to synchronise them to local realities. The primary aim of this research is to examine advances in gender and education policies in India with reference to Carstensen and Schmidt’s (2015) notions of ideational power and Alasuutari and Qadir’s (2016) notions of modern epistemic governance. Based on these perspectives, I examine the dynamics of knowledge transfers in India. I conclude that global knowledge transfers are located in current paradigms of power in epistemic governance. These knowledge isomorphisms lose their significance at the local level, where they are more or less arbitrarily applied and are reduced to political rhetoric, doing little for the emancipation of female children.

Theoretical frameworks: Understanding knowledge transfers and power dynamics in the globalised world

Early origins of policy transfers engaged with social and economic determinants for the spread of modernisation and democratisation (Cutright, 1965; Lerner, 1958; Lipset, 1959). These comparative studies have provided the grounds for the initiation of common policies across the newly independent aid recipient countries. World polity theorist Thomas Boli contended that ‘the world policy is constituted by a distinct culture – a set of fundamental principles and models, mainly ontological and cognitive in character, defining the nature and purposes of social actors and action. Like all cultures, world culture becomes embedded in social organization, especially in organizations operating at the global level’ (Boli and Thomas, 1999: 14). This clearly indicates that we are witness to the genesis of a globalised society marked by ubiquitous models espousing positivistic rationality in the realms of higher education, female education, public health, environmental and fiscal governance, and so on (Mok and Kühner, 2017).

Dolowitz and Marsh defined policy transfer as a ‘process in which knowledge about policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas in one political setting (past or present) is used in the development of policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas in another political setting’ (2000: 5). Power is central to these transfers. Dolowitz and Marsh (1996) include both voluntary and coercive transfers in their fold. Most importantly, as Ellison (2017) highlights, these transfers are possible through three ideal typical power locations: ‘power as mutual influence’ (PMI) through voluntary or open learning, ‘power as weighted bargaining’ (PWB) and ‘power as coercion and/or conditionality’. Coercive policy transfers are a result of a bipolar world wherein rich countries that are welfare pioneers can transmit knowledge directly via a range of transnational agencies, INGOs and governments. However, power is more dispersed now with greater economic affluence, and political autonomy in the poor countries adapts through voluntary or weighted bargaining. Such isomorphisms occur at national and at subnational levels as well. Additional caveats have been added to policy transfers, the terms ‘copying’, ‘emulation’ and ‘hybridisation’. Rose (1991) further upgraded these categories to include ‘photocopying’, ‘copying’, ‘adaptation’, ‘hybrid’, ‘synthesis’, ‘disciplined inspiration’ and ‘selective imitation’; in addition, others have created terms like ‘policy assemblages’ (Prince, 2010) and even ‘failed’ transfer and/or the transfer of ‘negative lessons’ (Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000: 9).

Theoretically, in their three-layered conceptual framework, Carstensen and Schmidt (2015: 320–321) focus on ideational power. Within this framework, the first type of power is through ideas, defined in terms of the use of ideational elements by actors to influence other actors to think in ways which is in congruence with their own; the second type is power over ideas, which is related to resistance to alternative ideas through de rigueur and persuasive power; and the third type of power in ideas is linked to hegemony over structural and institutional frameworks that is exercised to influence the cognitive patterns of the recipient actors. Power in ideas refers to depoliticisation of normative ideas on a range of subjects such as economy, polity and society to the extent that we perceive them as intrinsic to our lives. In contemporary times, power in ideas gives us an understanding of the complex nuances underpinning knowledge transfers from rich to poor countries.

In the rush towards becoming ‘knowledge’ economies, countries such as India have emerged as fast track welfare states, unlike European welfare states, which were incremental in nature and were entrenched ideologically in extending citizenship rights to their entire populations. On the surface, India would like to display autonomy in terms of its capabilities to generate knowledge to address its problems. Internationally, this shows that India is a competitive economic powerhouse and locally it gives legitimacy to political actors. Increasing affluence and availability of local knowledge brokers allows political actors to voluntarily adapt knowledge transfers. Such knowledge transfers are widespread, albeit replete with political verbosity. Alasuutari and Qadir (2016: 633) argue that political rhetoric on growth and progress is inextricably linked to social scientific conceptions of reality which rely on certain root metaphors of modernisation. The basic premise of this reality is that all human societies are ranked in terms of the levels of western style modernisation based on the epistemological standpoint of positivism. This Weltanschauung requires that all societies must adopt certain public policies to follow logical steps towards modernisation. The success of political actors depends on how well their society fits into an epistemological framework. Policy, or rather knowledge isomorphism, is inevitable, as Meyer et al. (1997: 145) propose: ‘a world whose societies, organised as nation-states, are structurally similar in many unexpected dimensions and change in unexpectedly similar ways’. Therefore, this proposition presupposes the simplistic transfusion of policy ideas or principles or plain ‘hypocritical conformism in policy pronouncements’ by national leaders acting as ‘Babbitts’, but in reality they display ‘conformity in practices’ which are antithetical to their pronouncements (Meyer, 2004: 44). Nevertheless, hypocritical conformism is a stepping stone to the ‘new global community’ (Meyer, 2004: 45), wherein every political actor has to compete for meagre and shrinking natural and economic resources. In his book Order of Things, Michel Foucault (1989: xxiii) draws a distinction between episteme and techne:

I am not concerned, therefore, to describe the progress of knowledge towards an objectivity in which today’s science can finally be recognised; what I am attempting to bring to light is the epistemological field, the episteme in which knowledge, envisaged apart from all criteria having reference to its rational value or to its objective forms, grounds its positivity and thereby manifests a history which is not that of its growing perfection, but rather that of its conditions of possibility; in this account, what should appear are those configurations within the space of knowledge which have given rise to the diverse forms of empirical science. Such an enterprise is not so much a history, in the traditional meaning of that word, as an ‘archaeology’.

Savoir has to be tested as per rules of archaeology that include ‘certain laws for the constructions of proposition’ (Foucault, 1972: 187). All discursive practices must pass the thresholds of positivity, epistemologisation, scientificity and formalisation (Foucault, 1972: 186–187). Therefore, my deliberate use of the term ‘knowledge transfers’ rather than policy transfers is based on the view that these policy transfers are techne symbolic of the discursive practices embedded in multifarious ways in current modes of epistemic governance. Knowledge transfers within the power in ideas frame are made possible by the epistemic configurations of our times. These knowledge transfers are viewed as intrinsic to the realisation of modernisation. Knowledge disparities are inevitable as poor countries do not know the modalities of achieving a welfare state. Knowledge actors have a privileged vantage point, as they understand these normative notions and possess the Weltanschauung required to achieve this form of epistemic governance. We question the principles which underlie knowledge transfers that we cannot see as transformation. Without what Gaston Bachelard (1986) called rupture épistémologique, transformation in power relations is not possible. Aristotelian phronesis (Aristotle, 1886) offers us some hope, i.e. neither involving science nor the arts, but rather the intellect which can move us towards benevolence in achieving our ends. If human good is the telos, then we should look at our méthodes as closely as our goals.

Critique of Indian education policy: Are conditional cash transfers the magic bullet or political jingoism?

In developing countries, the benefits of female education not only extend to their social and economic empowerment but also enhance demographic outcomes with a concomitant reduction of fertility rates, improved social life and greater economic participation (Schulz, 1993). In spite of the economic benefits derived from girl-child education, it is still undervalued both at the household and national levels, which is largely attributed to the societal norms of universal marriage with dowry payments to the groom’s family (Gandhi-Kingdon, 1997). Increased attention to female education has resulted in improved literacy rates, skyrocketing from 18 to 65% over the last 50 years. But the last census of India indicated a gender gap of nearly 22% among youth in the 15–24 age group (Government of India [GOI], 2011; United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation [UNESCO], 2011). The available data indicate that India substantially increased the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in primary education from a low baseline in 1999 (UNESCO, 2015a). Nevertheless, these improvements in the education of girl-children are questionable when compared to global patterns, as Indian female children underachieve in their reading skills and mathematical skills, disparities which are attributed to the cultural, economic and social biases suffered by them (White et al., 2016).

In line with these transnational developments, the new millennium witnessed major expansions in India’s education system along with improvements in economic growth rates, which reflected its commitment to the UNESCO programme ‘Education for All’ and the push to achieve universal primary education by the year 2015 under the MDG programme. Some of the major turning points, which gave impetus to girls’ education from a social investment perspective, include the World Conference on Education for All, held at Jomtien, Thailand, in 1990, which was jointly convened by the World Bank, UNICEF, UNESCO and the UNDP. It proposed the attainment of universal primary education (UPE) by 2000 (UNESCO, 1990). The ‘Dakar Framework for Action’, adopted in (2000), reaffirmed the Education for All targets and established six new goals: expand early childhood care and education; provide free and compulsory primary education for all; promote learning and life-skills for young people and adults; increase adult literacy by 50%; achieve gender parity by 2005, gender equality by 2015; improve the quality of education (UNESCO, 2015b). Similarly, Article 10 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (UN Women, 1979) was a precursor to the recognition of equal rights to education for girls and boys. This was followed by the International Conference on Population and Development, Cairo (1994) and the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995). Along with these covenants, India ratified the Education for All (EFA) goals, by devising specific policies like the National Action Plan, National Literacy Mission (NLM) and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) (translates as Education for All). In 1993, the Supreme Court of India recognised that the right to education was a fundamental right as an inherent part of the right to life. In addition, some other programmes that were launched include: Mid-day Meal Scheme (MDM) and early education under the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) (Basu, 2012).

Along with poor enrolments and retention, one of the difficulties with Indian education is poor learning outcomes among children especially from the impoverished communities. In 2012, the country ranked 63 out of 64 in the latest PISA study (Gelda et al., 2013). The Indian Government has since refrained from participating in PISA because of poor results and blames these on socio-cultural factors. The Government of India’s National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), since 2000, has conducted National Achievement Surveys (NAS) for class (grades) III, V and VIII levels. In the latest NAS report on Grade III overall, children were able to answer 64% of language items correctly and 66% of mathematics questions correctly (National University of Educational Planning and Administration, 2014). The 2011 Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) Centre was established in 2008 as an autonomous assessment, survey, evaluation and research unit within the Pratham network, an Indian NGO (www.asercentre.org/) which tracks trends in rural education. ASER indicated that enrolment rates among primary school-aged children were about 93%, with little difference by gender (Gelda et al., 2013). The percentage of Grade III children able to solve simple two-digit subtraction problems fell from 26.1% in 2013 to 25.3% in 2014 (ASER, 2014). The gender dimensions of exclusion in terms of dropout rates, etc., at various levels are well documented, but data on learning outcomes are relatively recent. At present, the National Achievement Surveys, which use Response Theory and Classical Test Theory (CTT), have reported that there are no significant gender differences in the learning outcomes in mathematics and language for Grade III, with the exception of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh where girls performed badly, while in Kerala girls outperformed boys. Similarly, no gender differences were reported by NAS for Grade VIII students, with the exception of Kerala where girls again outperformed boys, and in West Bengal where girls performed poorly in science (National Council of Educational Research and Training, 2014).

The India Human Development Survey (IHDS) conducted in 2004–5 administered short reading and arithmetic tests to children aged 8 to 11 years, based on the ASER methodology. Results indicated variations across various social groups, with only 54% of children being able to read a short paragraph (at Grade II level) and only 48% being able to subtract. However, among upper-level castes this number was 71% (for reading) and 63% (for subtraction), while for Dalits, Adivasis (aboriginals) and Muslims it was about 44% each. These differences have been attributed to the disadvantage of being a first-generation learner, the lack of parental knowledge about their children’s education, teacher indifference and discriminatory attitudes (Desai and Thorat, 2013). Existing evidence does suggest the presence of gender differences in the development of reading and mathematics skills for 8- to 11-year-old children in India, especially for girls with many younger siblings. Moreover, household assets level is associated with girls advancing in reading. It appears, then, that having a positive attitude towards girls’ education is an important contributor to learning outcomes (White et al., 2016).

Generally, improvements have been recorded in Indian education policies and programmes. Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and the National Programme for Education of Girls at Elementary Level (NPEGEL) have been initiated by the Government of India to universalise primary education across the country based on EFA commitments. Gender-specific policy and programmes include NPEGEL, which is implemented in Educationally Backward Blocks (EBB) to incorporate the ‘hardest-to-reach’ girls, especially those not in school, and Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya (KGBV; Kasturba Gandhi Programme for Residential Schooling for Girls), which provides for the establishment of residential schools at the upper primary level for girls belonging predominantly to the Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST), Other Backward Classes (OBC) and minority communities. However, several constraints remain across the educational cycle for the girl-child. Studies confirm caste and gender biases pervade the life course of the girl-child from early childhood to tertiary education programmes (Gragnolati et al., 2005). Caste biases also shape access to services. Some studies reveal that midwives and workers from higher castes are less likely to help children and mothers from lower castes. Owing to this discriminatory behaviour, 80% of children are covered by the Integrated Child Development Scheme (an early childhood education programme) but only one-third of children use it (Saxena, 2010).

Several state government schemes for conditional cash transfers (CCTs) have been initiated to address declining sex ratios and poor educational outcomes among female children from marginalised communities. Bihar’s Mukhya Mantri Bicycle Scheme (Chief Minister’s Bicycle Scheme), for example, is a CCT and welfare scheme initiated by the Bihar state government in India that gives INR 2000 (US$45) to every student enrolled in Standard IX in a government high school to purchase a bicycle. Table 1 gives an overview of these cash transfer schemes. They cover a small number of beneficiaries ranging from 62 in Punjab to 144,749 in Karnataka (United Nations Population Fund and Planning Commission of India, 2010). Often these schemes are scrapped arbitrarily and renamed without any notification to the beneficiaries, such as Bangarutalli Scheme beneficiaries, which has been renamed the Kalyana Laxmi and Shaadi Mubarak Schemes (Marriage Support Schemes) with the bifurcation of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh and the election of a new political party (Government of Telangana, 2016). As Table 1 depicts, these educational schemes are not linked to each other or the larger national programmes for education. They are similar schemes with minor changes in the name and amount of money disbursed depending on the affluence of the state. The schemes seem to be endogenously copied by state governments one from the other (Ellison, 2017).

Table 1.

Overview of Indian and provincial government schemes to promote education of female children.

Indian states	Aims and objectives of the schemes for the girl-child
Haryana	Apni Beti ApnaDhan: This CCT scheme was launched in 1994. It provided a cash transfer to mothers of US$7 on the birth of a girl-child and within three months of birth, and on enrolment, the government purchased a savings bond of US$37 in the name of the daughter which was redeemable at a maturity of US$367, at age 18, provided the girl was not married. Ladli Scheme: A CCT scheme which entitles parents who are residents of Haryana to a financial incentive of US$75 for the birth of second girl-child.
Himachal Pradesh	Indira Gandhi Balika Suraksha Yojana (Indira Gandhi Girl-Child Protection Scheme): This scheme was introduced in 2007 by the Department of Health and Family Welfare to address deteriorating sex ratios. Beneficiaries are parents who adopt family planning after the birth of one or two girl-children. Provincial government deposits US$350 in the bank account of the girl-child or US$300 into the account of two girls in one family, which is given to the girl at the age of 18. The programme had only 700 beneficiaries due to lack of awareness of the scheme (UNFPA, 2010). Beti Hai Anmol (Daughters are Precious): The scheme is targeted at families with two girl-children and living below the poverty line. At birth, the government deposits US$150 in the bank account of the girl-child and these girls are eligible to scholarships to buy school uniforms and books. Mukhya Mantri Kanyadaan Yojana (Chief Minister’s Daughter’s Marriage Scheme): Under this scheme girls who are orphaned or whose father is physically/mentally incapacitated or bed ridden can get a US$366 grant for their marriage if their parents’ annual income is no more than US$515 per annum.
Jammu and Kashmir	Ladli Beti (Girl-Child Scheme): Launched in April 2015, the state government will contribute US$15 per month to the bank account of girl-children, who, after turning the age of 21, will receive a sum of US$10,000.
National Capital Territory of Delhi	Ladli Scheme: Launched in January, 2008, this scheme provides cash incentives of varying amounts to the female children for completing Standard X in schools with government approval.
Uttarakhand	Scheme to Prevent Female Foeticide and Promote Education of the Girl-Child: A cash transfer scheme to families living under the poverty line of the amount of US$75 at the birth of the first two girl-children and an additional US$75 after they turn 10 years old. Furthermore, at the birth of a girl-child, US$300 is deposited in her bank account, which she receives at 18.
Punjab	Bebe Nanki Laadli Beti Kalyan (Scheme for Providing Education to Orphan Girls): A cash transfer scheme where the amount of US$300 is deposited into the bank account of a girl-child at birth and released at the age of 18 if she has not dropped out.
Goa	Laadli Laxmi Scheme: A cash transfer scheme wherein a registered girl-child receives US$1500 at the time of marriage and is also entitled to payments for primary and secondary education.
Gujarat	Kunwarbainu Mameru Scheme: Girls belonging to economically underprivileged classes and Scheduled Castes were given US$75 as financial assistance at the time of marriage. Dikri Bachao Campaign (Save Girl-Child): US$90 aid is granted to a family having only one daughter and no sons, and US$75 is granted to a family having two daughters and no sons.
Rajasthan	Chief Minister’s Subh Lakshmi Scheme: A cash transfer scheme wherein financial assistance is provided to mothers for giving birth in a hospital and completing three pre-natal check-ups. Another cash transfer of US$35 is made on the completion of immunisations and enrolment in school.
Andhra Pradesh	Girl Child Protection Scheme 1996–97: This is a cash transfer scheme wherein girl-children living in families living below the poverty line are entitled to US$1500 on reaching age 20 (see http://gcps.ap.nic.in/entitlements.jsp) Bangaru Talli: A cash transfer scheme whereby a girl-child from a family living below the poverty line receives cash transfers at key milestones such as completion of immunisations and completion of secondary education.
Karnataka	Bhagyalakshmi: A cash transfer scheme launched in 2006–7 with the objective of supporting girl-children from poor families and includes provision of cash transfers at completion of milestones of birth, schooling and graduation.
Kerala	Marriage Assistance to differently abled women and to daughters of differently abled parents entails providing financial support to get their daughter married.
Tamil Nadu	Cradle Baby Scheme: Set up at a cost of US$6000, each centre will have a superintendent, an assistant nurse, an assistant and other workers to rescue abandoned baby girls. Chief Minister’s Girl Protection Scheme: A cash transfer scheme wherein a fixed deposit of US$800 is made at the time of birth, which will be released when the girl turns 18 and has completed primary education. Roughly, in the year 2011–12, 3198 beneficiaries were covered under the scheme, while 2966 beneficiaries were covered during 2012–13, and a total of 2347 beneficiaries benefited during 2013–14 (The Hindu, 2014).
Telangana	Bangarutalli: At the birth of the girl-child a family receives US$37, which will be deposited into her account and US$15 will be given for the first 2 years at the time of immunisation and similar cash transfers are provided at successful completion of significant milestones.
West Bengal	Kanyashree Prakalpa: A cash transfer scheme initiated by the Department of Women Development and Social Welfare, West Bengal (DWSW). Through conditional benefits, Kanyashree Prakalpa aims to reduce the prevalence of child marriage in West Bengal by increasing the enrolment of girls in secondary education or vocational / sports training, and simultaneously encouraging the delay of marriages of girls until they reach the age of 18.
Madhya Pradesh	Ladli Lakshmi Yojana: A CCT scheme for the girl-child with regular cash transfers at the successful completion of life-cycle milestones such as primary, secondary and tertiary education, the final amount being released at the age of 21. Mukya Mantri Kanyadan Yojana: Provides assistance to girls from poor families of US$225 for higher education and marriage.
Chhattisgarh	Kanya Saksharta Protsahan Yojana (Promotion of Girl Child Education): Provides cash transfers to girls from poor families at the completion of primary, secondary and tertiary education.
Maharashtra	Lek Soniyachi (Precious Daughter): The government deposits US$323 for the girl-child living below the poverty line with an insurance company. At the age of 18 this money is released to her along with additional stipends of US$3 per month during secondary education.
Uttar Pradesh	Kanya Vidhya Dhan Scheme: Entails the provision of cash transfers to deprived communities of designated tribes, castes and Muslims.

Sources: Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India (2014–15); United Nations Population Fund and Planning Commission of India (2010).

The Indian state of Haryana was a pioneer state for CCTs, as the region faced one of the most adverse sex ratios and rampant violence against women. A comparative evaluation of Laadli Scheme (translates as ‘Dear Daughter’) in Punjab and Haryana indicated that the scheme had no positive impact on sex ratios (Mazumdar, 2012). The lack of political consistency often leaves these girls in a precarious situation. The Comptroller Auditor General of India found that only 73,108 – 58.11% – Laadli cases were renewed out of 125,808 between 2010–11 and 2011–12 (Times of India, 2013). Despite the chequered evidence of the efficacy of these CCTs, they fit well into the culture of assuaging ethnic cleavages through political patronage and the swaggering bureaucratic approach of imposing conditionalities on the most vulnerable groups of people in Indian society (Krishnan et al., 2014). As Camfield notes, in the NREGA conditional cash transfer scheme, the absence of on-site childcare provisions and high female participation resulted in older children being pulled out of school to care for babies. These schemes embed girls in a ‘set of social activities’ that is shaped by ‘culture, ideology and social institutions’ (2013: 118).

Dynamics of global knowledge transfers: Twists, turns and trims of Indian education policy

In the 1990s, against the backdrop of structural adjustment policies, Anthony Giddens’s (1998) ubiquitous Third Way paved the way to social investment and labour activation policies to rejuvenate the receding welfare states of the rich countries and moribund welfare states of the poor countries (1998: 117). In the twenty-first century, with countries rushing towards creating and sustaining knowledge economies, education emerged at the core of ‘activation’ policies (Dale, 2010). These developments added additional caveats to knowledge transfers from rich to poor countries. Poor countries have now been pushed into becoming fast track welfare states without the ‘welfare’ expertise but with increasing reliance on transnational organisations such as UNICEF or the World Bank. Current modes of epistemic governance inevitably result in knowledge asymmetry, which places the rich aid organisations in a privileged position. But the institutional structures associated with rich welfare states are missing in the poor countries. As Stephen Ball (1994, cited in 1998: 126) notes: ‘most policies are ramshackle, compromise, hit and miss affairs, that are reworked, tinkered with, nuanced and inflected through complex processes of influence, text production, dissemination and, ultimately, re-creation in contexts of practice’. Successful models of poverty interventions such as micro-credit, or research practices such as randomised control trials have been deemed gold standards in development policy and practice. Policy isomorphisms have been triggered across the developing countries largely supported by the donor-driven NGO sector as a panacea to a range of development problems from poverty to malnutrition. Such imitations do not necessarily improve policy processes or outcomes. In the past, knowledge transfers were explicitly linked with loans and grants from international agencies. In recent times, knowledge transfers from low-middle income countries to other countries (referred to as South–South transfers) have created an illusion of power parity. Knowledge brokers are still the rich donor organisations which endorse and support these transfers and conveniently overlook the local realities. At local levels, however, these isomorphisms remain ‘global speak’, instrumentally invoked at a particular time and in a particular policy context, to accelerate policy change. The term ‘loose coupling’ could be used to describe the resistance of government officials, administrators and teachers especially in developing countries to implement or sustain imported reforms (see Steiner-Khamsi, 2010: 332).

India’s rhetorical adaptation of CCTs to address the educational problems of female children can be traced to the early 1990s, marked by the launch of several successful CCT programmes in other countries such as: the Female Secondary School Assistance Project in Bangladesh; Bolsa Escola in Brazil in 1990; and Oportunidas in Mexico, which were successful in addressing chronic poverty and educational dropouts. In April 2000, at the Forum on Education for All in Dakar, the General Secretary of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, referred in a speech to the Brazilian programme Bolsa Escola as being one worth replicating. This led many participants to ask the question: ‘What is Bolsa Escola?’ (Buarque, n.d.). Not only was Bolsa Escola a successful programme in terms of enrolling more children in schools but also the average PISA scores for Brazil have improved in reading from 396 in 2000 to 412 in 2009; mathematics scores improved from 356 in 2003 to 386 in 2009; and science scores improved from 390 in 2006 to 405 in 2009 within a short span of time (OECD, 2010). Much of the Brazilian success could also be attributed to Presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva (known as Lula), who increased federal contributions to education from BRL314 million in 2006 to BRL4.5 billion in 2009. Bolsa Família was combined with FUNDEF (Fundo de Manutenção e Desenvolvimento do Ensino Fundamental), which increased teachers’ salaries, increased teacher numbers, increased the length of teachers’ preparation programmes and made contributions to higher enrolment in rural areas. President Lula also improved funding for early childhood and after-school learning and increased funding for education, which came from the approved reallocation of 75% of public revenues from oil to education (Hanushek and Woessman, 2015; Schwartzman, 2005).

In developing countries, the CCTs have emerged as an answer to complex social problems, as UNICEF and ODI (2009: 21) have stated: ‘in countries that are rich in natural resources, such as oil or minerals, cash transfers also can play a redistributive role, ensuring that the poorest deciles of the population benefit from increased national revenues, so helping to reduce inequality and to build social cohesion’. Other UN initiatives such as the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI, 2012: 1) have also endorsed CCTs as an instrument to address the problems of girl-child education:

Examples of successful cash transfer schemes from countries in Latin America such as Brazil and Mexico provide valuable insight into addressing economic disparities, poverty and the challenges for human development. As opportunity costs remain a significant barrier for many adolescent girls to participate in secondary education, cash transfer strategies may be one way to ensure that all girls have an opportunity to be educated at the secondary school level.

Successful randomised control trials by the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (Fernald et al., 2008) on CCTs in Mexico have resulted in improvements for child development with cash transfers, rather than for related health and education components. Subsequent academic work has correlated CCTs with better school enrolment for marginalised groups such as girls, in contradistinction to unconditional cash transfers (Akresh et al., 2015). Evidence on the efficacy of cash transfers in India in addressing early marriage, improved enrolment or learning outcomes is rather chequered and does not reinforce the global evidence. For example, a study by the International Centre for Research on Women indicates that the CCT in the Indian state of Haryana, Apni Beti Apna Dhan (Our Daughter Our Wealth) did influence parental decisions to educate girls. However, there is scarce evidence to suggest a wide-scale behavioural change, such as was achieved in Latin America (Nanda et al., 2014). As discussed above, in Brazil, CCTs were accompanied by a wide range of structural changes in the education system and linkages to other health and poverty programmes, whereas in the Indian context, these CCTs have a small number of beneficiaries(see Table 1), unlike in Latin America. One of the reasons CCTs are preferable as a quick fix for structural issues associated with girl-child education is cost efficiency. As UNICEF and ODI (2009: 10) note: ‘Although the impact of the universal transfers may be greater than in the targeted transfer, the high cost associated with a universal benefit makes it an unfeasible option for most low-income countries in the region.’

In terms of national and subnational dynamics of knowledge transfer, political actors are important brokers of the colloquial policy knowledge through an array of bureaucrats, NGOs and lobby groups. The newly elected United Progressive Alliance (UPA) (2004–14), with coalition support from the Left, was amenable to enacting a range of legislations such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), the Forest Rights Act (FRA), National Food Security Act (NFSA) and Right to Education (2009) (Chopra, 2011). The constitution of the National Advisory Council by the UPA aimed to bring development expertise to mainstream public policy in India. In the twenty-first century, India has been marked by the robust presence of a range of civil society actors, social movements and activists, which all came together to formulate the Right to Information Act. The rights-based approach to social policy seemed rather contradictory in the absence of clear demarcated institutional frameworks to achieve the goals alongside poor budgetary commitment (Jayal, 2013). Political actors rely on a core set of advisors who are aligned to their party ideology, and in return these advisors depend on political patronage, which eventually hinders neutrality in policy making (Ogden, 2014). Though not all of the intents of political actors can be questioned nor all policy transfers deemed acts of copying, these policy adaptations are usually consistent with the political ideology of the ruling party (Betz and Neff, 2017). At local level, we can clearly see policy evaporation, wherein the grandiose claims of political actors vanish into thin air, leaving young girls with little or no support and in a precarious situation.

To conclude, as Carstensen and Schmidt (2015: 319) note: ‘compulsory power is not limited to material resources; it also entails symbolic and normative resources’. Based on the ‘power in ideas’ approach, it is evident that knowledge transfers are rooted in ideational processes, systems of knowledge, discursive practices and institutional setups. This epistemological standpoint inevitably results in a power disparity, as it permits only certain forms of knowledge and actors who meet the thresholds of historically constituted notions of enlightenment and modernisation (Alasuutari and Qadir, 2016). The twists, turns and trims of girl-child education and survival programmes in India are not incidental. As discussed in the previous sections, these policy transfers are discursive practices that reflect the episteme frameworks of our times. As noted earlier, poor countries have now been pushed into becoming jhatpat (fast track) welfare states without the ‘welfare’ expertise but with increasing reliance on transnational organisations such as UNICEF or the World Bank. Knowledge disparity permits the emergence of certain policy entrepreneurs as brokers in the process of diffusion. It is not only access to the privilege of knowledge but also the Weltanschauung that facilitates the establishment of knowledge networks. On the surface, countries such as India want to demonstrate the capability to make and implement policies in the international arena. However, on a deeper level we find a complex juxtaposition of international and national tensions in the realisation of the epistemic imagery of modernisation. Most importantly, the prevailing institutional biases on the basis of gender, religion, caste and ethnicity in Indian education find resistance in the national and local implementation of these policies. To move towards a realisation of empirical changes, it is necessary to achieve a rupture épistémologique in the current modes of knowledge creation. I conclude that the performers have changed but that the stage is still the same and so is the dialogue. Phronesis might provide us with some answers in terms of both theory and method to permit knowledge colloquialisms.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Gita Steiner-Khamsi, Columbia University, New York, USA for her comments on the first draft of this article and the workshop participants of ‘Comparative Policy Studies: Theories, Methods and Emerging Issues’, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Oslo (2016). I am grateful to Professor Nick Ellison (University of York) and Mark Williams for their comments. A draft version of this article was presented at Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Budapest with the support of Dr Michael McAteer.

Funding

This article was written with the support of a Research Excellence Fellowship, Central European University, Budapest, the Open Society Foundation and O.P. Jindal Global University, India.

ORCID iD

Keerty Nakray

Author biography

Keerty Nakray is an Associate Professor with Jindal Global Law School, NCR Delhi. She has published in leading international journals on gender budgets, child sensitive budgets and comparative social policy. Her recent edited books include Social Science Research Ethics for a Globalizing World: Inter-disciplinary and Cross-Cultural Perspectives (Routledge, New York) and Gender Based Violence and Public Health: International Perspectives on Budgets and Policies (Routledge, London).

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