Abstract
The year 2015 marked a new turn in public debates on education in India. Early in the year, the government invited recommendations for the drafting of a national education policy, the third since 1947. This led to consultations across the country by academics, educationists and civil society groups to recommend strategies that the state should consider to expand access to quality education at all levels, and the form and direction this expansion should take. Serious concerns have been raised about the future of public education in an extensively restructured context marked by the retreat of state commitment to education: widespread commercialisation, a focus on skills rather than knowledge, the increasing contractualisation of teachers and the decline of teachers’ autonomy. The reduction of budget allocations to the education sector and the phasing out of an important programme like Mahila Samakhya reflect the narrow imagination and weakening commitment of policymakers. There has been public opposition to the government’s proposal to make higher education a tradable service under GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services). The overall picture that emerges is of an education system that will favour the market over the values of equity, inclusion and justice. In such a context, it is imperative that constitutional commitments to education for all, embodied in the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act or the Right to Education Act (RTE), 2009, and the recommendations of the Justice Verma Commission on Teacher Education that have been upheld by the Supreme Court, guide all policy framing on education.
The formulation of the new education policy has come in the wake of student protests across the country demanding democracy and freedom on campuses, and a more equitable and just education system. Over the past 14 months, students in many universities have taken to the streets, articulating positions that bring together issues of caste and gender discrimination on campuses, increasing right-wing authoritarianism and privatisation of education. The tragic death of Rohith Vemula, a student at the University of Hyderabad (HCU) in January 2016, brought to public attention the various forms of institutionalised discrimination against students from marginalised groups who struggle for an education that holds some promise of release from a world scarred by stigma, humiliation and indignity. Suicides by Dalit students on our campuses are signs of their deep and intractable despair and anguish. The antecedents of Rohith’s death—interminable delays in receiving state scholarships, eviction from the university hostel along with other Dalit students, the insistence of the ministry in demanding action against students labelled anti-national, Naxal, jehadist and casteist—and his dreams of gaining knowledge so eloquently captured in the letter he left behind for us highlight serious gaps in education discourse and practice. Dalit writers like Om Prakash Valmiki (Jhootan) and Daya Pawar (Baluta), and filmmakers like Nagraj Manjule (see his brilliant film Fandry) show us how assaults on dignity and personhood start early in schools, in Rohith’s words, reducing the Dalit student to ‘his immediate identity and nearest possibility. To a vote. To a number. To a thing.’ The targeting of students is not new in India, but recent developments at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) show how state power can be used to clamp down on all forms of dissent that challenge majoritarian politics. Events at HCU and JNU have succeeded in bringing together university students and teachers across India to protest against the arbitrary and violent politics of the Right. At stake is the very idea of the university and, more widely, of education itself.
The expansion of the education system and the much-touted ‘youth dividend’ in India are posing historic challenges to both state and society. As increasing numbers of children from marginalised sections enter schools, with aspirations and hopes for their future, it is time to address the problems of the under-resourced public education system, low-quality private schools and the focus on equipping students with merely low or vocational skills to prepare them for entry into the highly hierarchical and unequal labour market. These measures certainly cannot ensure that the passage of students through the formal educational system will fulfil their desire for social justice in the broadest way possible. Serious reflection on the caste and gender implications of institutionalising the values of social equality, freedom and secularism is essential to meet these new demands and aspirations. Even as the shape and content of a new education policy are debated, critical engagement is needed with practices that seek to undermine the very aim of education in enhancing these social values. The recent student protests and the deployment of state power to suppress them clearly show that these values and practices cannot be gained in the present context without struggle.
This issue of Contemporary Education Dialogue focuses on some dimensions of these debates. The experiences and aspirations of first-generation learners from marginalised sections of Indian society have to be seen in the context of the new political economy centred around education. This is particularly evident in rural areas, which are in the grip of a severe agrarian crisis. Suchita Chakraborty’s ethnographic study of a village in Odisha describes how these shifts affect children’s schooling. G. Ramesh and V. Sucharita present a qualitative case study of an intervention in an area of Bangalore to improve student performance through exerting what they term ‘contiguous’ pressure rather than acting directly on the school system. The teacher–student relationship is at the heart of the learning experience. Dvora Lederman-Daniely’s article raises several issues around ‘dialogue’ as an essential dimension of this relationship. Discussing the work of the philosopher Martin Buber, Lederman-Daniely argues for the introduction of an ‘in between’ space that defines moments of revelation and repose that allow for reflective learning.
The Classics with Commentary section of this issue discusses the life and work of the influential sociologist of education Pierre Bourdieu. The text selected for this section is from the 1970 classic Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture that Bourdieu co-authored with Jean-Claude Passeron. Jyoti Dalal places this text within the framework of a concise discussion of Bourdieu’s ideas of cultural capital, habitus and field, which are critical constructs in sociological inquiry of the role of education in social and cultural reproduction.
All three book reviews in this issue address issues concerning the theorising of an equitable education for children in situations of diversity and inequality.
With the turn to market-driven reforms in education, a serious concern is the systematic erosion of teachers’ autonomy. We are happy to have an end page in this issue written by two government school teachers from Delhi. Snehlata Gupta and Firoz Ahmad’s article provides an insiders’ account of how teachers committed to the welfare of their students, most of whom come from marginalised sections, are reduced to mere bystanders in the grand designs of administrators who carry out policies dictated from above. The authors draw attention to the ways in which government schools are opened out to private and ‘civil society’ interventions to which teachers must accommodate themselves, and the steady undermining of their academic competence and authority even as they are increasingly under attack for allegedly being the cause of a dysfunctional public school system.
The freedom to question structural inequalities and the right to debate and dissent are the foundational aims of education in a democratic society. These are facing their gravest challenge in India today. We hope that the contents of this issue of CED will continue to provide an impetus to these aims and reinstate our faith in education as a space for critical reflection and action.