Abstract
The importance of higher education in narrowing opportunity gaps and driving social and economic mobility cannot be overstated. Participation in higher education in India has expanded enormously in the past decade, doubling from 14 million in 2007 to 28 million in 2013, and India is forecast to have the largest student-aged population in the world by 2025, of around 119 million (Oxford University, 2017). This expansion of the higher education system, while praiseworthy, also calls for a higher rate of growth in the enrolment of historically marginalised groups to level off social inequalities in terms of access to higher education. However, present-day market-friendly reforms favoured by democratic regimes may be unsuitable agents for promoting social justice or redistributing resources to benefit the marginalised.
Accessing Higher Education: Footprints of Marginalised Groups is a compilation of papers presented at a national seminar on ‘Higher Education and the Marginalised: A Critique to Access and Quality in the Global Context’ held on 3 and 4 March 2014 at Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. In India, higher education has been the privilege of urban, elite upper classes/castes, excluding the minorities, marginalised and women. The recent privatisation of higher education, especially professional education, has intensified unequal access and consequent inequality in capabilities and employability for the economically poor and socially marginalised groups. The importance of higher education for inclusive growth makes a review of its access, practices, policies and ground realities a must for scholars and policymakers. The compilation successfully addresses these concerns in the context of historically disadvantaged segments of Indian population. However, the discrete issues addressed by independent papers presented at the national seminar results in a lack of continuity within the chapters of the book.
The book is divided into three parts of two, four and five chapters, respectively. The introductory chapter by Govardhan Wankhede and Ivan Reid sets the tone and basis for this book. It rightly points out the contradictory role of higher education which while being projected as an agent of change for the disadvantaged has increasingly excluded the marginalised, thanks to the hierarchical nature of Indian society.
Ivan Reid delves into his long and varied experience with global educational systems in Chapter two to define equality, equity and quality in higher education. The discursive chapter also reviews the economic, cultural and individual functions of education alongside social engineering and justice and the evolution of a stratified education system as a consequence of a stratified society. It addresses the transformative role of higher education, which is by far the most challenging aspect of the higher education philosophy of inclusion and integration.
J. B. G Tilak’s chapter ‘How Inclusive is Higher Education in India’, explains how inclusive growth has replaced equity in growth as the modern-day mantra of development. Gross enrolment ratio and the percentage of adult population having completed higher education are examined to determine whether inequalities in higher education have increased or declined over time. Empirical data from the National Sample Surveys covering the years 1983 until 2009–2010 reveal the groups that have improved the most and the relative progress or decline between groups. Tilak concludes that relying on the private sector for expansion of higher education seems to impact inclusive growth negatively and does not seem to have translated into a reduction of inequalities.
Pierre Bourdieu (1992), in his analysis of the complex correlation between education and social structures, points out that educational institutions reproduce social hierarchy by transmitting power and privilege of the dominant classes. Prashant Bansode expands on Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital in his chapter, ‘Cultural Capital, Social Exclusion and the Marginalised Groups’, to point out that the reservation policy has not achieved the expected results. Exclusion of marginalised groups has been explained using Lamont and Lareau’s modified version of cultural capital. It is argued that the affirmative action policy to ensure inclusion of the historically disadvantaged has failed due to lack of commitment by the implementing authorities.
Any compilation about the ‘excluded marginalised’ is incomplete without engaging with the perceived unfair exclusion of the ‘unreserved privileged’ classes. Smriti Singh examines the public opinion within classrooms for feedback on affirmative action. In her chapter ‘Discourses of Caste in the Classroom: Reflections from Undergraduate Teaching in a Delhi University College’, she discusses how merit rather than social profile should be the criterion for determining beneficiaries of reservation in higher education. The painful articulations of Dalit students to reclaim the public sphere is contrasted effectively with the aggressive anti-Dalit stance of privileged students by the author. However, future editions need to edit spelling mistakes and ensure better image quality on page 97, which is the basis for the chapter.
Chapters nine and ten address institutional roles and disciplinary issues in the context of expanding participation for the marginalised. Accommodating a more diverse student population creates new tensions in higher education institutions both for academic integration and social inclusion. Continuing with the observations made by Singh in Chapter five, marginalised students have recently begun to challenge a campus culture which represents the dominant privileged culture. Marginalisation begins at the university level when the process of transmitting knowledge is itself governed by ‘popular culture’, thereby promoting a ‘cultural hegemony’. It is intriguing as to why intellectuals at the university level have failed to address caste-based discrimination until the lower-caste students raised it through their own platforms. Student activism in four major Indian institutions has been examined as examples of a counter-hegemonic culture to the traditional left- and right-wing politics. Gaurav J. Pathania, in his chapter ‘Counter-Hegemonic Assertions of Marginalised Students in University Campuses’ in India wonders how far this counter-hegemony will find support from civil society. Hegemony of the privileged classes in academics, specifically social sciences, is enunciated by Vivek Kumar in his chapter ‘Exclusion of Dalit Issues in Social Sciences’. Despite globalisation and the information revolution, the Dalit world, in terms of their icons, art, culture and politics still faces a cognitive blackout within the social sciences.
In Chapter eleven, ‘The Coming Crisis of Social Science Education in India’, Avinash Kumar Singh addresses the declining standards of social science education in India. Singh points out that privatisation and commercialisation of higher education have resulted in social sciences becoming a refuge for underperforming, marginalised students who cannot afford expensive private professional courses. Singh observes that market economy and declining state funding for higher education have resulted in the social sciences faring poorly where it is most needed. He also argues that rising social problems may be linked to the declining social sciences education in India.
Chapters six, seven and eight address access to higher education among three historically disadvantaged groups, the Kunchikorves, the youth of Jammu and Kashmir and the differently abled. ‘Aiming High: Higher Education among the Kunchikorves of Dharavi’ explores the educational roadblocks faced by the de-notified tribe of Kunchikorves. The liberalisation of the Indian economy and the consequent privatisation of sanitation jobs predict a bleak future for the Kunchikorves who depended on employment in the sanitation department of the Bombay Municipal Corporation. Again, India’s neo-liberal policies, in this case, do not augur well for the marginalised unless the state intervenes with remedial measures to protect their aspirations and interests. Renu Nanda addresses the lack of quality higher education institutions in rural Jammu and Kashmir which has resulted in youth falling prey to ideological and monetary inducements in the absence of income and employment opportunities. In ‘Higher Education, Conflict Resolution and Peace Building in Rural Areas of Jammu and Kashmir’, Nanda highlights the role of higher education in promoting both material and intellectual well-being, which is essential for resolving conflict and promoting peace. Improving the quality of higher educational institutions especially those located at the international border is essential to facilitate the overall development of human resources. Vaishali Kolhe, in her contribution ‘Access to Higher Education: Issues and Challenges of Students with Disability’, suggests establishing a centre for disability studies in every university to initiate a bottom-up dialogue on differently abled students’ issues in higher education.
The edited volume thus addresses several relevant aspects of marginalised voices but a better understanding of the ‘hierarchy of deprivation’ is critical for framing more nuanced policies of affirmative action, including reservation. Among the many arguments against affirmative action in academic literature is that affirmative action fails to target the most marginalised members of a disadvantaged group, and, instead, it supports the group’s most affluent members whose socio-economic position may be comparable to that of the mainstream population (Garaz, 2014). The available evidence suggests that reservation policy in India has not been an unqualified success. Over the years, their scope and coverage has been enlarged, and sub-categories have been created in each segment to address the concern that the most marginalised are not benefiting from this policy. Apart from the uneven participation of marginalised groups, recent studies have highlighted that social hierarchy and conditions which formed the basis of affirmative action are not stable and are undergoing change in India.
Empirical findings raise questions regarding the efficacy of socio-religious affiliation being the sole focus of affirmative action. Since factors other than socio-religious affiliation also influence participation in higher education in a significant manner and since the deficits are changing over time, reservation policy needs to be revised frequently. This should be done to reflect the change in participation among eligible underprivileged factoring in the economic background and parental education of the beneficiaries of affirmative action (Basant & Sen, 2012). A regular review of affirmative action policy is essential at this juncture, and it is unfortunate that not a single article in the present edited volume addresses this question.
Higher education institutions are gradually moving towards more social diversity, and campuses definitely have a visible presence of a diverse student body. An improvement in terms of access ensures the first level of equity, that is, equity in access, but this is not sufficient. An over-representation of privileged students in elite subjects and institutions is commonly observed. As mentioned in Chapter eleven, students belonging to lower social strata, underdeveloped regions and those having studied in vernacular medium and from poor families are relegated to the arts, humanities and social sciences streams. Disciplinary stratification follows social stratification which, in turn, influences financial and social outcomes. This issue needs further discussion in future seminars and publications. These emerging forms of disparities in a mass society such as ours call for concerted policy efforts to ensure equal educational opportunities (Sabharwal & Malish, 2018). There is a need in future conferences and publications to closely assess this phenomenon of differential access to disciplines or a field of study by campus administrators and for identifying the under-represented groups on their campuses.