EXCLUSION, DISCRIMINATION, DISPARITY

symposium participants

a symposium on

emerging patterns of

social inequality in India

14 THE PROBLEMPosed by Surinder S. Jodhka, Professor, Centre for the Study of SocialSystems, JNU and Senior Affiliate Fellow, Centre for Social Sciences andHumanities, Delhi and Divya Vaid, Assistant Professor, CSSS, JNU, DelhiEQUALITY AS A RELATIONSHIPJules Naudet, Senior Researcher and Head, Politics and Society Division,Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities, DelhiPOLITICS, PRIVILEGE AND POST-NATIONAL URBANISMSanjay Srivastava, Professor, Centre for the Study of Social Systems,Jawaharlal Nehru University, DelhiDIGNITY CENTRE-STAGE: FOUR PROPOSITIONSMaitreyi Bordia Das, Global Lead for Social Inclusion atThe World Bank, Washington, D.C.INEQUALITY IN INDIAHimanshu, Associate Professor, Centre for Economic Studies andPlanning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, DelhiIT’S HAPPENING, LETS KEEP AT ITRama Bijapurkar, market strategy consultant and co-founder, People’sResearch on India’s Consumer Economy, MumbaiSOCIAL INEQUALITY AND HUMAN DIGNITYK. Satyanarayana, Associate Professor, Department of Cultural Studies,The English and Foreign Languages University, HyderabadTHE COMPLEXITIES OF THE GENDERSCAPE IN INDIAKalpana Kannabiran, Professor and Regional Director, Council for SocialDevelopment, HyderabadSTATE-PRODUCED INEQUALITY IN AN INDIAN CITYPatrick Heller, Professor of Sociology and International Studies, BrownUniversity, Providence, RI and Partha Mukhopadhyay, Professor, Centrefor Policy Research, DelhiINEQUALITY IN EDUCATIONSangeeta Kamat, Associate Professor, Department of Educational Policy,Research and Administration, University of Massachusetts, AmherstFROM FORMAL TO SUBSTANTIVE EQUALITYAshwini Deshpande, Professor, Department of Economics, Delhi Schoolof Economics, DelhiMUSLIM MIDDLE CLASS AND THE ‘GHETTO’Anasua Chatterjee, Researcher, Centre for the Study of Social Systems,Jawaharlal Nehru University, DelhiUNEQUAL DISLOCATIONSAnkur Datta, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, South AsianUniversity, DelhiABSENT DALIT: THE INDIAN NEWSROOMRavish Kumar, news anchor, NDTV India, DelhiUID: FROM INCLUSION TO EXCLUSIONReetika Khera, Faculty, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences,Indian Institute of Technology DelhiBOOKSReviewed by Sagarika Ghose, Padmanabh Samarendra, Sreya Senand Surinder S. JodhkaFURTHER READINGA select and relevant bibliography compiled by Divya Vaid andSreya Sen, Centre for the Study of Social Systems, JNU, DelhiIN MEMORIAMAshok Jaitly 1942-2015BACKPAGECOVERDesigned by www.designosis.in

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Inequality in educationS A N G E E T A K A M A T

PERHAPS it is time we acknowledgethat as a society we are no longer trou-bled by an unequal education system.We have become so immune to thegross inequalities in the education sec-tor such that it rarely even merits anymention in policy documents of thestate or in the numerous reports pre-pared by NGOs and internationalagencies about what ails our educationsystem. In other words, inequality ineducation is no longer a policy issue atthe highest levels, and has ceased tobe an issue of importance in the deve-lopment agenda. Concerns about‘quality’ and ‘choice’ have come tosubstitute the constitutional commit-ment to the right to an equal education.

There is no better exemplar ofthis new ‘policyscape’ we inhabit thanthe Right to Education Act of 2009, thelong overdue legal promise of the fun-damental right to education for everyschool age citizen. The RTE Act legis-

lates that every person of age 6-14must receive school education; how-ever, it leaves wide open the questionof responsibility for the provision ofeducation. Schools run by governmentor the private sector, or belonging to a‘special type of authority’ (i.e. faithbased schools) are all regarded on parwith one another for the provision of‘free and compulsory education’ for allchildren.

From 2000 onward, we have wit-nessed the rise of an incredible arrayof private education providers thatrange from ‘five star’ schools thatboast of Olympic size swimming poolsand air-conditioned campuses to ‘lowfee schools’ in a single room in a slum,and a whole range in between. Ratherthan the expansion of schools in themiddle range, what is most striking andpoints to the intensification of educa-tional inequalities is the rapid increaseof schools at either end of the spec-

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trum. The ‘five star’ schools speakabout fostering students as ‘activelearners who have a love of learning,are self-directing and engaged at alllevels with their education’, of creat-ing ‘leaders of tomorrow’ who are ableto ‘think critically, solve problems andtake decisions’, who are ‘compassion-ate and open’ – goals that represent thefundamental purpose of education inall civilized societies.

In India, however, there is a steep pricetag to access such an education thatnurtures young minds and preparesthem for success in the global eco-nomy. Save for a statistically smallclass of affluent families, this kind ofeducation is out of reach for mostIndians. Meanwhile international insti-tutions, the government and NGOs,focus on the schools of the poor. Eachyear reports like ASER (Annual Sta-tus of Education Report), in mind-numbing, repetitive fashion publicizethe numbers of government schoolsthat have usable toilets, how many ofthese have drinking water facilities, andhow they score on ‘minimum levels oflearning.’ The reports, without excep-tion, are silent about the parallel sys-tems of schooling that are so differentthat they may well inhabit separateplanets. Like a horse with blinders, thereports plod on about the dismal qual-ity of government schools and the her-culean task of improving them, even asthe chasm between schools for theprivileged and well-to-do and thosefor the majority grows ever wider andbeyond breach.

The varied types of schools thatrange from elite international schools,generic private schools and reputedaided schools for the middle classes,to low cost private schools for the lowincome and poor and governmentschools for the very poor are segre-gated not only along class lines but alsoby caste. Thus, forward caste students

are concentrated in international andother private schools, while ScheduledCastes and Scheduled Tribe studentscomprising the majority are enrolledin government run schools. The RTEAct ignores these specificities and inso doing has backed a ‘separate andunequal’ education for our younggeneration that violates the spirit ofthe Constitution.

As far back as 1966, the NationalEducation Commission (otherwiseknown as the Kothari Commission)had stated the obvious in clear anduncompromising terms: ‘Good educa-tion instead of being available to all chil-dren… from every stratum of society,is available only to a minority which isusually selected not on the basis of tal-ent but on the basis of its capacity topay fees. The identification and deve-lopment of the total national pool ofability is greatly hampered. The positionis thus undemocratic and inconsistentwith the idea of an egalitarian society.’In effect, the RTE Act has foreclosedthe debate on what constitutes an egali-tarian and democratic education andhas set a very low bar on maintainingminimal norms in schools, and not oneradicating inequality that character-ises the system as a whole.

The act encourages varied types ofproviders to enter the ‘education mar-ketplace’ – from big business housesestablishing networks of internationalschools to individual entrepreneursmanaging ‘budget’ schools, each pro-viding school choice for a differentincome (and caste) bracket. The pro-vision of ‘choice’ in the educationmarketplace is interpreted as demo-cracy. School choice, in other words,has resulted in an intensely segregatedschool system. The 25% reservationfor low income students in privateschools is a half-hearted attempt toaddress the segregation that is deeplyentrenched in our schools, that avoids

the real task of reversing policies thatlead to exclusion and discrimination.Even this measure is strongly opposedby private schools, thereby exposingjust how hollow their claims to deve-loping ‘global leaders’ and ‘caring andcompassionate citizens’ are. Ratherthan design the school system to bridgeexisting societal inequalities, schoolsin general have come to mirror theextreme inequalities of our society, andit appears we want to keep it that way.

There have been several appeals fora common school system as the onlyresolution to the problem of unequalschooling in India. The All India Forumfor the Right to Education (AIFRTE),a national network of school teachers,principals and educator-activists, hasrejected the RTE Act for sanctioningthe commercialization and privatiza-tion of education and proposed theKothari Commission’s recommenda-tion for a ‘common school system’ asthe only realistic measure to safeguardequal rights to education. The idea ofcommon schools is to create a struc-turally coherent school system thatwould enable children from differentsocio-economic backgrounds, whoare also differentiated by caste and lan-guage abilities, to have an opportunityto study together.

The common school model isfound in most developed countries ofthe West and has its early history in theUnited States where a common schoolsystem was established by the end ofthe 19th century, giving the new, pri-marily European, immigrants anopportunity to study with already resi-dent white students. However, theU.S. school system remained raciallysegregated until the mid-1950s whennew laws were promulgated to deseg-regate the racially segregated schoolsin America. This resulted in stiff oppo-sition that in many cases led to riotingand violence with the National Guard

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having to be called in to ensure thatblack students could attend predomi-nantly white schools.

In the U.S. it took both a civil rightsmovement and the executive and thejudicial branches of the state actingtogether with one mind (more or less)to turn the tide against segregatedschooling. Sixty years later, we haveto ask what it will take for us to deseg-regate our school system? The deseg-regation movement in the U.S. wasdriven by a realization that the ‘sepa-rate but equal’ motto for racially seg-regated schools is nothing but a mirage;that to endorse a system of separateschools by race, class or gender is toendorse an unequal education. Therewas also a growing recognition amongeducators and policy makers that itwould be in the best interest of thenation for children of different ethnici-ties and races to go to school together,to befriend and learn from one another.Intellectuals and researchers alsoinfluenced the thinking at the time andmade a compelling case for mixed anddiverse schools as a prerequisite forsocial and economic progress andpeace and stability. Research and datasupported by public funds were usedto inform public opinion on the subjectand forge a broad consensus on themerits of desegregated schooling.

It is instructive to follow not onlythe success but also the unravellingof the common school system in theU.S. that concerns our situation aswell. While the movement to desegre-gate education was largely effective,the struggles to desegregate housingand equalize access to infrastructuralprojects such as roads, highways andtransportation services were not simi-larly impactful. There was no similarmovement to counteract the racism inurban planning and real estate and thiswas reflected in the way housing, infras-tructure and transportation remains

largely segregated in the U.S. today.Blacks and whites, the industrial andservice classes, and the professionalclasses are likely to own and rent prop-erty in different neighbourhoods andhave very different mobility choices.The former rely mainly upon publictransportation that over time has beengreatly diminished and the latter bene-fit from a state supported automobileindustry. Increasing segregation inhousing and other public amenities hasthus undercut the success of schooldesegregation in the United States.Indian cities and towns too are under-going a similar transformation in infra-structure and transportation choicesthat makes it evident that any effort toequalize educational opportunity mustbe matched by more equitable anddemocratic urban planning and infras-tructural investments.

The U.S. case shows that inequalitiesin the school system are symptomaticof a sedimented history of racism thatneeds to be determinedly opposed toenable a more fair and equal systemof education to emerge. In the Indiancontext, the fault line is caste andcasteism that persists both in its violentand genteel forms and pervades allsocietal institutions – from family tothe media, from political parties to thebureaucracy. The education system is,of course, part of the same socialstructures and can hardly be impervi-ous to ideologies of caste and casteismthat have been documented in every-day practices of schooling, and are moresubtly present in policy and research.

Caste (and class) prejudice jus-tifies an inferior education for certaingroups of children in the belief thatdifferent groups of children need to beprepared for different roles in society.A casteist view is likely to concur withthe notion that certain social class andcaste groups just do not possess thecapacity to excel academically and that

providing all students a rich and chal-lenging educational environment onpar with schooling for the affluent wouldbe a waste of societal resources.

Not only are such beliefs ethi-cally reprehensible and have no placein modern democracies but equally,hard data and evidence contradictssuch beliefs and demonstrates pre-cisely the opposite. The best exampleof a country that has an effective com-mon school model and high rates ofeducational attainment is Cuba. Everyfew years the front pages of The NewYork Times carry perplexing reportsabout what might possibly explainstudents in Cuba outperforming stu-dents in developed countries and com-ing out on top in english, math andscience international tests.

Further, how does one explainthe below average performance ofU.S. students on similar tests despitehaving resource rich schools? While itis well known that Cuba invests tenpercent of its national budget on edu-cation, a proportion higher than mostdeveloped countries and certainly morethan any low income country, the waysin which the entire school system isoriented to deliver quality educationprovides valuable lessons on howequality and quality of education aresynergistically linked.

A recent study, ‘Cuba’s AcademicAdvantage: Why Students from CubaDo Better in Schools’, provides anempirically rich account of schools inCuba comparing them to Brazil andChile, two upper income countries thatperform much more poorly on learningoutcomes than Cuba. The data drivenresearch arrives at certain conclusionsabout the necessary conditions thatproduce a high quality school system.

Let me briefly list a few salientpoints about Cuba’s school systemfrom the study: (i) a social context iscreated that is highly supportive of

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academic achievement; (ii) a concep-tually complex curriculum, a robustteacher training programme and strongmentoring relations for new and jun-ior teachers so that teachers are farmore competent and confident in theirpedagogy; (iii) the teaching professionis made attractive in terms of respect-ability, pay and affirming workingconditions such that it draws academi-cally strong graduates; and (iv) smallclasses and teachers teach the samecohort for several years which buildsrelations of trust and caring betweenstudents and teachers.

Over and above these organiza-tional features of Cuba’s school system,the authors highlight the importanceof ‘state social capital’, that is a con-text in which ‘children’s health andlearning are fully supported, where thestate ensures that low income chil-dren are well fed and do not have towork, and where employment foradults is guaranteed.’ While Cuba is alow growth economy, what seems tomatter in terms of quality of educationand strong learning outcomes is thatincome distribution is relatively equalin contrast to the high levels of incomeinequality in Chile and Brazil (as inthe United States).

While India is in a league of its ownin terms of sheer size and linguistic andregional diversity, the findings fromsuch dense empirical studies (e.g. Fin-land and China also) have implicationsfor our education system. Incomeinequality in India has worsened inthe last decade and a half, a trend thatshows no signs of reversing. This mili-tates against the prospects of an egali-tarian education system; rather, whatwe are likely to see is a more unequaleducation system that undermines thebasic precepts of a democratic andsocially cohesive society.

Second, evidence shows thatpolitical will and genuine commitment

on the part of the state and broaderintellectual forces play a critical role inthis endeavour; investing more in termsof GDP and stand alone schemes suchas midday meals proves inadequateif these schemes are not integratedinto a comprehensive programme toimprove education that includesrevamping teacher training, class size,infrastructure, pedagogical appro-aches, and curricula, and most of allclaiming quality education as a funda-mental human right. Countless NGOand World Bank reports highlightIndia’s losing battle with quality edu-cation despite different kinds of infu-sions in the government school sector.

In the present conjuncture, the politi-cal commitment to equalize educa-tional opportunity appears a distantprospect, not least for two main rea-sons. One, the priority of the state iscapital accumulation and global eco-nomic integration by any means nec-essary, even if it means the destructionof secure livelihoods for the majority.The developmentalist state has trans-formed into a ‘competition state’ wherethe profitability of the corporate sec-tor and political elites are given prec-edence over the economic and socialrights of ordinary citizens and workingpeople. We are looking toward afuture of increasing wealth inequalityand precarious existence for the many.Given this, education policy will be fur-ther subordinated to the requirementsof the economy and oriented towardproducing necessary labour for the glo-bal economy, labour that is increasinglylow wage, low skills and contractual.

In this economic model, educa-tion for global leadership, higher orderproblem solving and critical thinkingwill be regarded as appropriate for aselect minority alone. In other words,a fractured, highly stratified and seg-mented education system makes per-fect sense for the economic path we

are on. Within the current model, equal-ity of educational opportunity wouldbe viewed as socially inefficient andeconomically unproductive. There arealready concerns that we are graduat-ing students from college at a rate higherthan can be absorbed by the labourmarket. What is notable here is thatcountries that have achieved universalschool education of a high quality havedone so through a publicly financedcommon school system, primarily onthe principle of human rights and civi-lizational progress and not as subser-vient to the needs of the economy.

A second barrier to realizingequality of educational opportunitythat is peculiar to the Indian context isthe unchecked prevalence of casteismand caste prejudice at the broadest lev-els of society. To have an educationsystem that is egalitarian, diverse anddemocratic, at least far more thanwhat exists at present, and which deli-vers high quality education, requiresconviction in the capacity of children– no matter what their lineage, familyoccupation and social history – toexcel if they are provided the appro-priate context for learning.

Caste prejudice and belief in thesuperiority of certain castes and theirinherent right to dominate over othercastes is a formidable obstacle toequalizing education. Unless we takethis issue head on, the casteist attitudesand mindsets of education bureau-crats, leaders and teachers will inter-fere with and continually underminethe best efforts to deliver quality edu-cation for all. Therefore, all those whoare committed to improving the qual-ity of schooling in India need to alsoconfront the inequalities fomented bya ‘competition state’ and by our invest-ment in the caste structure. Withoutthis the national goal of universal qual-ity education will remain forever outof reach.