This book pays attention to education in India as part of several overlapping stories developed along different axes: stories of dissent, contestations, appropriation and social action. It historicises the enterprise of formal education by paying attention to the numerous policy shifts. Further, it theorises the education policy discourse by analysing the ways in which education is increasingly being shaped by international/transnational knowledge production, actors and norms. Focusing on the cultural politics of education policy production, circulation and translation across different contexts, the book revisits some of the long-standing and unresolved debates on social reforms, justice, nationalism and mobility. Evolution of ideas such as mass education, national education, adult literacy and education through public-private-partnerships showcase the momentous shifts in education policy over the course of last century. Ideas, institutional and economic arrangements, administrative formulations and frameworks for implementation make frequent appearances in the cultural as well as political reading of education policy. In a departure from the traditional policy research, this work sees policy as socially and culturally constructed; connected to questions of power, context and struggle; and part of a number of processes at large.

This book quantitatively analyses data to demonstrate India's recent progress in the education sector. India, as one of the world's fastest growing economies, currently enjoys what is termed a 'demographic dividend' meaning that, compared to most other countries, it has a relatively young working age population. In order to exploit this advantage, the author argues that India needs to make this young population economically productive through education. The chapters in the book address whether India has succeeded in doing so, both in terms of numbers educated and the quality of their education. The author draws on specialist surveys conducted by India's National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) in 2008 and 2014 which examine the state of education in India.

This volume examines how the public and private domains in school education in India are informed and mediated by current market realities. It moves beyond the simplistic dichotomy of pro-state versus promarket factors that define most current debates in the formulations of educational reform agendas to underline how they need to be interpreted in the larger context. The chapters in the volume present a series of conceptual and empirical investigations to understand the growth of private schools in India; investigate the largely uncontested claims made by the private sector regarding provision of superior quality of education; and their ability to address the educational needs of the poor. Further, the book looks at how the private–public dichotomy has been extended to professional identity of teachers and teaching practices as well. Rich in primary data and supported by detailed case studies, this volume will be of interest to teachers, scholars and researchers dealing with education, educational policy, school education and public policy. It will also interest policy makers, think tanks and civil society organisations.

Just a thousand years ago, India was dotted with universities across its length and breadth, where international students flocked to gain credentials in advanced education. This illustrated book describes how these multi-disciplinary centers of learning existed in several forms such as forest universities, brick-and-mortar universities and temple universities. It examines the funding for these citadels of learning and their graduation ceremonies. The process by which India’s ancient systems of education helped to fuel a knowledge revolution around the world with its manuscripts, forming the basis for monographs and academic papers, is explained with references. The marauding incursions by Muslim invaders, which disrupted the idyllic world of university learning in India, followed by European colonization, which led to further erosion and degeneration of India’s traditional learning systems, have been taken up in some detail. Readers will get a snapshot view of India's education system down the ages from ancient to modern times.

Subject Lessons offers a fascinating account of how western knowledge “traveled” to India, changed that which it encountered, and was itself transformed in the process. Beginning in 1835, India’s British rulers funded schools and universities to disseminate modern, western knowledge in the expectation that it would gradually replace indigenous ways of knowing. From the start, western education was endowed with great significance in India, not only by the colonizers but also by the colonized, to the extent that today almost all “serious” knowledge about India—even within India—is based on western epistemologies. In Subject Lessons, Sanjay Seth’s investigation into how western knowledge was received by Indians under colonial rule becomes a broader inquiry into how modern, western epistemology came to be seen not merely as one way of knowing among others but as knowledge itself. Drawing on history, political science, anthropology, and philosophy, Seth interprets the debates and controversies that came to surround western education. Central among these were concerns that Indian students were acquiring western education by rote memorization—and were therefore not acquiring “true knowledge”—and that western education had plunged Indian students into a moral crisis, leaving them torn between modern, western knowledge and traditional Indian beliefs. Seth argues that these concerns, voiced by the British as well as by nationalists, reflected the anxiety that western education was failing to produce the modern subjects it presupposed. This failure suggested that western knowledge was not the universal epistemology it was thought to be. Turning to the production of collective identities, Seth illuminates the nationalists’ position vis-à-vis western education—which they both sought and criticized—through analyses of discussions about the education of Muslims and women.

India Higher Education Report 2020 critically analyzes the role played by the state, industries, and higher education institutions in the employment and employability of educated youth in India. The book discusses a wide range of topics such as employability skill gaps of higher education graduates; curriculum and skills training systems; formal and informal modes of skill formation; crisis of jobless growth in India; migration, education and employment; dimensions of gender, caste and education; general, technical and professional education; vocationalization; qualifications framework and skills certifications; curriculum and pedagogy in higher education for skill development; industry–academia linkages; entrepreneurship education and executive education; and sustainable employment. The book focuses on theoretical insights, empirical evidences and recent data on key issues and challenges of higher education graduate employment in a knowledge economy driven by the unprecedented expansion of higher education and increasing digitization. It offers successful cases of institutional responses, examples of policy and practices as also perspectives of different stakeholders such as employers, employees, teachers and students to present trends in the changing landscape of higher education and future demands of the job market for the youth workforce across sectors, subject disciplines and gender. This volume will be an important resource for scholars, teachers and researchers of higher education, public policy, political economy, political science, labour studies, economics, education, sociology in general as well as for policymakers, professional organizations and associations, civil society organizations, and government bodies.