thapliyal, nisha - the struggle for public education activist narratives from india

8/9/2019 Thapliyal, Nisha - The Struggle for Public Education Activist Narratives From India

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Postcolonial Directions in Education , 3(1), pp. 122-159 , 2014 , 122ISSN: 2304-5388

THE STRUGGLE FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION:

ACTIVIST NARRATIVES FROM INDIA

Nisha ThapliyalUniversity of Newcastle, NSW

ABSTRACT . The aim of this paper is to explore and analyseconstructions of public education amongst Left-leaning educationactivists in India. This discussion highlights the adverse impact of twodecades of pro-privatisation education reforms on entrenched

educational and socio-cultural inequalities. It also provides apreliminary mapping of the scope and substance of socialmobilisations in the domain of public education. This discussion isgrounded in my ongoing research with the All India Forum for theRight to Education (AIF-RTE): a nationwide network of organisationsand individuals engaged in collective struggle to protect andstrengthen public education. I explore a multiplicity of activistrepresentations about public and private education as well as theirimaginaries about the transformation of educational and socialinequity. In addition to positing education as a site where subalterngroups engage the capitalist state, I show that activists constructknowledge in different ways depending on the contexts andrelationships in which knowledge production occurs.

Introduction

Approximately one in four people in India fallinto the category of school-aged population (agedbetween 6 to 24 years) (GoI 2008). The Government

of India claimed to have achieved universal primaryeducation by the end of the last millenium (on thebasis of primary education enrolment data).However, completion data and the disaggregation ofnational statistics by caste, class, and gender painta different picture about what is happening in ourschools. Disaggregated statistics reveal a multi-tieror hierarchical education system in which caste,


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class and gender determine access to qualityeducation. Relatedly, the data showsdisproportionately high drop-out rates amongst poorand subaltern social groups including: Dalits,derogatorily referred to as the Untouchables andpart of the Scheduled Castes in official demographicclassification; Adivasis, (indigenous communitiesreferred to as Scheduled Tribes); Muslims, girls, andrural students.

Within the first three groups, less than 10-15%of students reach tertiary education on average This

data points to the enduring nature ofinstitutionalised inequality in Indian schools andsociety as well as the questionable commitment ofthe capitalist developmental state towardsestablishing an equitable and just system of publiceducation.

In a scathing 2012 essay entitl ed Capitalism: Aghost story , Indian novelist Arundathi Roy writes

that the capitalist development model hasexacerbated the unequal distribution of wealth,environmental destruction, as well as inclinationstowards individualism, unapologetic consumerism,casteism, sexism, communalism 1, andterritorialism. It is in this context of shrinkingcollective or public spaces that my research onsocial mobilisations is located. In this paper, I

explore and analyse constructions of therelationship between schooling and social inequalityamongst activists engaged in collective struggles tostrengthen and expand public education. These

1 In the Indian context, communalism refers specifically to conflicts betweenreligious groups, particularly between the majority Hindu and minority Muslimcommunities. See Bns (2008) study of schools as sites for the production ofexclusionary nationalisms and Krishna Kumars writings on education and conflictin India more generally.


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activists are members of a progressive coalitioncalled the All India Forum for the Right to Education(AIF-RTE). Many of them are also part of otherongoing and interlinked struggles for economic andcultural justice related to the commodification andexploitation of natural resources (water, land, forestsetc.) and discrimination and violence againstsubaltern groups including women, Dalits, Adivasis,disabled, religious or linguistic minorities, women,transgenders, as well as displaced, migrants,nomads, and denotified tribes (AIF-RTE 2012). In

addition to positing education as a site wheresubaltern groups engage the capitalist state, I showthat activists construct knowledge in different waysdepending on the contexts and relationships inwhich knowledge production occurs. This discussionfocuses on understandings and representations ofunequal education amongst activists and theimplications for building a social movement in

support of free and quality public education.I come to this research project as anintersectional and transnational feminist migrantacademic. I am currently located in Australia butwas born, raised, and schooled in India andcompleted PhD studies in the USA. My search foralternatives to capitalist development first led me tothe Landless Workers Movement in Brazil (Thapliyal

2006) and South Africa (Thapliyal, Vally and Spreen2013). I returned to India when I learned about theAIF-RTE in 2007; one of the few spaces withinIndian civil society to initiate a sustained campaignfor free and equitable public education. Through theinternet and on my visits home, I began tocontribute to AIF-RTE mobilisational activities in thewestern state of Maharashtra in 2007 (through


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translation support, website support, street protestsetc.) In July 2012, the AIF-RTE asked me to presenta paper at their All-India Conference about strugglesfor public education in Brazil (with a focus on theMST, the Landless Workers Movement) and theUnited States. At this conference, I met activistsfrom Karnataka Jan Shakti (KJS, Karnataka PeoplePower) who invited me to visit and document theirstories and experiences. I spent three weeks livingwith members of KJS in in central Karnataka in

January 2013. On their request, I made multiple

workshop-style presentations about the MST as partof the ongoing systematised internal educationalprocesses of KJS. Some of the data presented herecomes from conversations with KJS activists whowere nominated to speak to me - all are leaders of akind within the organisation. All the activistsrejected anonymity and requested that I inform asmany people as possible about the work of KJS. I

also draw on relatively more formal and shorterinterviews with members of the national leadershipof AIF-RTE recorded in the past year. Theseinterviews are part of another commitment toconstruct a systematised history for the AIF-RTE. Iprovide this background information about theactivists and myself with a view to situate theanalyses presented here.

Cultural politics of education: Quality for aprivileged few

An in-depth history of inequality, the culturalpolitics of public education, and social mobilisationsin postcolonial India is beyond the scope of thispaper. In this section, I encapsulate this history


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using a broad strokes approach with a focus on thehistorical relationship between the developmentaliststate and subaltern groups - at the national leveland in the state of Karnataka.

The Indian state which emerged from thenationalist struggle was a coalitional state (Kamat,Mir, Mathew 2004) where the state drew its mandatefrom multiple forces. They included mainly Hindu,male, upper-caste and class elites alongside amobilized stratum of subaltern communities thatconstituted the struggle for Independence. This

coalition dissolved by the end of the sixties with thedemise of the first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehrualong with his particular vision for a scientific,socialist and liberal India. By the mid-eighties, theIndian state had abandoned any pretense atredistributive, anti-poverty and social equity-oriented policy in favour of structural adjustment foran unregulated market economy. Ray and

Katzenstein (2005) posit that meaningful anti-poverty politics have been successfully displaced bynationalist, pro-market voices and only endure insome spaces within womens , environmental, andDalit movements.

The education system has always beencontrolled by upper caste and class elites.Independence from British rule did little to change

the established multi-tier system in which childrenof the colonial and indigenous elite were mainlyschooled in exclusive urban private English-mediuminstitutions and to a lesser extent, in a smallnumber of well-funded government schools reservedfor the children of civil servants and militarypersonnel. Access to these two groups of schoolscontinues to be highly restrictive and thus central to


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the reproduction of social status and opportunitiesfor social mobility. (In other words, neither thepublic nor the private education sector ishomogenous.) The education system as a wholereflects the segregation and stratification producedby interlinked structures of caste-class-gender-geography and maintains the hegemony of the rulingclass which today includes the new and aspiringmiddle-class(es) (Fernandes 2006).

The practice of quality for a privileged few wasfirst legitimised by educational discourse centered

around interlinked agendas of human capital andnationalism / national security; and, more recently,by global capital-oriented discourses ofmacroeconomic stability and managerialism 2.Progressive tendencies and alternative discourses tocolonial and capitalist education by indigenousthinkers such as Gandhi, Tagore, Aurobindo, as wellas those inserted by globalisation (e.g. Right to

Education, childrens rights) have been symbolicallyevoked by the ruling class for legitimacy purposesand otherwise ignored (Kumar 2006). In 1986, theNational Plan of Education officially institutionalisedthe unequal multi-tier system by promoting privatelydelivered, nonformal, low-quality educationalprogrammes delivered by untrained and underpaidinstructors under the flagship of DPEP (District

Primary Education Programme), designed andfunded by the World Bank (and other internationalagencies) 3. Other so-called targeted initiatives

2 Unlike many other developing countries in this region of the world, India spendsroughly as much on her military budget as she does on her education budget bothin terms of GDP and national budget (Tomasevski 2006)3 Less than 5% of educational budget comes from external assistance butinternational development agencies and discourses like Education for All enjoydisproportionate amount of influence in policy making . See for example the

Tribunal on World Bank at http://www.worldbanktribunal.org/education.html
http://www.worldbanktribunal.org/education.htmlhttp://www.worldbanktribunal.org/education.html


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through public -private partnerships, includedModel Schools and Hostels (residential schools formarginalised girls and SC/STs) that promised todeliver high-quality education to meritoriousstudents in so-called backward areas. With a fewexceptions, these programmes have been poorlyimplemented and have failed to significantly impactout of school children as well as completion ratesamongst subaltern groups (Probe Revisited 2006;Saxena 2012). At the same time, the wholesaleabandonment of government schools created

conditions for the entry of a new actor - budget orlow cost private schools which have mushroomedacross the country in the last two decades. Since thegovernment has steadfastly evaded demands toregulate the unaided private sector in any way,nobody knows the exact number of these schools letalone conditions within these schools (Mehrotra andPanchamukhi 2007).

One of the most recent formulations of statewithdrawal has taken the form of urbanmunicipalities handing over administration ofgovernment schools -wholesale to non-governmentalorganisations funded by a mix of corporatefoundations, external donors, and localphilanthropic societies (Kumar 2008). In addition,since 2010, the Congress Party-led central

government has been trying to pass sixParliamentary bills in support of the privatisation ofhigher education. These reforms are intended toestablish a legal framework that will invite globalinvestment in keeping with the offer made by thegovernment to the World Trade Organisation (WTO)


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before the Doha rounds 4. In summary then, thedistribution of quality education can be imagined asan inverted, multi-tiered pyramid topped by a smallgroup of exclusive private schools and selectivegovernment schools described previously. However,the vast majority of Indian children who live near toor in conditions of extreme poverty face a choice-lesschoice between barely functioning governmentschools, unregulated budget private schools, andnonformal education

It has taken more than sixty years for the

government to provide a legal guarantee for the rightto education. An in-depth analysis of the Act is notpossible in this paper but I will identify a few keylimitations. First, from a human rights-basedperspective, the notion of rights in the 2009 Right toFree and Compulsory Education Act (hereafterreferred to as the Act) is much diluted (Thapliyal2012). For example, it only guarantees access for

children aged 6 to 14 years. Moreover, it onlyguarantees access, not quality education for all.Instead of the expansion and improvement ofgovernment schools, the primary vehicle foruniversalisation remains nonformal educationthrough SSA (Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, Education forAll), a repackaged DPEP. From a critical perspective,the Act is problematic because it reifies the gap

between exclusive private schools and governmentschools and continues to perpetuate the discourse ofquality education for a privileged few. Specifically,the Act requires private schools to reserve 25% ofseats in Class 1 for poor and socially disadvantaged

4 In 2011 market-analyst reports by Anand Rathi and KPMG put the total value ofthe Indian education market between US $ 45 - 50 billion. See also the recentcollection of essays edited by J.B. Tilak (2013).


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children living in the neighbourhood of the school.In what appears to be remarkably similar to schoolvoucher initiatives that have failed in the USA (citeKlees), the government will pay private schools thesame amount of money which would have beenspent on the child in a government school. Thegovernment has asked private schools to bear theextra cost (or the wide gap) of educating thesechildren as a form of social responsibility. Thepotential of this particular reform for remedying theequity gap can be questioned on multiple grounds

beginning with the dis-connect between the numberof recognised private institutions and the number ofdisadvantaged children. If we put the present realityof wide variations in quality aside, we must stillengage with the historical relationship betweenprivate schools and these groups. That is to say, themajority of private schools have historically shownlittle inclination towards meeting their social

responsibilities even when legally tied to the receiptof state subsidies (Juneja, 2005); and as I will show,their response to the Act continues to be dominatedby resistance. 5

Although one of the better performing states oneconomic and social development indicators (Gok,2006), education in Karnataka reflects the samecharacteristics of exclusion and inequality found

across the country. In a population of 53 millionpeople (5 per cent of Indias total population),disaggregated data reveals that poor women,

5 Other significant reforms include the abolition of all examinations except at thetime of school-leaving; the introduction of minimum norms and standards forrecognition of all schools and teacher qualifications as well as child-friendlypedagogy and curriculum. In addition to studies cited here see also the Pathways toAccess (PTAs) monographs produced by the Consortium for Educational Access,

Transitions and Equity (CREATE-NUEPA). - http://www.create-rpc.org/publications/ptas/
http://www.create-rpc.org/publications/ptas/http://www.create-rpc.org/publications/ptas/http://www.create-rpc.org/publications/ptas/http://www.create-rpc.org/publications/ptas/


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Scheduled Castes (16% of the state population), andScheduled Tribes (7%) have not enjoyed the fruits ofthe hi -tech boom that has brought the state globalattention 6. According to the Karnataka HumanDevelopment Report (Gok, 2006:312-313), there aresignificant and widening gaps in terms of educationand income attainment between these three groupsand the rest of the population.

The ruling nexus in Karnataka today consists ofentrenched elites consisting of Hindu upper-casteand class, urban, English-speakers and the

relatively new elites from landed peasant castes - theVokkaligas and the Lingayats who are officiallyclassified as Backward Classes . Readers shouldnote that Caste groups classified as backward aredistinct from those classified as Scheduled Casteand Scheduled Tribe but they also benefit fromaffirmative action policies - also known asreservations - some of which were introduced in

colonial India. The landed peasant castes ofKarnataka constitute one early such instance of adisadvantaged group that was able to organise tooppose Brahminical control over the colonial stateapparatus. Through political mobilisation, they wereable to get themselves categorised as BackwardClass and therefore eligible for reservations andother forms of state subsidies and support (Kamat,

Mir and Matthew, 2004). However, their critique ofthe caste system did not include discriminationagainst Dalits. This may help to explain - partially-why Dalit and Adivasi populations continue to live inextreme poverty and exclusion in a state with 200

years of reservation policies that have benefitted

6 Some readers may be familiar with Indias Silicon Valley - the city of Bangalorewhich accounts for 40% of Indias software exports (GoK 2006).


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other historically marginalised groups (Manasa,2000).

Since the late nineties, state-led developmenthas been overtly oriented towards the rhetoric ofeconomic globalisation through a discourse of IT-ledgrowth, privatisation, efficiency, and competitiveness(Sarangapani and Vasavi 2003). Karnataka was oneof the first states to secure very large loans from theWorld Bank in return for structural adjustmentreforms; and, one of the first states to pilot theWorld-Bank funded DPEP in 1994. 7 Since then

successive state governments have promoted theneoliberal development model by slashing publicsector spending and borrowing money to meet theirsocial obligations (Sarangapani and Vasavi2003:3406). The World Bank continues to be animportant actor in state education policy and hasinfluenced other reforms including standardisedstudent assessment practices and state-corporate

partnerships for education delivery.AIF-RTE and Karnataka Jan Shakti:Mobilisations for the improvement of publiceducation.

The AIF-RTE is a coalition of educators, publicintellectuals, concerned citizens and organisations

who advocate for the expansion and improvement ofthe public education system. AIFRTE was officiallyconstituted in 2009 in response to the Act.Constituent members are located in 19 differentIndian states and include community-based

7 See Sarangapani and Vasavi (2003) for an explanation of the indirect and informalways in which the World Bank influenced every aspect of DPEP from funding normsto teacher training, textbooks, measurement of learner achievements, andprogamme evaluation as a whole.


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organisations, not-for-profit NGOs, and student andteacher unions. While specific goals and strategiesare state- and context-specific, key elements of thecommon platform set out in the 2012 ChennaiDeclaration include: expansion of public provision ofquality basic education to include early childhoodand secondary education; significant andprogressive increase in spending on publiceducation; opposition to the privatization ofeducation; and the creation of a common orneighbourhood school system to bridge the growing

economic and social divide (AIF-RTE 2012). Whilethe AIF-RTE strives to be open and inclusive to allthose interested in protecting and strengtheningpublic education, it has articulated one condition formembership: members cannot receive foreign fundstagged with neoliberal policies ( Interview withRamesh Patnaik, January 8 2012).

As I have previously mentioned KJS is a

member of AIF-RTE. It also consists of a coalition ofprogressive organisations active in the state ofKarnataka for several decades. Efforts to build KJSwere initiated in the mid-2000s in response to theintensification of privatisation and communalisationin the state when the right-wing Hindufundamentalist BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party, IndianPeoples Party) came to power. After a year of

intensive, state-wide consultations anddeliberations, the coalition platform was formalisedat a conference in Bangalore in February 2012.


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An Approach to the study of Activist Narratives.

This analysis begins with the premise thatpublic education in capitalist society is a site forcontestation. For the capitalist state, masseducation serves dual and contradictory functions:the enhancement of capital accumulation as well asmaintaining the legitimacy of the democraticcapitalist state. The legitimacy function of masseducation helps us to understand why the domain ofpublic education in capitalist societies is imbued

with relatively greater openings and possibilities fortransgressive participation by subaltern groups(Torres, 1990; Shirley, 1997; Anyon, 2005;Rethinking Schools, 2012).

In order to study social mobilisations, I adopt acultural politics approach wherein the constructionsof meaning and representation embedded inactivism are understood as inherently shaped by

culture as well as political and economic interests(Alvarez, Dagnino, Escobar, 1996). As is pointed outby social movement scholars Jeffrey Rubin(2004:107) and Wendy Wolford (2010:31), in order tounderstand how political actors form, how socialmobilisations work, the places where politics occur,and the meanings that lie at the heart of politicalconflict - you have to ask the people who join

mobilisations. Since neither mobilisations noractivists are static, stories are likely to change. Evenstories that seek to essentialise the movement oractivism in any sense, are fluid and contingent onmultiple interests, time, space, and place (Rubin2004).

I also draw on the work of Francesca Polletta(1998; 2006) who argues that the relationship


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between activist stories and politicisation iscomplex. Activist narratives as situated in socio-historical contexts and cultures of story telling. Assuch, these stories hold the potential to expandcontestation by rendering the familiar strange; andalso sometimes to constrain possibilities for protestbecause they are unable to go beyond culturallyproscribed rules about story telling.

Finally, I use the words, stories, narratives,accounts, and testimonies interchangeably here torefer to activist representations of themselves and

their lived experience. Relatedly, I use official andeveryday knowledge communicated to me by theactivists. I think of official knowledge as what iscommunicated to me by those in formal positions ofleadership as well as positions adopted throughformalised internal processes and manifest inmovement writing/documents. Everyday knowledgerefers to representations of lived experience and

location - both considered and unthinking - thatemerged in interviews with all the activists.As other contributors to this journal Special

Issue have argued, social movements are sites ofknowledge production. Activist narratives constituteone of the many ways in which individuals makemeaning and collectively construct anddisseminated meaningful knowledge. The stories

activists tell are integral to their own politicisationas well as wider politicisation processes within themovement. Therefore, I do not present thesenarratives with a view to making simplistic cause-effect linkages between story and action. Given theabove, I approach activist accounts asrepresentations of oppositional consciousness thathave individual meaning - as well as strategic acts of


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counter-story telling that challenge dominantrepresentations of reality and are relevant to thecollective goals of the movement.

In the next section, I explore the different waysin which AIF-RTE activists responded to myquestion: Why are you in this struggle for publiceducation? I begin with activist testimonials aboutlived experiences of educational and socialexclusion. The following section examines activistaccounts and analyses of the impact of pro-marketeducation policies in Karnataka and the country as

a whole.Personal experiences of government school

Personal experiences of government schoolfeatured in several activist narratives - in Karnatakaas well as amongst members of the nationalleadership who were schooled in other southern

Indian states8

in the sixties and seventies. In thislatter group, government schools were representedas institutions that provided quality education instudents mother tongue and enabled individuals toovercome other disadvantages such as a ruralbackground. For example, Professor Haragopal, afounding member of the Andhra Pradesh SaveEducation Committee that has opposed privatisation

for more than two decades, remembers his schoolingas providing him with the skills to succeed in acompetitive system.

I come from a rural background. I completedHigher Secondary education in a village school

8 Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala are typically referred to assouthern states.


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in Telegu medium [which is] my mother tongue. Then I moved to Hyderabad to do my graduateand post-graduate studies. When I look backour village school was good and somehow wecould compete in this competitive system.(Interview with Professor Haragopal, February 22013).

Another member of the national leadershipschooled in north India, Professor Anil Sadgopaldevoted a significant part of his narrative to

describing his part in reforming the teaching ofscience education in government schools in thecentral and impoverished state of Madhya Pradesh.His efforts to introduce experimental or hands -onmethods of teaching science eventually led to acomprehensive transformation of sciencecurriculum, pedagogy, and assessment in the stateand beyond 9. For Sadgopal, it was important to

make the point that government schools did havethe capacity to improve given adequate support andresources from the state (Interview with ProfessorSadgopal, January 8 2013).

The narratives of KJS activists schooled in theeighties to the present day stood in stark contrast tothese positive representations of governmentschools. The following excerpts point to a pervasive

and entrenched culture of discrimination againstDalits and women particularly those living inextreme poverty and/or in rural areas.

Kamla was in her mid-twenties and had livedher entire life in one of the poorest slums in

9 He is one of the founders of the Hoshangabad Science Center in the seventies andlater Eklavya in the eighties - two highly-respected non-governmental organisationsthat worked intensively with rural and poor government schools to make curriculumand pedagogy more active, relevant and meaningful.


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Mandya. She was married with two children aged sixand three years. She first became an activist as ateenager to speak out against the violence againstwomen in her family and community. Now a full-time member of KJS, she has also participated inother protests including those against communalismand the destruction of forests by multinationalcorporations. In her short life, she has witnesseddomestic violence, been beaten up by the police atstreet protests (including during the time she waspregnant) and gone to jail on suspicion of being a

terrorist associated with the Naxalite movement. Sheis much admired by her KJS comrades for herfearlessness and leadership abilities despite herpetite stature. However, talking about herexperiences in school was the most emotional part ofher interview.

When Kamla was in primary school, her familywent through very difficult times. Their father

abandoned his wife and children leaving her motherto support the family. Her grandmother was ill andneeded medicines that cost Rs 500-600 per day.

There was not enough food in the house for them totake to school for lunch. She remembers being sohungry that they would eat pieces of coal that hadfallen on the ground from railway wagons. Theirteachers would stop them and share their own food

with them. Some even offered to send her to a hostelbut her mother refused to let her go. Eventually sheleft school to help her mother. She took care of thehousehold while her mother went to work. After a

year, one of her teachers came to talk to her motherbecause she was a good student. She was able to goback to school for a year. But she stopped for goodin Class 6 when her grandmothers condition


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worsened. (Interview with Kamla, January 19 2013,translated.)

Despite showing academic ability, Kamla had todiscontinue her education to help her all-femalehousehold survive. Her story speaks to the enduringlinkages between gender and extreme poverty whichcombine to restrict educational access andopportunity for girls. Although Karnataka hasrelatively high rates of female literacy and schoolcompletion compared to most other Indian states.these aggregated statistics conceal the persistence of

embedded patriarchy and sexism. Thisdisproportionately disadvantages the educationalopportunities of extremely poor girls from subalterngroups.

Another activist nominated by KJS to speak tome was Siddharaju - a Dalit man in his mid-thirties.He sat down to talk to me with hand-written notesprepared as he listened to my conversation with one

of his comrades. Through the translator, he told methat he would prefer to tell his story first and thenanswer any questions I might have. He considershimself a full-time activist and member of the KJS.He is also President of the Slum Dweller Federationin his hometown of Mandya and resident in one ofthe poorest slums in the town. In addition, he worksdaily as a loading worker - someone who loads and

unloads trucks and other forms of heavytransportation. His story began with how hisexperiences in school played a direct role in his

journey towards becoming an activist.In 4 th standard, Siddharaju started to question

casteism, untouchability, and the inequalitybetween his family and others. It made him angry.In school, he was separated from other students.


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This made him think about why there was adifference between himself and the other students.His teachers told him to clean toilets and dirtydrains. They made him miserable. His peers did nottreat him this way but the teachers and villageelders abused him all the time. So he left his villageand came to Mandya town to study. He refused to goback to the village with his parents even though hisgrandmother pressured him. He felt comparativelybetter. There was less of the village-kind of casteismin Mandya. But he had to leave school in Class 7

because his father was a drunk. He had to work topay of the loans and debts his parents hadaccumulated. He did construction work, toiletcleaning, all kinds of downtrodden work andearned Rs 900 per month . He gradually paid off thedebts totaling Rs 50-60,000. Then he contacted themain DSS (Dalit Struggle Movement) person in hisneighbourhood and began to participate as an

activist (Interview with Siddharaju 17 January 2013,translated).However, as previously discussed, caste-class

social hierarchies are reflected across the educationsystem. Higher education is a key area for KJS

youth activists, many of whom are currently first-generation college students themselves. Many butnot all are also Dalit. Here, one of the youth leaders,

Krishnamurthy describes a recent campaign toreverse a state government decision to stopsubsidies for university examination fees whichprimarily affected low-income and SC/ST students.

Examination fees range from Rs 850 ingovernment colleges and Rs 3000 in privatecolleges. Without the scholarships, poor


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students cannot sit for these exams. We [the youth activists] visited campuses in 3 cities andwere given permission to talk to the students.We gave a 5 minute presentations about theorder and distributed pamphlets. We alsoorganised lamp-light marches which wereattended by 70 to 150 people in each city. Thegovernment revoked the order after 26 daysincluding one week when we organised dailyprotests. (Interview with Krishnamurthy, 16February 2013)

In the next section, I discuss a broader range ofstate pro-market policies that have exacerbatededucational and social inequality in Karnataka.

Educational politics in Karnataka: Caste, class,and market

KJS activists spoke to other manifestations ofthe marketisation and commercialisation ofeducation in Karnataka that they have had lesssuccess in opposing. Mohan who has been aneducation activist for several decades provided thefollowing historical sequence of events:

English education started with liberalisation. In

each taluka [district], one or two convent[schools] came up for better-off students inrural areas. Then private schools appearedeverywhere. Even sheds are being converted toschools in rural areas, And the students areleaving government schools for so-calledEnglish education. Now only very backward,Dalits and girls come to local schools. Two years


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ago, the state government decided to close 3800Kannada-medium schools in the name ofeducation and opportunity. And to start ModelSchools in all talukas - English-medium schoolsrun by the government. We (KJS) took theposition closing schools is a blow to the people they have to be educated and in their mothertongue. This way the government is forcingparents to send children to English schools.Instead the government should be training moreteachers to fill the vacancies. But first the

parents abandoned the schools and then thegovernment. (Interview with Mohan, January 42012)

Mohan identifies the deliberate ways in whichthe state has withdrawn from the provision ofeducation and created conditions that promoted theentry of private actors. The closure of rural schools

is integrally connected to the teacher shortage - acrisis that began to build in the eighties - a period ofstagnation for development in Karnataka (Vasaviand Sarangapani 2003). Structural adjustmentconditionalities that restricted the hiring ofgovernment school teachers (and expansion of thepublic sector) intensified problems with teacherquality, recruitment, and retention to a point where

the state was able to close schools using the rhetoricof economic efficiency, choice and merit.

We are also fighting with the BEd/DEdorganisations 10 for two things: dont close theschools and recruit more teachers. There areseven lakh teachers in Karnataka. We worked

10 Teacher education institutions


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with them - about 50000 teachers in solidarityfor one year in 17 districts. Because if yourecruit teachers students will come to schools.But the government has not responded.Particularly the BJP government. In the lastfour years, they have recruited only once.(Interview with Muthuraju, January 20 2013).

Thus, the role of the state in privatisation of theeducation sector takes the form of both deliberateaction and inaction. At the same moment that rural

schools were closed, it opened Model Schools in so-called backward districts; government schools withselective admissions procedures supposedly basedon merit (as opposed to equity). The terminology ofdevelopmentally backward districts exposesunderlying and pervasive assumptions of deficit thatare associated with extreme poverty, Dalit, andindigenous communities. Moreover, the haphazard

implementation of these Model Schools in Karnatakabelies rhetorical references to equity. Media reportsindicate that these schools are reported insidegovernment schools, staffed by contractual teachers,and yet to receive any of the special facilities (Deccan Herald, September 6, 2012 11 ). In 2013,despite poor conditions and low enrolments, thestate government announced it would open more

schools in backward blocks. The schools will beadministered by selected private entities and chargefees for students in Class 8 and upwards (NewIndian Express, March 27 2013 12 ). It would appearhere that the rationality of state provision of quali ty11 Retrieved http://www.deccanherald.com/content/276985/an-adarsh-school-only-name.html12 Retrievedhttp://www.newindianexpress.com/states/karnataka/article1518910.ece


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for some has been replaced entirely by theimperative of privatisation.

Teach English: Colonialism and cultural capital

As I have previously discussed, access toEnglish-language education has always mediatedaccess to socio-economic mobility in India. Inindependent India, the state and ruling classes havesteadfastly regulated access to English and relatedforms of cultural capital 13 that distinguish the

privileged lives of the 20% from the other 80%.Rooted in colonial education, debates aboutlanguage of instruction have not diminished inindependent India. Historically, a multi-lingualregion 14 , the post-colonial state of Karnataka hasbeen the site of particularly intense contestationsaround official state language(s) as well as mediumof instruction. The state government declared

Kannada the sole first language in 1982 and hasallocated significant resources to the revitalisation ofthis language particularly through educationalinstitutions.The introduction of mandatoryinstruction in Kannada has prompted opposition(including legal action) from a diverse range ofgroups. Simplistic representations of the debate tendto position pro-Kannada traditionalists against pro-

13 These include not only fluency in English language fluency but a certainpronunciation and a vast amount of related classed cultural knowledge. For anindepth discussion of the ways in which schools produce classed identities,subjectivities and opportunities, as well as the lengths to which differentiallypositioned (by caste, class, gender, rural) social groups to go to acquire culturalcapital, see the growing body of ethnographic research in Chopra and Jefferey(2005) and Baviskar and Ray (2011).14 Languages spoken here include Maratha, Urdu as well as Kannada. A relativelylittle know fact is that Kannada-speakers are not a numerical majority in the state.It is however the language of the politically dominant Lingayat peasant caste(Gavaskar 2003).


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English, urban, middle- class modernists. However,for KJS activists like Mohan (quoted previously) andMuthuraju (below) the language debates are aboutcaste as well as class.

We are against privatisation andcommercialisation of education. We are fightingfor a common school system, for a realeducation - not an education to serve thecapitalist system. Mother tongue instruction isa very big issue in Karnataka but there are a lot

of ideological differences in our coalition. So we[KJS] are focusing on fighting againstcommercialisation and building public sectorschools. (Interview with Muthuraju, January 202013)

While KJS, as a coalition, has avoided takingsides in the language debates, member

organisations are free to engage as they deemnecessary. Thus Muthuraju, as a Dalit youthactivist, has also participated in Teach Englishmobilisations:

In Mandya we protested for Teach EnglishWell in front of the VCs off ice [we laugh].

Many students said this is very good we will join

you. We want to learn good English so that wecan pass exams. So many students fail inEnglish in Mandya. For example [points to hisfriends and laughs]. I just passed. I get goodmarks in Kannada, History but I dont get above40 in English.(Interview with Muthuraju,

January 20 2013)


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Dalit activists have actively sought Western-style, English-language education as the road toindividual and social emancipation for over twocenturies 15 . In Karnataka, they occupy a range ofpositions on the language debates, not least becausenot all Dalits in the state speak Kannada as theirmother-tongue. Pro-English Dalits argue that in aneducation system that has always controlled byupper-castes, English is the only way out of extremepoverty and social disadvantage.

Moreover, the necessity of English has becomeeven stronger with structural adjustment reformsthat put an end to recruitment to the public sectorwhich formed the backbone of the state economy.Readers should recall that affirmative action policiesdo not apply to the private sector. Even though theopportunities in the public sector tend to berestricted to the lowest (and menial) government

positions, the private sector prefers not to employSC/STs at all (Manasa 2000; Teltumbde 2008). Thus, English-language proficiency functions as aproxy for quality education, and continues todetermine life trajectories and whether members ofsubaltern groups are able to break out of the viciouscycle of poverty and discrimination. Siddharajuprovided this eloquent description of the structural

roots of inequality.All the labourers live in slums and slave in thecity for rich people. Carpenters, constructionworkers, scavengers, domestic servants,

15 Under the guidance of their leaders who include Jyoti Rao Phule - a 19th centurysocial reformer, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, and more recently, Chandra BhanPrasad.


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loading workers, plumbers, painters, streetvendors, drain cleaners. They dont haveproper wages. They cant save money. they dontget treatment in government hospitals... Thissociety has removed education far away fromlabourers and scavengers... Children of

labourers and scavengers become labourersand scavengers without proper education.

The system is changed by privatisation. Poorpeople cannot go to private schools becausethey dont have money. If you dont have money

you cant go for higher education. That is whythey are far away from education. (Interviewwith Siddharaju 17 January 2013, translated)

It is in within this complex context of thecultural politics of English-medium instruction thatwe can situate the official AIF-RTE (2012) positionon medium of instruction. While recognising the role

played by English as a language of colonisation andsocial stratification, the AIF-RTE does not rule outthe teaching of English. The Chennai Declaration(AIF-RTE 2012:13) advocates for a multilingualenvironment where multilinguality refers toproficiency in the the languages spoken in thechilds neighbourhood, kinship, and family and forgreater support for linguistic minorities including

Adivasi, Braille and sign language(s).16

Thisarticulation resonates with the perspective thatlanguage and the medium of instruction are not justdebates about cultural identity and social mobilitybut also complex fields of social power (Anderson1990, in Fernandes 2006).

16 For a more detailed statement see the AIF-RTE Discussion paper on on Languageand Education prepared in January 2011 for a national workshop on this subject.


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Building a movement: The challenge ofdemystifying private schooling

In the previous section, Muthuraju provided anexample of the way in which English proficiencyfunctions as a barrier to successful completion ofhigher education for Dalit students. In the followingexcerpts, members of the national leadershipcomment on the conflations between English-medium instruction, quality education, and private

schools.Professor Haragopal remarks on the strength ofthis perception amongst all Indian parents despitethe complex reality that private schools, particularlylow-cost private schools differ widely in terms ofquality. He also identifies the challenge of changingthese perceptions as central to the mobilisationalefforts of the AIF-RTE.

There are powerful market forces. Education ismost lucrative. No investment is requiredexcept land and building. You can just advertiseand start making money. They may not haveinfrastructure but they can advertise,government schools cannot. People makechoices based on information they have

according to rational choice theory. There is noway for the public sector to compete withprivate schools. Not all private schools arebetter. We have done a research study aboutwho does well in government schools and whodoesn't. What we noticed is not public-privatedifference but where the mother is educated,the child does well. But private schools are


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taking the entire credit for the educated mother.Government school teachers are highly qualifiedbut lack infrastructure. So you have todemystify the private sector. But frankly I don'tthink we have succeeded. Parents think privateschool and English language is better. Theythink they can go to America and earn thedollar. Otherwise they will be confined to thelocal. These are external factors but they arecritical. People trust us but we don't have somuch information to make a difference. So the

challenge is what we do when public opinion isso hostile to the public sector (Interview withProfessor Haragopal, February 2 2013).

Prof. Gupta, a historian by training, concursand provides a socio-political context to understandthe social construction of these perceptions.

The whole idea of a public-funded system ofeducation is something which people reallyexpect, understand, appreciate and are ready tostruggle for. But when they reach that level that moment only comes when you can explainthe whole issue to them. How historicallyspeaking we are at a diametrically oppositecontrast where earlier even things which were

not brand government were always despised.And now anything that is government isinefficient. How that scenario has evolved issomething people do grasp but it needsexplanations. It is not just a classphenomenon a mass phenomenon. (Interviewwith Professor Gupta, February 2, 2013).


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The language used by both of these intellectualssuggests that the way forward for the AIF-RTE mustinclude transforming public discourse aroundgovernment schools. More specifically, as Guptaarticulates, the movement must support subalterngroups to articulate their demands and vision forfree high quality public education. I have all readyprovided a historical overview of the cultural politicsof public and private schooling in India andidentified some of the forms of cultural capitalrequired for social mobility in addition to

credentials. I will now briefly examine the mostcurrent version of the quality for some approach asconstituted by the 25% reservations mandated bythe 2009 Act.

Four years after the passage of the Act,elite/exclusive private schools steadfastly continueto delay and undermine implementation of thisclause. Implementation was first delayed by a legal

battle which concluded in a 2012 Supreme Courtruling that required all private schools (exceptreligious minority schools which include exclusiveprivate residential or boarding schools started byChristian missionaries) to implement the reservationpolicy immediately. Two years later, elite privateschools continue to turn eligible students away. Thelevel of discourse within this domain of society is

such that private school principals have gone onrecord in the media to disparage, ridicule, andotherwise undermine the reservation policy. Perhapsit is no coincidence that one of the more notoriousexamples of derogatory remarks comes from thePresident of the Karnataka Unaided SchoolManagements Association (KUSMA) (The Hindu,


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July 20, 2012 17 ). The role played by local educationbureaucracies in abetting this willful lack ofcompliance must also be noted. The vast majority ofunaided private schools remained unrecognised andunregulated and few state bureaucracies have mademeaningful efforts to disseminate the Act.

These forms of outright hostility anddiscrimination have not yet dissuaded relativelydisadvantaged parents from trying to give their childa better education notwithstanding the social andemotional cost to families. Needless to say, the

majority of parents who have the confidence andknow-how to challenge private school - bureaucracynexus - do not come from the poorest subalterngroups. Nevertheless, these are the complex culturaland political conditions in which the AIF-RTE hasundertaken to transform brand government ordiscourse on government schools. They have decidedto do so by formally adopting a multi-tier strategy

through the 2012 Chennai Declaration. Thisstrategy has evolved out of sustained processes ofinternal consultation and debate about the situatedways in which educational mobilisations haveemerged across different parts of the country.

The Chennai Declaration identifies every part ofthe education system from KG to PG (preschool touniversity) as an area of struggle. It also encourages

members to mobilise simultaneously at the micro-(individual schools, districts etc.) and the macro-level (state, central government and internationalactors). What is relatively new to the movementnarrative (as represented by official documents likethe Declaration) is an explicit stance on

17 Retrieved http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/dss-demands-action-against-kusma/article3660763.ece


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transforming educational processes as a whole. Inaddition to the medium of education, theDeclaration (AIF-RTE 2012:12-14) discussescurriculum, pedagogy, and teacher education invarying length for the first time:

Discrimination and exclusion takes placenot only because of the prevalence of amulti-layered school system but alsobecause of the nature of the dominantcurriculum and pedagogy. Rooted in middle

class and upper caste values and norms,especially patriarchal, the curriculum andpedagogy are entirely alienated from thesocial reality, life experiences, and ways oflearning of the vast sections of society... andincreasingly influenced by the requirementsof the global market...The Constitutionalvalues ...call upon the state to engage with

hegemonic influence of class, caste, race,patriarchy, language, and normal bodywhile formulating the curriculum...whereinthe plurality of values, knowledge,productive skills and lifestyles of We, thePeople wo uld have legitimate space forinfluencing, tilting, and eventuallytransforming the school in their favour...it is

imperative that a new kind of teacher wouldhave to be prepared who would be culturallytransformed to relate with the children ofthe downtrodden and dispossessed classesand castes, especially girls and the disabled,with dignity and respond to ... the challengeof drawing upon their life experience andknowledge in the classroom.


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attempting to claim guaranteed rights from the stateas well as frame new claims that disrupt existingsocial hierarchies. It is thus engaged in the work ofconstructing new imaginaries about education anddevelopment. How precisely it will do so remains tobe seen. The scope of its vision combined withconscious efforts to construct an internallydemocratic and pragmatic politics of engagementfrom below as well as from above bode well for thefuture.

From my perspective as a researcher of anti-

privatisation mobilisations, it is precisely this senseof ambiguity and fluidity that imbues this particularspace for mobilisation with power and possibility.While there is a long history of critique, dissent, andalternatives within the domain of Indian education,the AIF-RTE is attempting to build organised dissentagainst capital and colonisation in a way that wehave not seen (Kumar, 2006). Moreover, it is doing

so in a political milieu where anti-capital(ist) andanti-imperialist politics have been significantlydiluted and fragmented. In his analysis of short-lived urban mobilisations, Ravi Kumar (2008) takeshope from any mobilisation, however small andeffervescent given the power and control exercisedby the hegemonic forces of liberalism and privatecapital through state and non-state institutions. The

AIF-RTE is neither small nor effervescent.It is not my intention to romanticise orotherwise simplify these mobilisations. Or thepolitics of studying these mobilisations. I do hopethat this discussion has provided some situatedinsights into the strategic and particular ways intomovements as discursive spaces with a multiplicity


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of meanings and meaning-making processes whichsupport contestation.

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