Educational Regimes in Contemporary India - Hardcover

Through detailed ethnographic studies, the book takes a close look at the processes that occur during schooling.... The authors probe the `educational black box` with interesting results.... This contribution is particularly important given that educational policy within India is framed in conjunction with many international aid agencies.... Schools are perceived to be a defence against social inequality. Yet, far from being `social equalizers`..., they are mechanisms which reproduce social inequality. That`s food for thought. (Business Standard)

 Educational Regimes in Contemporary India is a collective effort of a group of eminent sociologists and anthropologists...The book successfully holds the readers’ attention in each of its inter-connected chapters by an intense deconstruction of crucial variables...The book validates an important finding that the differential outcome fro the differential social groups have mostly been determined by their Social capital in the country. The success of this volume lies at the basic fact that the authors make the readers think about the related issues simultaneously...This volume with its thorough analysis places the ethnography and social anthropology at the centre-stage. Hence it is special volume. Furthermore almost all the contemporary discourse and debate has been efficiently covered in this book. This carefully edited volume with lucid rigorous analysis becomes a precious work...this volume becomes an essential reading for the scholar in social science.

(Journal of Educational Planning and Administration)

The commonsense understanding of education rests on the assumption that it has a straightforwardly positive value. The original essays in this volume, however, argue that education, as it is imparted in India, is ambiguous in its effects. They address such questions as: How do educational regimes relate to other facets of contemporary Indian society? Do they facilitate or obstruct the attainment of values enshrined in the Constitution? What are the implications of the differential impact of educational regimes on different groups in Indian society? Do they tend to reproduce entrenched social, cultural and economic inequalities? How do students and their families perceive the value of education? The volume has three sections. The first, 'Changing Contexts of Education and the State', focuses on formal educational institutions attended by children and teenagers. The contributors show how formal education becomes an arena where hotly contested issues of class, caste, gender and religion are played out. The second section, 'Teaching and Learning Regimes', focuses on micro-processes, and is based on ethnographic work in various kinds of educational institutions. The third, 'Different Transitions, Different Adulthoods', shows how the value of education to its consumers will not be uniform in a highly differentiated society like India.