Education And Caste In India

Seven decades since Indian Independence, education takes the centre stage in every major discussion on development, especially when we talk about social exclusion, Dalits and reservations today. This book examines social inclusion in the education sector in India for Scheduled Castes (SCs). The volume: · Foregrounds the historical struggles of the SCs to understand why the quest for education is so central to shaping SC consciousness and aspirations; · Works with exhaustive state-level studies with a view to assessing commonalities and differences in the educational status of SCs today; · Takes stock of the policymaking and extent of implementations across Indian states to understand the challenges faced in different scenarios; · Seeks to analyse the differential in existing economic conditions, and other structural constraints, in relation to access to quality educational facilities; · Examines the social perceptions and experiences of SC students as they live now. A major study, the volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of education, sociology and social anthropology, development studies and South Asian studies.

Contents: Introduction, School Education, Government s Role, The Drop-outs, College Education, The Concessions, Societal Factors, Protection under Constitution, Conclusion.

Caste is a contested terrain in India's society and polity. This book explores contemporary realities of caste in rural and urban India. Presenting rich empirical findings across north India, it presents an original perspective on the reasons for the persistence of caste in India today.

Inspired by egalitarian doctrines, the Dalit communities in India have been fighting for basic human and civic rights since the middle of the nineteenth century. In this book, Shailaja Paik focuses on the struggle of Dalit women in one arena - the realm of formal education – and examines a range of interconnected social, cultural and political questions. What did education mean to women? How did changes in women’s education affect their views of themselves and their domestic work, public employment, marriage, sexuality, and childbearing and rearing? What does the dissonance between the rhetoric and practice of secular education tell us about the deeper historical entanglement with modernity as experienced by Dalit communities? Dalit Women's Education in Modern India is a social and cultural history that challenges the triumphant narrative of modern secular education to analyse the constellation of social, economic, political and historical circumstances that both opened and closed opportunities to many Dalits. By focusing on marginalised Dalit women in modern Maharashtra, who have rarely been at the centre of systematic historical enquiry, Paik breathes life into their ideas, expectations, potentials, fears and frustrations. Addressing two major blind spots in the historiography of India and of the women’s movement, she historicises Dalit women’s experiences and constructs them as historical agents. The book combines archival research with historical fieldwork, and centres on themes including slum life, urban middle classes, social and sexual labour, and family, marriage and children to provide a penetrating portrait of the actions and lives of Dalit women. Elegantly conceived and convincingly argued, Dalit Women's Education in Modern India will be invaluable to students of History, Caste Politics, Women and Gender Studies, Education Studies, Urban Studies and Asian studies.

This book addresses the familiar issue of unequal access to education in a new perspective. In this regard, whether one looks at gender or caste or tribes or class differences, the gap between the privileged and the dispriviliged is a matter of everyday experience. In what manner and form are these asymmetries reflected in the domain of education is the question at the core of this collection of essays. This volume is likely to be useful to those interested in understanding the interface between education and society in India as well as in other developing countries.

How the language of “merit” makes caste privilege invisible in contemporary India. Just as Americans least disadvantaged by racism are most likely to endorse their country as post‐racial, Indians who have benefited from their upper-caste affiliation rush to declare their country post‐caste. In The Caste of Merit, Ajantha Subramanian challenges this comfortable assumption by illuminating the controversial relationships among technical education, caste formation, and economic stratification in modern India. Through in-depth study of the elite Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs)—widely seen as symbols of national promise—she reveals the continued workings of upper-caste privilege within the most modern institutions. Caste has not disappeared in India but instead acquired a disturbing invisibility—at least when it comes to the privileged. Only the lower castes invoke their affiliation in the political arena, to claim resources from the state. The upper castes discard such claims as backward, embarrassing, and unfair to those who have earned their position through hard work and talent. Focusing on a long history of debates surrounding access to engineering education, Subramanian argues that such defenses of merit are themselves expressions of caste privilege. The case of the IITs shows how this ideal of meritocracy serves the reproduction of inequality, ensuring that social stratification remains endemic to contemporary democracies.

Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2008 in the subject Sociology - Social System and Social Structure, grade: 19/20, Aarhus School of Business, course: Education Civique / Sociale, language: English, abstract: In this paper, I try to analyse the fairness of Scheduled Classes’ access to education. The paper starts with giving some introductive information about the cast system. Putting together the findings of several academic articles, different factors are then discussed such as the literacy level and school attendance of Dalit Children, the discriminative behaviours they face, some other important variables, the governmental initiatives and the discrimination on the labour market. It appears clearly that caste membership is still an important discriminative factor with regards to Dalit children’s access to education.

With referenc to India.

Study relates to villages in Tumkur District, Karnataka.