Privatized rights, segregated childhoods: A critical analysis of neoliberal education policy in India

Abstract

This chapter analyzes the cultural politics of rights-based discourses for education and children in India. It is empirically grounded in sociohistorical discourses about mass education with a focus on the 2009 Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act (hereafter referred to as the RTE Act). This analysis explores the disjuncture between the RTE Act and the multiplicity and diversity of contemporary Indian childhoods. In particular, it shows how dominant discourses of childhood, education, and development intersect to promote the neoliberal project of the commodification and commercialization of education. In this context, it is argued that the language of rights has been co-opted to legitimize segregated and unequal schooling and, relatedly, promote the privatization of public education. The goal of this chapter is to highlight the need for contingent explorations of children’s experiences of schooling in order to provide complex understandings of how children make meaning about themselves as well as other children in unequal social contexts.