NOTE: This is a bonus series designed for teaching postgraduate courses on Education and Development in Contemporary Asia. This episode (comprising previously published episodes of the Asian Education Podcast) is fully accessible. For details on terms of access to the whole series write to: [email protected]
Session Two: Education in Postcolonial South Asia - nation-building, inequality and economic development
Episodes related to this session: Tara de Mel on Sri Lanka's educational challenges Anita Rampal on the Ascendency of Non-State Actors in Indian Education (Series 1, Episode 5) Further conversation with Anita Rampal Krishna Kumar on curriculum reform in India Krishna Kumar on new developments in Indian curriculum reform Latika Gupta on educational philanthropy in India
Education systems in the societies of South Asia still bear the stamp of their origins in the era of British colonialism, when provision was designed to buttress political control and cause minimum disruption to the privileges of established elites. In the postcolonial era, expansion of educational provision has been touted as the key to economic growth and shared opportunity, but profound social inequality remains entrenched across the region. In this session, we discuss the role of education in shaping the new nation-states of postcolonial South Asia, with a particular focus on the period since the 1980s - a period that has witnessed extensive marketisation and privatisation of public service provision. We consider how pressures for increased privatisation of educational provision have been related to other trends, notably the rise of nationalist extremism and demonisation of religious or ethnic minorities. We also consider the role of education in promoting - or limiting - opportunity for groups on the margins of South Asian societies: not only religious minorities and ‘lower’ castes, but also women and girls.
Questions discussed in this session include: What factors help explain the particular enthusiasm with which policymakers and social elites across South Asia have greeted arguments for marketised provision of education and the role of the private sector? What has been the role of international agencies (such as the World Bank) in promoting this agenda of marketisation? What is the significance of the discourse of ‘quality’ promoted by agencies such as the World Bank and UNESCO? How has ‘quality’ been defined, and what metrics have been advanced to measure it? How have these metrics been harnessed or interpreted by local policymakers and corporate actors to promote their own agendas? What has the promotion of ‘quality’, ‘accountability’ and related metrics meant for the role of the teacher? What is the extent of teacher shortages in the public sector, and how can these be explained? To what extent have marketisation and privatisation become intertwined with other agendas for education - in particular, the corrosion of unifying, secular visions of nationhood and their displacement by exclusivist forms of religious nationalism? What have both the expansion of educational provision, and its increasing stratification (in part through privatisation) meant for equality - especially for girls and women?
Readings: Angela Little. 2024. Development, Education and Learning in Sri Lanka. London: UCL Press.
Krishna Kumar. 2014. Politics of Education in Colonial India. New Delhi: Routledge.
Lall, Marie, and Kusha Anand. 2022. Bridging Neoliberalism and Hindu Nationalism: The Role of Education in Bringing about Contemporary India. Bristol University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2xqnf78.
Gupta, L., & Vickers, E. (2025). The Janus Face of Indian internationalisation: nationalism, neoliberalism and the politics of teacher education reform. Comparative Education, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2025.2574754
