Education possesses the potential to combat the prevailing systemic inequities in societies through policy interventions aimed at creating inclusive societies. Several studies since independence have critically analysed the indifferent nature of the education system towards certain groups and sections. Despite a rights-based approach to…

The NEP 2020 is the chief education policy of the twenty-first century, paving the way for a change from the 34-year-old National Policy on Education that was implemented in 1986. The initial pillars of NEP 2020 are Access, Equity, Quality, Affordability, and Accountability. It aims to transmute India into a flourishing information society and…

Learning Poverty (LP), the inability to read at age of 10 years has been the cynosure of concern and trigger for policy reform. Specifically, in India, the National Education Policy (NEP-2020) advocates several recommendations for epistemic justice and to thwart "learning poorness." This paper exposes that the proposals advocated by the…

We estimate the returns (measured by hourly earnings) to education, experience, and social networking in India using individual-level panel data from the India Human Development Surveys. We combined the two latest waves of this survey using individual-level identifiers to generate a balanced panel and merged it with various household…

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), launched by the United Nations in 2015, established ambitious targets to be achieved by 2030, including in education. SDG 4, which focuses on ensuring "inclusive and equitable quality education and promot[ing] lifelong learning opportunities for all", attracted attention from the adult education…

Efforts to desegregate schools have consistently been undermined by privileged parents finding ways to avoid undesirable schools. In some contexts, a more complex picture is emerging, where 'progressive' privileged parents choose 'diverse' schools but still reproduce segregation. We demonstrate how the desegregation aims of an Indian education…

Taking the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4 - quality and equity in education and lifelong learning opportunities for all by 2030) as a global education policy, this article investigates the accompanying consensus politics. It shows how political consensus among 193 UNESCO member states over the national implementation of SDG4…

This article is concerned with an institutional initiative designed to encourage the development of an outreach culture which can support fairer, more equal, access to higher education (HE) in India. The initiative constituted the final impact phase of a 5-year Fair Chance Foundation (FCF) research project (2017-2022) which explored gendered…

Inclusive education has grown into a worldwide process of educating all students, confirming a commitment to universal guidelines and values of inclusiveness and diversity. It involves recognizing and eliminating roadblocks that limits students, especially disadvantaged ones, from participating and flourishing in their endeavors. More importantly,…

Social inclusion policy in higher education--also referenced as affirmative action, reservations, schedules, or antidiscrimination--has been used widely to promote equity and access for minority and historically discriminated subgroups who wish to participate in tertiary education. Inclusion is often protected de jure through a country's…

This report is one in a series of case studies RAND researchers are conducting as part of an independent evaluation of the BHP Foundation's Education Equity program. This case study traces the development of two efforts by UN Women's Second Chance Education Programme (SCE) in India to support policy changes that improve women's access to education…

This paper traces the location of the principles of India's Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, in the country's most recent National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, and the documents leading up to the policy. It draws on the capability development approach and critical theory that facilitate understanding education as…

This ethnographic study analyzes the barriers women encounter in achieving their goals at Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. Employing a discursive approach, the study seeks to identify symbols promulgated by various policy actions that legitimize or delegitimize specific gender relations. It draws…

Conferences are key sites for the development of academic careers; however multiple studies have shown that conferences are exclusionary on the basis of gender and other axes of social disadvantage. This study focuses on India and as such also incorporates caste as an axis of privilege and disadvantage in relation to access to conferences.…

This article provides a critical review of English medium instruction (EMI) policy/practices in the K-12 multilingual schools in South Asia, especially in Nepal, India, and Pakistan. Employing Bourdieu's (1993) lens of 'linguistic capital' and 'linguistic marketplace,' the article takes stock of (a) the development of EMI and its ideological and…