How regular schooling unfolds for children should be an important concern in the light of the Right to Education Act, 2009 that makes schooling not just free, but also compulsory. While getting children to school is a central pillar of the state's mandate of promoting social justice and enabling improved opportunities and life-chances for all, the empirical data presented in this article shows how children, identified by their social milieu and even humiliated on that count, can be constrained within the processes and the ethos of learning.
