Need for Inclusive Education

Vikas Maniar in his article (“Overlooking the Idea of Common School in the Education Policy,” EPW, 14 September 2019) rightly addresses the problem of segregated and differentiated schooling for different social groups in private schools, which may occur because of the proposals of the draft policy to provide operational autonomy to “public-spirited” private and government schools. One of the important features of the Indian education system is its inherent unequal nature. Over the decades, some progress has been made in improving the literacy rate. However, there remains a substantial gap in the literacy rate between the various population groups. The literacy rate figure for the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (SCs/STs) was lower than the national averages for men and women. Except for primary education, the dropout rates were far higher for the ST children in all levels of school education (India Inequality Report 2018). In this scenario, if any kind of segregation is promoted in the schooling system, it can prove to be lethal for the education system. Rather, we need a more inclusive approach to the problem.

Educational planning in India, after so many years of independence, suffers from countless loopholes. In spite of several endeavours to provide quality education, all the educational facilities are unequally distributed among the socio-economic, sex, regional, caste, and occupational groups of the population. The increasing privatisation has in itself marginalised a large section of rural India, which is unable to afford expensive education. The government-run schools are not only facing a lacuna in their teaching quality, but also struggling to survive along with private schools, which have outgrown in numbers in the recent years. Though critical perspectives help us in understanding that inequality is being reproduced through education, capability app­roach may provide a fresh perspective to overcome these inequalities.