Political Economy and Politics of India’s Education (Anil Sadagopal)

EDUCATION AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS:\nEXPLORATIONS FROM INDIA AND THE WORLD\n\n10 November 2016 \n\nPolitical Economy and Politics of India’s Education: Narratives from People’s Resistance\n\nAnil Sadgopal\n All India Forum for Right to Education (AIFRTE)\n\n \nIndia’s education system has steadily moved away from the aspirations of the freedom struggle and Constitutional values. The historic role of education in fighting against inequality, discrimination, sectarianism, religious fundamentalism and irrationality and for building a democratic, secular, egalitarian and enlightened society stands eroded. By kowtowing to the neoliberal agenda dictated by IMF-World Bank-WTO, education is reduced to mere trade, profit and utilitarianism. The intellectuals owe a duty to the oppressed classes and castes to reveal the determining role of capitalism in the changing political economy. The emerging alliance of capitalism with Manuwad and fascist politics is designed to incorporate the patriarchal caste system into the neoliberal avatar of Brahminical-Corporate economic order embedded in finance capital. Only a people’s movement to “Educate, Agitate, Organise” to reclaim the Constitutional vision of education can redeem the Republic.\n\nThe speaker Prof. Anil Sadgopal, Ph.D. in Biochemistry from California Institute of Technology, resigned from Govt. of India’s Tata Institute of Fundamental Research at the age of 31 and engaged with issues of education and socio-political transformation for the past 45 years. During grassroots work in rural education and development in District Hoshangabad (Madhya Pradesh) through KISHORE BHARATI, he led the Hoshangabad Science Teaching Programme (HSTP) in government schools, got involved in civil liberties and people’s science movements, helped found EKLAVYA and joined the struggle of the Bhopal gas victims for justice from Union Carbide Corporation. As Professor of Education and former Dean, Faculty of Education at Delhi University, he learned to analyse education policy in terms of political economy and locate it in anti-caste and anti-colonial struggles. He is presently with the All India Forum for Right to Education (AIFRTE) involved in building nation-wide people’s movement for establishing an emancipative, democratic and free Common Education System from ‘KG to PG’ founded in equality and diversity.