Attack on Rural Education under Neoliberalism and NEP 2020
G Ramakrishnan
EDUCATION has become an important aspect to understand the rural society due to its influence in determining the elements of “everyday life of the people, such as family relationships, marriage alliances, migration, and consumption besides direct impact on occupational and economic activities” according to a study of two Tamil Nadu villages, published in 2024 by the Foundation of Agrarian Studies (FAS). The attainment of higher education categorically forms the necessary condition for the aspiration of economic (and social) upliftment and upward mobility for the working class in today’s Indian society. Jobs in the formal economy, which are already scarce, require a certain level of educational attainment of the prospective candidates. However, in the present context of neoliberalism in India, we observe two upsetting trends that threaten the educational and employment access to the rural working class: the prolonged distress in the agrarian sector (or the rural society broadly) and neoliberal and privatisation measures under the National Education Policy (NEP 2020). In the rest of this essay, we aim to demonstrate this issue confronting the rural working classes significantly composed of people belonging to the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and the Backward Classes.
AGRARIAN DISTRESS AND RURAL POOR
The lopsided development of neoliberal India has caused the sharpening of rural class divisions. This aspect of rural development is carefully and systematically outlined in the Report of the Study Group on Agrarian Classes submitted to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in 2015 (published in 2016 in Marxist).
The following findings of the report give a cursory illustration of the rural class differentiation. First, the concentration of land ownership, agricultural assets ownership, agricultural and (rural) non-agricultural incomes has intensified in recent years. Second, among the agricultural workers, the proportion of agricultural labourers who work for wages on others’ lands (55 per cent) surpassed that of cultivators (45.2 per cent) in 2011. It is important to note that in 1952, cultivators constituted around 82 per cent of the lot. Various statistics and reports published by the National Sample Survey Organisation have revealed that lakhs of small and marginal farmers are forced to sell their land, leave cultivation and join the ranks of manual workers. Apart from farmers, small artisans have also lost their work and are forced to join the labour force of agricultural labourers. Third, despite increase of the proportion of agricultural labourers, the state of rural employment has worsened. According to the findings of the Foundation for Agrarian Studies (as mentioned in the Report), the number of workdays does not exceed 70 days on average across India. The stagnant nature of rural employment can be attributed to factors like the lack of public investment in agriculture and the indiscriminate use of labour displacing technologies on the farm. These developments point to the undoubted worsening of the livelihoods of the poorer sections of rural India, especially Dalits and backward castes. The Report notes in this context:
“The possibilities of upward mobility for agricultural labour households in rural areas, particularly the Dalits and Adivasis, have been extremely limited in the context of slow growth in rural employment.” (p. 9)
NEP “RATIONALISATION” A THREAT TO PRIMARY EDUCATION
The Constitution of India guarantees free and compulsory education for all children till 14 years of age. However, the systematic closure of government-run schools as part of the NEP’s “rationalisation” measures has threatened access to free and compulsory school education for children from the Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), and the poorer sections of the Backward Classes (BC). The Minister of Education, addressing an unstarred question in the Parliament on February 3, 2025, noted that 89,341 government schools were shut down in the ten-year period between 2014-15 and 2023-24 across the country. There was a decline of 29,410 and 25,126 government schools in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh respectively, which together contributed to a whopping 60.9 per cent of the nation-wide decline in the number of government schools in this period. At the same time, the Minister reported a sharp increase in the number of private schools by 42,944 new ones all over the country; Of these, Uttar Pradesh accounted for an increase of 19,305 private schools or 44.9 per cent of the total national increase, followed by Madhya Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Odisha. In Odisha, the number of government schools declined from 58,697 to 48,671 in the reference period, and in Jammu and Kashmir, the decline was from 23,874 in 2014-15 to 18,785 in 2023-24.
Although the central minister did not specify the reason for government schools being shut down, he pointed out to the fact that education is on the concurrent list of the Constitution, and the governments in the states (and union territories) had control over the opening, closing and rationalisation of schools. The State governments do use terms such as pairing and merger for the shutting down of government schools; the students in the schools being shut down are simply asked to join another school that may be further away from their place of residence. For students from economically poorer backgrounds, travelling to a faraway school can be a major factor in deciding the terms of cost and effort of attending school, and may even lead them to dropping out of school altogether.
IMPACTS OF PRIVATISATION ON ENROLMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION
According to the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2021-22, of the total 4.33 crore enrolled in higher education in 2021-22, students from Scheduled Tribes (ST) constitute only a meagre 6.3 per cent, students from Scheduled Castes (SC) account for 15.3 per cent, and those from Other Backward Classes (OBC) constitute 37.8 per cent of the total. The Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER), or the percentage of students who enrol for higher education was 28.4 per cent during 2021-22. For the SC communities, GER was 25.9 per cent and for ST it was 21.2 per cent at the national level (age group 18-23 years). This pattern is often reflected at the state level as well. Although the GER for most categories has improved from 2014-15, this can be understood as the dividend from the earlier efforts to implement the ‘Right to Education’ at the school level. Hence, the sustained decline in the number of government schools, especially in the rural areas, are very likely to have disproportionate repercussions on GER among the poorer and marginalized groups.
The paradox of Indian education is apparent with an overwhelming majority of schools still in hands of the government(s), while a substantial majority of colleges, universities and higher education institutions are in private hands. The interventions of the Left during the UPA regime and exemplar policies of Left front governments such as in Kerala have served to advance the cause of public education through central legislation such as RTE. However, these institutions are under lethal attack due to the present neoliberal education policy.
PROTECT EDUCATIONAL ACCESS FOR ECONOMIC MOBILITY
If agricultural and non-agricultural industries of the Indian countryside remain incapable of absorbing the soaring proportion of agricultural labourers, education must act as the inter-generational passage to economic mobility. The rural poor should be able to seek educational opportunities for their children to make sure they find meaningful and gainful employment in other industries and sectors. The aggressive privatisation tendency of neoliberal education policies has resulted in the shutting down of government schools in the guise of “rationalisation”; the rural poor, especially the Dalits and Tribal communities, who cannot afford private education would be deprived of affordable education and the means for economic mobility would remain elusive to them. Protecting and expanding access to public school and college education must therefore be a critical demand for India’s poorest sections, as educational attainment remains one of the last hopes for (intergenerational) economic and social upliftment for the rural sections in distress in the current system.
