Globalized modernity is brazenly paradoxical. One face of it is that of surging GDP rates and sky-scraping buildings. Another face, not apparent but dreadful, is that of starving bellies and proliferating slums. The shift from post world war Keynesian consensus to Neo-liberalism has thrown open sectors hitherto controlled by the state to private entities. The wave of privatization that it sent across the world undermined the state’s responsibility in ensuring the welfare and development of its people. It created new forms of inequality and aggravated the already existing forms. It pushed those living on the fringes beyond the fringes. It permeated all spheres of social life.
This article lays emphasis on the education of girls, one of the areas where the pervasive influence of privatization is seen. This is especially important, considering the push for privatisation in the draft National Education Policy (NEP, 2019). Privatization of education ends up excluding the marginalized groups from opportunities that the well-off have access to, and the condition of girls among these groups are far worse.
The quality education provided by private institutions is naturally found attractive by parents. But with scarcely any resources, they choose to send boys over girls to the private institutions. Thus, under the privatization ‘regime’, the marginalized and the girls among them are left to compete with others, no matter how unequal the opportunities are.
Neo-liberal privatisation aims to transfer social resources from public or state ownership to private ownership. It perceives social resources as an economic surplus that might become wasteful if not brought under the control of private ownership. This notion believes that only when they are commodified and an ‘exchange value’ is put upon them besides their use-value, will they be harnessed in the right way.
With the deregulation of social resources, a new environment of free competition is created where profits can be unlimitedly maximized. In India, as part of the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAP) of the 1990s, many public sector enterprises were undervalued and sold to the private sector. Sectors like education were exempted from government spending to incentivize the growth of private schools. Though it is to be conceded that post-privatization, the country saw an increase in GDP rates and mushrooming of many hospitals and educational institutes, the promised utopia of welfare and development for all, never became a reality. While the economic reforms in India put a dent in the absolute poverty level, there has been an appalling surge in income inequality.
The intersectional and multilayered inequalities in India based on caste, class, and gender made this problem even more complicated. The social systems that have historically evolved here placed some sections of Indian masses in a privileged position and systematically discriminated against and excluded other sections.
These systematically oppressed groups had their hopes high in the post-independent welfare projects. However, when the state started withdrawing from public services making room for the private sector their condition worsened. Quality education, one of the single most important factors that would have rectified material conditions became barely accessible. The state took a backseat in the education sector. The public funding of education was cut down. The private schools and educational institutes that burgeoned were expensive and unaffordable for the marginalized.
In the year 2018, the UGC granted autonomy to 62 educational institutions in the country including JNU, HCU, BHU, AMU etc. This autonomy aims to turn these institutions into self-financing ones. The result of this is that the students will be burdened by a fee hike in these institutions known for academic excellence. It goes against the founding values of equal access in higher education.
Given that JNU is a university that has been opening its doors to students irrespective of their economic and social backgrounds, this move naturally invited country-wide protests.
The recent Draft National Education Policy of the Union Government is a further push towards privatization, with its proposals to replace UGC with NHERA, introduce tenure track appointment, hike fees in institutions like IIT and more.
These policies contravene the ideals of equality, justice and freedom enshrined in the Constitution, distancing the poor and marginalized sections from development. Now, the impact of COVID-19 on these social groups in India will aggravate the situation.
The whole idea of privatising education is founded on the flawed notion of meritocracy. It propounds that in the environment of free competition, those with merit or deserving will succeed. But given that in an unjust social system merit is hereditary and class-ridden, this notion is irrational and ill-founded. The exclusion of the marginalized from education amounts to denying someone a basic right, decent livelihood, and good social standing, and ultimately, freedom.
In the case of girls from marginalized communities, where this cannot be truer, we can see that poverty combined with gender-based inequality and exclusion make them the most oppressed group. Since the privatization of education compels the disadvantaged families to choose from among their children who can be sent to private institutes and colleges, they tend to prioritize boys over girls.
This gender bias originates from the prejudices and stereotypes around gender and the patriarchal belief that better returns come from educating boys rather than girls. The gross reality is such that education, which would empower these girls and enable them to break the shackles of exclusion, is denied to them by privatization compounded by patriarchy. This gender inequality holds true not just for India. It is a reality everywhere. However, it is relatively more entrenched and persistent in India.
Under patriarchy, men end up becoming household heads and gain control and dominance over women. They were relegated to the roles of housewives and mothers which reinforced the belief that women were incapable of engaging in any labour outside homes and of thinking or intellectual activities.
These gender stereotypes led to girls being educated with only the marriage market in mind. From a very young age, they are preconditioned to thinking that for women, serving their husbands, child-bearing and child-rearing were only expected of them and nothing more. Although much of this has changed in many countries today, it persists in countries like India where a nexus of religion and patriarchy makes transformation a distant dream.
Privatization cashes in on this gender inequality in India and in turn, perpetuates it. The direct, indirect, and opportunity costs of education have seen a massive surge in this period. Girls who have been denied access to quality education cannot compete on equal terms with other children. They will be confined to their households. Moreover, the augmented financial constraints of the poor families under privatized education will impact their access to basic necessities like water, food and nutrition, disproportionately affecting the girls.
Without education, their likelihood of earning a sustainable livelihood and a proper social standing is nil. Instead, at a very young age, they might be married off, ending even the limited freedom they had. Early marriage and pregnancy become the final blow and they will be sentenced to a life of utter misery. Jobless, and with no alternatives, they cannot afford to leave their husbands.
No access to proper sex education and reproductive health education in schools and even higher educational institutes is another cause for worry. This also holds true for many public institutes in India. But, the question is if the government brings in a curriculum that is inclusive of this education, to what extent will the private players follow it? This is considering that they have complete autonomy.
Most importantly, there are severe shortcomings with respect to the content of education. This applies to both public and private schools and syllabi. Education as a social institution in a power-based society ends up promoting the ideologies of the ruling class and maintains the status quo. Thus, in a patriarchal society, education performs the function of conditioning the children to adapt to a way of social life where women are ascribed a subordinate position relative to men. The children end up forming the idea that any kind of inequality is natural and not necessarily socially created. It is only when they learn that these injustices and inequalities are socially created and this condition can be transformed through human agency, they will have the drive for leading change. However, education in the current world is enslaved to the system, negating its transformative and emancipative potential. Hence this whole issue must be tackled with a qualitative approach also.
Amartya Sen, the Indian Economist and Nobel Laureate, equates illiteracy of women with the insecurity they face. He argues that the more women are educated, the more they will be respected, independent and be empowered to make decisions. An educated woman will know her rights and worth. She will be politically engaged so as to lead a movement. She will have freedom of choice regarding marriage and her body.
Evidence suggests that educating women will work in favour of bringing down population growth. Also, their children will be healthier and more likely to survive compared to women who aren’t exposed to the same levels of education.
It must be noted that while clamouring for women’s education, many people tend to justify it based only on the ‘motherhood aspects’ like the ones mentioned above. That in-fact reinforces this identity as the exclusive one.
Education is the basic right of an individual! Education brings with it freedom! These are reasons enough to promote education for women.
Kerala, where I hail from, is a wonderful example of how priority is given to the public sector and state provisions have enhanced living conditions and improved the human development index. The importance it has given to universalistic principles in the provision of essential public services like education, health, food grains, water, electricity, can be said to be the reason these are available to everyone equally instead of being the privilege of a wealthy minority.
Even in the post-liberalization period, the endless pursuit of social policies in view of public welfare kept up their living standards. This explains its comparatively low gender gaps in education, better child-related index, low fertility levels, and more. The female literacy rate here is 92% and the male literacy rate is 96%. That being said, there is still a long way to go in improving the quality of higher education in Kerala.
It is the urgent need of the hour to restore the primacy of the public sector in fields like education. This restoration must be, at many levels a reinvention. It should be so reinvented as to allow the quality of public education to improve and the content to change in a transformative direction.
Research says India will see an increase of 20% in girl school dropouts in the post-pandemic scenario.
Hence, it is highly significant to us, as a democratic polity, to entitle these girls and all the disadvantaged children to education through quality public schools and social policies like reservation and affirmative action. The concerted effort of citizens, civic organisations, and the government in this direction is what that is going to make a difference.