Education

In low-cost private schools in India, English as a medium of instruction attracts children of poorly educated parents with a low-income background. A primary survey in Delhi and the National Capital Region finds that mediating primary-level education through an unfamiliar language poses language barriers and adversely affects the learning outcome. The agency in using English for communication is limited. The learning deficit is undetected through successive grades in the primary level due to translation- and memorisation-based teaching processes, and focus on textbook-based exercises. The study finds that parents do not get a fair exchange in return for committing their limited resources towards education.

The paper focuses on the history of the first three Bible women, Mary Wesley, Martha Reuben, and Bathsheba, who came from marginalised communities in Rayalaseema, and emerged as new leaders of social change in the context of colonial modernity and Christianity in the region. The emergence of a modern profession of Bible woman for Dalit women in the 1870s was transformative, opening doors of education, learning, and transforming them into local leaders. Bible women played a pivotal role in the history of Dalits, gender, and missions by shaping the life and community of Dalits and spreading Christianity in Rayalaseema.

Released 34 years after the previous policy on education, the National Education Policy, 2020 is framed in a context that is unrecognisable from that of the past policies. This article examines the discursive framework underlying the current policymaking process.

Migration has helped India weather many a crisis and also ushered in new challenges.

Using data from the India Human Development Survey, this examination of toilet possession and personal hygiene in India shows that the strongest influences on households in India having a toilet were their circumstances: standard of living, educational level, and whether they possessed ancillary amenities. However, toilet possession depended also on households’ social environment; households in more developed villages were more likely to have a toilet than those in less developed villages. Open defecation is due to a lack of development and not because caste, ritual pollution, and untouchability instil in rural Indians a preference for defecating in the open.