‘Elementary Education in India: Policy Shifts, Issues and Challenges constitutes an urgent challenge not only to India’s educational system but to the underpinnings of the crisis in which it is perilously enmeshed—the roots and branches of capitalist overproduction and consequent immiseration. Jyoti Raina has assembled a distinguished group of Indian and international educational scholars whose critiques of neoliberalism and education sound the death-knell of efforts to repurpose education to accommodate a capitalist system reeling on its transnationalist heels. Equally important, the book provides readers with new vantage points from which a new system can be built. This stunning work will be of interest to critical educators worldwide.’ Peter McLaren, Distinguished Professor in Critical Studies, The Attallah College of Educational Studies, Chapman University; and Chair Professor, Northeast Normal University, China‘The period 1990 to the present has seen a major neoliberal turn in public policy in India in all sectors of education. The policy shifts in elementary education have been of the greatest impact because these touch the very base of India's highly stratified society. There has been a dearth of competent documentations and analyses that set out the causes, trajectories and consequences of these major shifts. The present collection of essays attempts to fill this vacuum by bringing together the perspectives of several Indian and international scholars and practitioners on the contemporary realities of policy and practice in elementary education. This book promises to serve as an important resource world-wide for students and educators as well as for those who work in policy spaces.’Shyam B. Menon, Professor of Education, Central Institute of Education, University of Delhi, Delhi; Founder Vice- Chancellor, Ambedkar University, Delhi, India‘This is an important book that brings together a rich collection of essays on a range of issues that are critical to the present and future of education in India. The larger context is the neo liberal restructuring of education and its fallout as reflected in the changes we are witnessing in schooling especially in the last two decades. The themes dealt with relate to policy shifts in education, privatisation, transformations in curriculum and pedagogical practices, exclusion and discrimination in schooling and so on. There is also an engagement with education as a public good and the challenge of public education, social justice and democratic citizenship, concerns that are increasingly marginalized today. This makes the book a timely contribution as well.’ Geetha B. Nambissan, Professor of Education, Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India‘At a time when discourse on the public education system is dominated by activist foundations and the practical urge ‘fixing things’ the collection of essays in this book bring back the focus on the underlying national and transnational force field within which the Indian constitutional promise of the Right to Education is playing out. The collection of essays present fresh historical and political analysis and commentary on education in society.’ Padma M. Sarangpani, Professor of Education, Tata Institute of Social Science, Mumbai, India‘This volume edited by Jyoti Raina is a direct and critical engagement with the ideas and practices of neo-liberalism as they restructure education with devastating consequences for the institutions of public education. Even more, Raina advances the theory that neoliberalism and the global ideas of the Washington consensus find their partner in the Indian state. This state has abandoned its role of redistribution in favour of the poor, and advancing the conditions for growth of private capital in education. The contributions in the volume highlight myriad themes of these arguments. A must read for scholars and researchers of Indian education.’ Manisha Priyam, Associate Professor, National Institute for Educational Planning and Administration, New Delhi
