Making the argument, that children out of school are working, required the presentation of information to back the claim. These statistics, use a range of definitions, some more liberal than others. Reason and evidence, are used to support a claim. Reason and evidence can also be used to challenge an argument presented. When argument is challenged, not through evidence, but by the questioning of intention, a new battleground is created. The backstory of advocacy statistics. 

When writing the story of education, it becomes impossible, to not address the issue of child labour. Just as when telling the story of child labour, it is not feasible, to not engage with the education system. The two tales are linked, one blends into the other, measuring one, provides the framework for success on another. This insight, would lead to the framing of the important public argument, All Children out of school are child labourers. 

August 24, is one of those days, when the world changes, quietly. 

In 1789, the French Assembly, proclaimed freedom of speech on August 24th.  And three days later on August 27th, the Assembly, finally accepted, the Lafayette version of the Rights of Man and Citizens.  

In 1985, Gorbachev, began the process of recognizing the market as a civilisational entity. A shift from the Soviet understanding of the market as an invention of capitalism. On August 24, 1991, Gorbachev, after surviving a failed coup and spending two days under house arrest, resigned as General Secretary of the Party, and by the end of the year the USSR ceased to exist. 

For teachers the vanguard of the education process, teaching from pages that were different from the world changing was a challenge, then as it is now. 

The replacement of the democratically elected government with a faith-led autocracy, in Afghanistan has been met with shock and awe. Mainstream media conversations have raised the possibility of the return to the dark days of the 20th century, when girls were denied access to education. 

The reality is likely to be an expansion of what has been happening in the provinces, during the past decade, where the Taliban has been de facto control. In these places, the official educators, administrators and providers, have negotiated on ground compromises. What this has meant, is the giving up, of final decision-making power, in key areas, recruitment, and curriculum. In turn, the Taliban have provided support in on-ground monitoring of teachers, assuring lowering of absenteeism. And when faced with determination, they have shown to have been willing to compromise. So co-education has been allowed to continue, albeit with a curtain separating girls and boys. It is this restricted future that awaits children going forward. 

Further Readings

1. Allen, John R and Felbab-Brown, Vanda (2020) The Fate of Women's Rights in Afghanistan https://www.brookings.edu/essay/the-fate-of-womens-rights-in-afghanistan/

2. Afghanistan Study Group (2021) Afghanistan Study Group Final Report https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/2021-02/afghanistan_study_group_final_report_a_pathway_for_peace_in_afghanistan.pdf

3. Rubin, Barnett and Rudeforth, Clancy (2016) Enhancing Access to Education: Challenges and Opportunities in Afghanistan https://cic.nyu.edu/sites/default/files/enhancing_access_education_may23_final.pdf

Here, we take a look at the last years of educational financing, with the integration of new private sector sources, through the lens of State responsibility. 

Further Reading 

Convergence Blog Post: Unlocking Financing for Investment into Education https://www.convergence.finance/news-and-events/news/2j6ZqZWOFCdDRLyI2bfOQm/view

Arvind Panagriya (2004): India in the 1980s and 1990s: A triumph of Reforms. IMF Working Paper https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2004/wp0443.pdf (last accessed August 10, 2021)

Vijay Joshi (2017), India's Economic Reforms: Reflections on the Unfinished Agenda, 15th L.K.Jha Memorial Lecture., December 11, 2017

https://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/Publications/PDFs/LKJHA235F92F8EBFB4E119129D18BA579628C.PDF (last accessed August 10, 2021)

Context is a powerful predictor of State Behaviour. What Context does not do however, is help us identify which areas, will receive more state attention. 

Further Readings

Keynes, J.M. (1919) The Economic Consequences of the Peace https://openlibrary.org/works/OL35914W (last accessed August 1, 2022)

Thucydides History_of_the_Peloponnesian_War_done_into_English_by_Richard_Crawley (1914) http://openlibrary.org/books/OL22889422M/ (last accessed August 1, 2022)

https://www.policycircle.org/life/off-the-yellow-brick-road-the-five-futures-that-the-new-education-policy-promises/ (last accessed, August 2, 2021).

The National Family Health Survey began life in 1991. It would soon gain credibility and acceptance. What makes the NFHS particularly valuable, has been its ability to shed light on difficult to measure facets of state-society-family-individual interaction. One such area, is child labour. 

Click on the chart below to get a better understanding of the narrative of progress.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/incidence-of-child-labour-in-india

In 2000, the NSSO survey, had already shown that 5.2 per cent of children were working.

That there were reasons, why the government was reluctant to collect disaggregated information on child labour would emerge when the National Family Health Survey, in 2005 would show that the child labour figure, was 15.2 per cent. This was substantially higher than the NSSO figure, which had just a year, earlier shown, that there had been a drop in the percentage of child labour, from 5.2 per cent to 4.2 per cent. This fall is a figure that the government could use to claim success in the struggle to end child labour. 

Data collection and analysis, present facets of realities. Those facets, have the potential to spotlight both the success and the failures. They thus have the potential to hold accountable the powerful. On April 10th 2003, in their response to a starred question, government would attempt to duck accountability. It would be a hairpin bend, in the long road to achieve education for all.   

Further Reading

RS Starred Question No. 417, answered on April 10, 2003

https://rsdebate.nic.in/bitstream/123456789/97196/2/IQ_198_10042003_S417_p54_p61.pdf

The Census and NSSO are pillars of the Indian Statistical system. Though the system has colonial roots, the establishment of the National Sample Survey Organisation, in 1950 with strategic autonomy, coded into its DNA gave the professionals, the ability to develop and share with the public analytical reports without fear. In 1953, with the passing of the Indian Statistical Act, the process of democratisation, the importance of accountability to the people, was built into the system. Willingness to share information was kept voluntary, which meant the refusal to share information, was lower than 10 per cent giving the system's data gathering ability, much heft.

This strategic autonomy, and the related valuation of the statistical system, would be important to lend credibility to the 2001 census, which reported, that for the first time, in recorded history, the number of total illiterates, had declined. Statement 25, of the census, was closely scrutinised. Statement 25 gives the number of literates and illiterates among the population aged seven years and above in absolute figures for India for the 1991 and 2001 Censuses. The significant milestone reached in Census of India, 2001, is that the total number of illiterates has come down from 328,167,288 in 1991 to 296,208,952. With that, Borrowing a few words from Nehru, the reason for the struggle for freedom, had been achieved, not wholly but in some measure.  

Decisions taken in this millennium, have eroded that strategic autonomy, that story will be taken up in the next episode.

Further Reading 

1.https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319292092_ORIGIN_AND_ACTIVITIES_OF_NSSO_GOVERNMENT_OF_INDIA(accessed on july 7, 2021)

2.https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/what-does-the-merger-of-national-sample-survey-office-and-central-statistics-office-entail/article27401039.ece

3.(https://censusindia.gov.in/Data_Products/Library/Provisional_Population_Total_link/PDF_Links/chapter7.pdf)

The census is a credible record of change and progress, a benchmark that allows trends to be highlighted, and correlations drawn. Only correlations, can be misunderstood as causation.  

Documents mentioned in the podcast 

Padmanabha, P. "Census of India, 1981: Salient Features." India International Centre Quarterly 8, no. 3/4 (1981): 207-18. Accessed July 3, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23001895.

https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-142/leading-churchill-myths-1/ Accessed July 3, 2021

Challenge of Education, A Policy Perspective http://14.139.60.153/bitstream/123456789/1592/1/CHALLENGE%20OF%20EDUCATION%20-a%20policy%20perspective_D-5070.pdf, Accessed, July 3, 2021

How do text books, present and re-present the darker side of a nation's past? The National Curriculum Framework, provides a guideline, " A (Text Book) guide to construct understanding through active engagement with text, ideas, things, environment and people, rather than transferring knowledge as finished product."

Yet how does that guideline, translate through a process of decision-making, into text books, that present, both successes and failures. 

Further reading 

Yogendra Yadav's Recalls what it took to get a chapter on the Emergency included in political science textbooks. https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/how-emergency-entered-school-textbooks-273107

In 1976, India adopted Article 51 A(h), making the development of a scientific temper, a duty of every citizen. Inclusion of that Article, put India, into a club of one, the only country, which requires, of its citizens, the development of a scientific temper, a shorthand for temperament promoted by Jawaharlal Nehru. Like some other Emergency  period changes in the Constitution, those who opposed the abandonment of democracy, retained this provision, when they came to power. 

That Fundamental Duty  would be the basis of an advance in thinking, of the purpose of education, best articulated in the National Curriculum Framework in 2005 and most recently in the National Education Policy 2020: The Indian as Global Citizen

Further Reading 

1. https://doj.gov.in/sites/default/files/Fundamental-duties_0.pdf

2. https://ncert.nic.in/pdf/nc-framework/nf2005-english.pdf

3. https://www.education.gov.in/sites/upload_files/mhrd/files/NEP_Final_English_0.pdf

Krishna Kumar uses the metaphor of a long corridor to darkness, to explain the continuities,  he surfaces in the way colonials and nationalists, understood the value of education. Reading reviews of his book, in academic journals, demonstrates, that his ideas met with both scepticism and empathy, --- reviewers pointing out the long corridor of darkness, was in reality, part of a long and winding road, that stretches, beyond Macaulay, to Charles Grant at the least, and possibly into the pre-colonial period too. 

Re-reading K. Ramakrishnan's review after all these years, again, it becomes easier to interpret that the long corridor of darkness, is not part of an edifice, but part of a long and winding road.  What Kumar's been able to do, is shine a light on parts of that road.       

Quoted works in audio

1. Avoiding the 'Corridors of Darkness', Reviewed Work: Political Agenda of Education: A Study of Colonialist and Nationalist Ideas 

Review by: K. Ramakrishnan, Social Scientist, Vol. 19, No. 8/9 (Aug. - Sep., 1991), pp. 90-94 (5 pages). https://doi.org/10.2307/3517703

2. Reviewed Work: Political Agenda of Education: A Study of Colonialist and Nationalist Ideas by Krishna Kumar

Review by: Suresh Chandra Ghosh, History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 3 (Autumn, 1993), pp. 394-395 (2 pages)

Published By: Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.2307/368203

The village of Sohagi, is at the heart of the Mirzapur-Badhoi Belt and the prime minister's visit, in 1975, was a significant signal of support to the carpet trade, and to the weaving industry. Her visit to launch, a programme for training of children to become weavers, would trigger, a series of events, that would lead Dr. Myron Weiner, to conclude, that Inda's children are not in school and learning, because the elites of the country want it to be so, 

During the Emergency, education was moved from the State List, to the Concurrent List, through the omnibus 42nd Amendment. In discussions on the health of democracy, that one amendment to the Constitution, has been identified as the single most lethal blow to the civil liberties legacy of the struggle for Independence.  Post the elections in 1978, civil liberties were restored, and those parts of the amendment, reversed. 

The shift of education, to the concurrent list, though, has remained, on the Statute books. With this move, the sources of financing and policy interventions expanded, and set the stage, for universalisation. 

Further Readings

Selva G. Universal Education In India: A Century Of Unfulfilled Dreams, https://archive.is/l9bm

https://www.livemint.com/news/india/india-s-federal-edifice-needs-a-nudge-11570981653330.html

Raveendhren, R.S. New Education Policy and erosion of states' powers, 

/http:///77624663.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

The extensive media coverage, of conflicts is not new. Yet in the course of one week, schools in places as disparate as Kabul, Kazan, in Russia,and Gaza, became the centre, of global attention as hatred and fear, turned schools into battlegrounds, and children, victims of hatred and fear, pawns in wars, they did not start.  

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/34-000-gazans-seek-refuge-at-unrwa-schools-amid-israeli-attacks/2244385#the story of Gaza

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/17/russia-searches-for-answers-after-rare-school-shootingthe story of kazan --- secondary school 175

https://scroll.in/bulletins/291/bearing-the-responsibility-of-creating-a-sustainable-tomorrow-a-citizens-pledge-to-the-future-- story of Kabul's Sayed ul Shuhada high school, afternoon shift

Myron Weiner's work has profoundly affected, public policy discussion on education and child labour. Child and the State in India achieved cult status. In a country, known to be prickly, and wearing its nationalism as a badge of honour, his central thesis, that the reason, child labour is rampant and children are not in school, is because India’s elite want it like that is cited by everyone ---- those who want to change the system and equally by those who want to maintain the status quo. 

Weiner advocated for compulsion on families to send children to school, a push for legislative action, with India following of the same path, as the east Asian countries. His ideas gained political and public attention. And yet, it was the ideal of education as a fundamental right, valued in and of itself, which would drive the inclusion of the Right to Education. The coercive element, was kept out. Years later, as schooling children became the norm not the exception, his thesis on the role of elites, continues to influence policy dialogues. The distance between ideas and ideals is shorter and at once longer, depending on which path one chooses to take. 

In his analysis of In the post-independence period, Kumar would point to both dramatic changes, such as the inclusion of all children within schools, while also pointing to ways in which the changes, were accompanied by subtle continuities. It was in the second edition of the book, that his analysis of the past would be nuanced with what he was witnessing all around him. Where earlier, the struggle was access to school, now the struggle, was to somehow, manage, even mitigate the prejudices, which had entered the classroom and were working to push select children, out of school. In his analysis, there is a central role of caste and gender. (https://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/pol-agenda-kk.pdf)

To understand the impact of his analysis on the wider community of academics, practitioners and policy-debates, it is useful to shift gaze to an earlier century. David Ricardo, published his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, in 1817 and it created ripples. It would be in 1821, when the third edition of the book was published, that the book would achieve the status of a timeless classic. It was in this third edition, that he would include Chapter 31, titled On Machinery. In this chapter, he would share ideas, on what the new technologies, then transforming production processes, would have on economy and society. A textual analysis of the chapter by the Munich School is an useful start  (  https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/73427/)

Vimala Ramachandran speaks about operationalising the ideals of equality, through the State system, in episode 2 of Baroque Conversations ...

The struggle to abolish child labour, is viewed as a good fight. But what if the work done by children is not considered labour?. What if children work, while also going to school? Can labour and school-going education co-exist, and if they do, what does it mean for the life experience of a child? 

These questions have no easy answers.   Prof G K Lieten has studied the phenomenon of children, doing the work of adults, extensively had explained, the distinction, between child labour (unacceptable) and child work, (acceptable in many if not most scenarios) as “(all) kaam (work) is not shram (labour)”. argues that the concept of work should be used as the generic term, and would refer to ”any type of work being done in any mode of employment relationship and for any purpose; it should serve as a description of the physical (or mental) involvement in a job”, while the concept of (child) labour should be ”restricted to the production of goods and services, including work in the household, that interfere with the normative development of children as defined in 1989 the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child”. 

Most  professionals, who work with children, disagree.  The understanding of how children should spend their childhood years, what experiences they should be introduced to, encouraged towards, through policy interventions, is at the heart of the two books faultline.  

For those interested, here's the study, during the course of which, I observed, that children were complementing schooling with labour http://www.negfire.org/images/reports/Maharajganj_Report_FinalDraft.pdf

1991 is known and celebrated as the year when economic reforms, were introduced in India. Cloaked within the story of the 1991 economic reforms, is the story of decisions taken that would decisively transform the policy and programming landscape of education delivery in India.  From 1992, there is a visible shifting of gears, and a policy commitment to universalise education for every child.  

The story of provision of education to every child, everywhere in India, is the story of State commitment, and public pressure. One of the key organisers, of that public pressure, national convenor of the Right to Education Forum, Ambarish Rai passed away this week. This episode is dedicated to our fellow traveller, Ambarish Rai. RIP. 

1991, is known in the public policy community, as the year, when India took a decisive turn right, on governance and especially economic policy-making. That same year two books were published, both by scholars, with a deep and abiding faith in the transformative, power of education in the lives of children and nations; both were to be successful, yet the two books could not be more different.

This Tale of Two Books audio serieswill examine the interplay of ideas and interests that were catalysed by these two very different books and the impact they had on India's education planning and the lives of children and their families.

Krishna Kumar, The political Agenda of Education, A Study of Nationalist and Colonial Ideas, 1991  (https://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/pol-agenda-kk.pdf)

Myron Weiner, The Child and the State in India, 1991 

(https://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/stateandchild.doc)

In today's India, institutions are especially important. How should the story of an institution be told? In his wonderful chronicle  of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Dr. Batabyal chose to focus on the contest of ideas, and the change processes, which could be seen, and experienced within higher education. In this episode, he talks about the struggles, ideological and professional, in the backdrop of which the Jawaharlal Nehru University was set up as a centre for advanced research. 

In a free-wheeling conversation, he shares the impact of growing up in one of India’s post-Independence centres of excellence, the steel city of Bokaro, then a microcosm of India, where professionals of all states, all communities came together to build a new and different history of modern India and how that sense of Indianness, was honed by the interest taken by his teachers in honing his latent interest in renaissance ideas and ideals. 

He talks about the shift in perspective, from participant to observer and how that played out while researching and writing his well-regarded, book JNU, the Making of A University.

Dr. Rakesh Batabyal is Associate Professor, of Media History, at the Centre for Media Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University.

A selection of his writings

https://www.amazon.in/Modern-School-1920-Century-Schooling

https://www.amazon.in/JNU-Making-University-Rakesh-Batabyal

https://www.amazon.in/Communalism-Bengal-Noakhali-1943-47-History

How did individuals, and organisations, respond when the first pandemic of the 21st century hit? What happens when an individual life-career pivot sends you on a career path you had not planned? Havovi Wadia, CEO of Save The Children India (STCI) shares what responding to the Covid 19 pandemic, meant, when government decisions and court orders, made lives more vulnerable, the everyday difficulties of ensuring children and women, are helped when they are most in need, has meant and how the organisation is preparing for a future, where many of the assumptions that were the foundation of planning, are no longer relevant. She talks her journey’s milestones about making the best use of available opportunities and how learning and making a job one’s own is the best kept secret of career success. This episode was recorded in the last fortnight of 2020.

Selection of Writings

https://azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/SitePages/pdf/Havovi-Wadia-Confining-childhood-in-India.pdf

https://idronline.org/how-to-use-data-to-improve-decision-making/

In this episode of the podcast, Dr. Resmi Bhaskaran talks about making career choices. She discusses the pleasures of taking the road less travelled, selecting among the many opportunities available and what happens to dreams that get left behind and how it feels, when those dreams come true.

Dr. Resmi Bhaskaran is a development economist, who is able to tell stories through both qualitative and quantitative data, making her rare among the community of data storytellers.

A selection of her writings

https://www.policycircle.org/life/indias-migrant-labour-exodus-and-missing-trade-unions/

http://www.environmentportal.in/files/child%20labour%20in%20delhi%20garment%20factory.pdf

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137377548_8

In the 1990s, India achieved a milestone, which she has never celebrated. She ensured, that for the first time in recorded history, majority of girls were in school and learning. One of the architects of that success, Dr. Vimala Ramachandran, was at the age of 34, the first national director of India’s most influential empowerment through education programme, the exceptional Mahila Samakhya. She reminisces about the changes, she helped pilot, later influenced, and most recently observed in a 40 year career, that has spanned academia, activism, entrepreneurship to improve the lives of girls and women through education.

A selection of her writings

https://zubaanbooks.com/shop/cartographies-of-empowerment-the-story-of-mahila-samakhya/

https://www.india.gov.in/spotlight/digital-gender-atlas-advancing-girls-education

https://www.eruindia.org/publications.asp

Listening, the singular experience on which this podcast is anchored, is taken for granted until we no longer have the ability to hear. Unlike other forms of disability,  deafness the disability is invisible, what is visible are the related educational and social widening gaps.

Arun Shah, the Director, Development of the All India Federation of the Deaf, shares with Baroque his engagement with visibilising the invisible disability. He has been supporting non-profits, in marketing, communications raising resources, both material and human for nearly four decades. 

In the course of the conversation, he discusses growing up as the younger brother, of one of India’s most talented artists, the painter, Prabha Shah, and the journey from being a supportive family member to becoming an advocate for the rights of the deaf, working full time, to bridge the divide between the deafness of those who are reluctant to hear and the difficulties of the hearing impaired who want to live lives of meaning and self-respect.